Kaby lake core i7
Встречаем Intel Kaby Lake: обзор и тестирование процессора Core i7-7700K
Оглавление
Вступление
Многим пользователям известен лидер процессоростроения – компания Intel, но мало кто помнит историю ее становления, особенно период царствования одной удачной архитектуры.
Давайте вернемся в 2011 год, что не так уж и далеко по меркам исторического континуума. После выхода Core и Nehalem компания анонсировала процессоры Sandy Bridge. И в их числе был поистине массовый бестселлер i7-2600K: относительно доступный (с тем-то курсом доллара), хорошо разгоняющийся, энергоэффективный и… с припоем под крышкой.
Успешный старт
Модели Sandy Bridge – i5-2500K и i7-2600K – продавались как горячие пирожки, поскольку после не совсем удачных процессоров Nehalem они обладали целым рядом нововведений и собственными достоинствами.
К тому же, как бы это парадоксально ни звучало, даже в 2017 году данная архитектура все еще способна удовлетворять запросы большинства пользователей. Особенно в тандеме с правильной материнской платой и прямыми руками.
В таком случае можно легко получить 5 ГГц с воздушным охлаждением. Да, Sandy Bridge позволил с большой долей вероятности говорить о первом процессоре Intel, покорившем частоту 5 ГГц на воздухе. И мало кто тогда задумывался о скальпировании. Разве это не заслуга компании?
Увы, или, наоборот, к счастью, технологии не стояли на месте, и Sandy Bridge заменил преемник в виде Ivy Bridge. 32 нм сменились 22 нм, но по сути это ничего не меняло.
Начиная с Ivy Bridge, появились проблемы компактного размещения транзисторов, под высокими напряжениями у ЦП пропадали линии PCI-e и каналы контроллера памяти, а разгон все еще оставался уделом моделей с приставкой «К». Немудрено, что после попадания новинок в руки энтузиастов энтузиазм последних поубавился. Вместо радужных надежд на беспроблемные >5 ГГц на воздухе получили температуры до 90°C под нагрузкой.
С другой стороны, прогресс ядра Ivy Bridge заключался в применении оригинальных «трехмерных» Tri-Gate транзисторов, взамен обычных планарных, вследствие чего уменьшилась площадь кристалла. Помимо роста частоты работы топового CPU (i7-2600К 3.4-3.8 ГГц, i7-2700К 3.5-3.8 ГГц, i7-3770К 3.5-3.9 ГГц), других отличий не было, а разработчики Intel уделили свое внимание лишь графической части ЦП.
Новые модели хоть и работали при меньшем напряжении vCPU, выделяли гораздо больше тепла. В среднем исправный i7-2700К при напряжении 1.3 В обеспечивал 4500 МГц с большим запасом по температуре (70-75°C), i7-3770К довольствовался 1.2 В, но прогревался уже до 75-80°C. Однако с точки зрения истинных оверклокеров Ivy Bridge казался промахом со стороны Intel, ведь он уступал в плане разгона и добавил проблем с тепловыделением.
В скором времени народ вспомнил о скальпировании, применяя этот метод как единственный способ излечить процессоры от нового недуга. А надежды возложили на новое ядро, которое могло принести или хотя бы вернуть старые добрые 5 ГГц при воздушном охлаждении.
И снова чуда не произошло. Появившиеся процессоры Haswell были словно братья Ivy Bridge. Стабильные частоты в разгоне откатились до совсем неприличных величин – 4200-4400 МГц. А пользователи, точнее энтузиасты, были в очередной раз заманены в ловушку маркетологами. На самом деле в процессе скальпирования и замены термоинтерфейса нуждался каждый вышедший с конвейера процессор i7-4770К.
Стоит упомянуть такой нюанс – архитектура Haswell разрабатывалась как универсальная с оглядкой на мобильный сектор, поэтому Intel сконцентрировалась на низком энергопотреблении и достаточно грубом режиме Turbo. В результате i7-4770К даже не прибавил в частоте, оставшись при своих 3.5-3.9 ГГц. И только спустя год его сменил i7-4790К, частоты которого выросли до 4.0-4.4 ГГц.
Haswell Refresh, а именно так называлось обновленное ядро, ближе всех подобрался к результатам Sandy Bridge. «Из коробки» можно было достичь 4.6-4.8 ГГц при использовании производительной системы охлаждения. Но на смену им выпустили процессоры Skylake, снова ничем не выделяющиеся среди массы ЦП Intel.
С одной стороны, штатные частоты постепенно повышаются:
- Sandy Bridge – 3.5-3.9 ГГц; OC 4.8-5.0 ГГц;
- Ivy Bridge – 3.5-3.9 ГГц; OC 4.4-4.7 ГГц;
- Haswell – 3.5-3.9 ГГц; OC 4.3-4.5 ГГц;
- Haswell Refresh – 4.0-4.4 ГГц; OC 4.6-4.8 ГГц;
- Skylake – 4.0-4.2 ГГц; OC 4.4-4.6 ГГц.
