Just to add: The notch feature will always work with any coil, you just need to know what's happening. The 11" DD for example won't be able to disc out bottletops completely, and it won't be able to notch them out either completely. This is because bottletops have ferrous and a high conductive metals in them. Large DD coils disc out the ferrous but see the non-ferrous.
Small DD coils don't see the non-ferrous part of the bottletop for some reason and disc out the whole conductive range of the bottletop. For large DD coils, this is a good thing, a really good thing especially on the Golden. It means you can hunt with the disc all the way down and identify items by pitch better so you can go for the deeper stuff, just takes a little getting used to but it's really easy. For small DD coils that disc out ferrous junk even if they're mixed with non-ferrous metals, this is also a good thing because you won't be seeing ferrous junk at all... it all depends on knowing what you're using, then it's a win/win.
Why am I explaining this? Because you asked about the notch feature relating to the 8" inch DD. I haven't had the 8" DD but have had various other DD's. I don't know if the Golden will see the 8" DD as a small coil or a big one, I wouldn't worry because either way, once you learn what's going on you can ignore junk.
Just to clarify if you're confused: The notch feature will work always, it's the targets that will make it act differently from coil to coil. The only real issue with this are bottletops... if you don't know what you're doing. From what I hear the 8" DD is an outstanding could btw, and the golden is an outstanding machine, I would get it knowing what I know especially since it comes with a better coil that the stock. Any coil is better that that 8x9!