Good news folks, good news indeed; different motherboard vendors have released new Beta BIOS versions almost simultaneously. The updated microcode contains support for possibly upcoming octa-core processors, which Intel might soon introduce to the desktop market.

Whether it’s ASRock, ASUS or MSI all three vendors have uploaded new Beta BIOS versions to their download servers. According to their changelogs they now “Support the latest 8th Gen CPU” or they now “Support the latest 8th Gen Intel Core Processor”. This apparently doesn’t tell us much but closer inspection by Twitter user @momomo_us with some magic tools to read out the BIOS shows that the CPU ID 06EC is supported. Since the current models are named 06EA and 06EB it can be very much expected that new chips are imminent.

This latest Beta BIOS update from the different vendors not only adds support for an upcoming chip about which we’ll be speculating further below, it also contains the latest microcode patch further securing the platform/CPU against the Spectre/Meltdown bugs.

As we mentioned; no specific news on the upcoming Intel mainstream CPUs has been released yet and we’re still left guess as to what the chip giant might be coming up with. So far it seems apparent that the chips will follow the Core i-9000 naming scheme replacing Core i-8000. On top of that it can be expected that the new chips will boast slightly increased clock speeds with the top-of-the-line model hitting 5GHz single core performance. Due to the todays leaked information there could be a possible eight-core CPU coming to the mainstream desktop market.



Source: ComputerBase