С другой – частотный потенциал моделей Core i7 с литерой К лежит в диапазоне 4.5-5.0 ГГц, причем чем дальше, тем хуже. Правда, иногда бывает передышка, но и она в целом ничего не меняет.
overclockers.ru
Intel Core i7 7700K benchmark preview
Sitting on a Skylake CPU and worried you’re going to be off the pace when Kaby Lake rolls around? Well, I wouldn’t worry your pretty little heads too much if my early testing with our own Core i7 7700K is anything to go by. Running it in our standard Z170 Asus motherboard it doesn’t really offer anything over the current Core i7 6700K.
Our full Intel Core i7 7700K review is now live!
I bumped into a guy in the park the other day. He was wearing a dirty mac and a battered fedora pulled low over his face. I was filled with dread to see him pull back the folds of his coat, though that was quickly replaced by a mix of wonder and disgust when I realised underneath he was painted head to toe in thick blue paint.
Before he flew off with his equally Smurfy buddies he dropped a tiny bit of silicon into my hand. And lo it was the new Intel Core i7 7700K. A genuine Christmas miracle, guv’nor.
Since that chance meeting I’ve been putting the new Kaby Lake K-series i7 through it’s paces in our fully updated Asus Z170 motherboard and the results have been… well… sort of disappointing.
I mean, they’re disappointing if you were hoping the newly optimised 14nm Kaby Lake Core architecture would offer anything tangibly different from the current Skylake generation of chips, but if you’re sitting on a current gen Core i7 I imagine the results are probably quite pleasing.
You’ll see from the benchmark results below that even with the two chips, the Core i7 7700K and Core i7 6700K running at their stock speeds there’s precious little extra performance to be gained by the Kaby Lake chip. And when they’re both running at the 7700K’s 4.5GHz peak Turbo clockspeed there is nothing between them whether we’re talking straight CPU tests or graphics/gaming benchmarks.
There is one little beacon of hope in these early tests and that’s with the temperature and power performance. The Kaby Lake chip runs hotter than the Skylake i7 when they’re both running at stock speeds, but when the 6700K is pushed to the 7700K’s 4.5GHz frequency that switches around.
The Intel Core i7 7700K is also a slightly better overclocker, as we were hoping, but didn’t quite manage a completely stable 5GHz. The 6700K sticks at the 4.8GHz mark and we got the 7700K running stable at 4.9GHz, though obviously that 100MHz speed differential doesn’t really translate into any tangible performance difference.
I did get the Kaby Lake i7 to pass some of our benchmarking tests at 5GHz, but for the really intensive X264 video encoding test it consistently fell over. It was also regularly topping 91°C, especially when I tried putting a little more voltage through it to keep things rolling on.
I can’t help feel a little disappointed in just how little difference there is in my, admittedly very early, benchmarking tests. The Core i7 7700K is really going to struggle to justify itself if these results ring true in my final testing.
We can only hope the new Z270 chipset makes up for that and brings us something more positive when the final Kaby Lake launch goes down next year. And, who knows, maybe the Core i5 7600K will turn out to be an absolute silicon triumph. Fingers crossed, eh?
Original story October 4, 2016: AGeekbench 4.0.0 benchmarkhas appeared online showing the performance of the top-endKaby Lake CPU, the Intel Core i7 7700K. Set in a Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI motherboard, the quad-core processor is shown performing at the same level as a six-core i7 6800K.
The Geekbench test uses a bunch of different benchmarks to deliver a performance score for your processor, using integer and floating point workloads as well as memory performance tests to put together both single and multi-threaded index scores. At the moment the Core i7 6700K sits atop the single core performance charts, but if this Kaby Lake test proves reliable and repeatable the i7 7700K will be considerably quicker than its older sibling.
But it’s not necessarily the performance of the upcoming Kaby Lake processor against the Skylake i7 chips it’s replacing which is the most interesting. The Broadwell-E i7 6800K chip is a six-core, 12-thread CPU and yet the 7700K is still able to post the same sort of multi-threaded performance in the Geekbench tests. Realistically that’s because the Kaby Lake processor is clocked so much higher – by a full 800MHz – on a clock-for-clock basis then the 6800K is still going to have the win.
This does though show the potential for the new Kaby Lake CPU refresh, though we’re going to have to wait for CES in January 2017 to get the full release of the new processors. And if they follow the last refresh – the Haswell-era Devil’s Canyon chips – then the Kaby Lake CPUs are going to take advantage of a mature production process to deliver super-high overclocking performance.
The posted benchmark results though may not necessarily be from a stock-clocked 7700K, however. There are posted benchmark results on the same site which have the 6700K with even higher scores and 7700K results with lower ones, so it’s possible that Kaby Lake chip was overclocked when it was tested.
The other interesting thing to come from the Geekbench result is that the testing was carried out on a Z170 motherboard, not the new Z270 chipset which is set to accompany the new CPU range’s launch. MSI have recently stated that their Z170 motherboards will only need a new BIOS update to provide support for the next generation of Intel processors, and this result seems to suggest the same for Gigabyte too.
So why would you want to make the move to a Z270 motherboard? The new 200-series chipsets aren’t going to be vastly different from the current 100-series boards, but will provide more PCIe 3.0 lanes – up to 24 from 20 – as well as support for Intel’s advanced new Optane SSD and memory technology.
Optane uses the 3D XPoint technology jointly created by Micron and Intel, which is designed to offer a step-change in memory performance over the traditional NAND memory used in RAM and SSDs. It’s potentially 1,000x faster, with 1,000x the endurance levels and 10x denser than conventional NAND-based memory. Intel reckons it will have the first Optane SSDs out before the end of the year, with volume shipping to follow later on in 2017.
www.pcgamesn.com
Intel's 7th Generation Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K CPU Leaked - Core i7-7500U and Core M7-7Y75 For Mobility Detailed
The first specifications of Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake processors have been leaked out. Intel’s 7th generation processor family, codenamed Kaby Lake, will be launching later this year on desktops and mobility platforms with several chips and products to select from. The Kaby Lake processors will be Intel’s last x86 processors to utilize the 14nm process after which Intel will jump ship to 10nm on their Cannonlake processors.
Kaby Lake processors will be compatible with existing 100-series motherboards. (Image Credits: Digitaltrends)
Intel’s Kaby Lake processors will be the 7th iteration of the Core family so we should be expecting some key improvements. The Kaby Lake lineup may not be a significant update over the Skylake family but Intel made things clear by announcing their latest process technology roadmap last month.
According to the roadmap, Intel will now stick to a process node for three generation of Core families. With 14nm, we have gotten the Broadwell, Skylake and the upcoming Kaby Lake processors. The same process will continue with 10nm and beyond due to complexity involved in developing new chips on such small nodes and the resultant yields.
Intel officially dropped Tick-Tock in favor of three year cadence (PAO).
Summing up the 14nm family of processors, Broadwell was the first to utilize the new process while keeping the architectural design close to Haswell. Skylake was also 14nm but brought significant improvements on CPU and GPU side. The Kaby Lake processors are termed as part of the “Optimization” process which means Intel will be able to extract more performance and better efficiency from existing Skylake designs. This is slightly closer to a refresh but we will see if Intel manages to offer more than that at launch.
The leaked details of three new processors include the Core i7-7700K, Core i7-7500U and the Core M7-7Y75. It is clear that the first processor is the flagship processor of the desktop lineup while the remaining two are built for the notebook families such as Kaby Lake-U and Kaby Lake-Y. It’s interesting that these chips have shown up on SisoftSandra so early so it is possible that the clock speeds might change in the final revisions. Regardless, let us get on with the specifications:
Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake-S Mainstream Desktop Processor
The flagship Intel desktop processor will be the Core i7-7700K processor. Intel will stick with the quad core and hyper threaded design which they have been using on the mainstream Core i7 processors since launch. The chip is currently clocked at 3.60 GHz with boost clocks of 4.2 GHz. The currently flagship Core i7-6700K features 4.00 GHz base and 4.20 GHz boost clocks. As mentioned before, these are early samples so clock speeds can increase by the time these chips launch.
Image Source: SisoftSandra Database
Other specifications include an 8 MB L3 cache, 256 KB of L2 cache and a 4.00 GHz internal memory controller. The chip will feature the latest Kaby Lake Desktop graphics processor which will consist of 24 Execution units. The sample was clocked to 1150 MHz which is what the GT2 graphics chip on the Core i7-6700K is also clocked at. The Core i7-7700K processor will feature slightly better efficiency and possibly a lower TDP due to the much enhanced 14nm process. The chip will be compatible with 100-series and 200-series motherboards that feature the LGA 1151 socket.
Intel Core i7-7700K Preliminary Specs:
| Family Name | Kaby Lake | Skylake | Broadwell |
| Process Node | 14nm (3rd Gen) | 14nm (2nd Gen) | 14nm (1st Gen) |
| CPU Cores | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 |
| Graphics Core | TBA | Intel 530 | Iris Pro 6200 |
| Base Clock | 3.60 GHz (ES) 4.20 GHz (Final) | 4.00 GHz | 3.30 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.20 GHz (ES) 4.50 GHz (Final) | 4.20 GHz | 3.70 GHz |
| L3 Cache | 8 MB L3 | 8 MB L3 | 6 MB L3 |
| L4 Cache | N/A | N/A | 128 MB eDRAM |
| Unlocked Design | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| TDP | TBA | 91W | 65W |
Intel Core i7-7500U Kaby Lake-U Low TDP Mobility Processor
The Core i7-7500U will be part of the Kaby Lake-U family which is built for ultra-low power platforms. The Core i7-7500U sample was a dual core, multi-threaded processor which featured clock speeds of 2.70 GHz base and 2.90 GHz boost. The chip comes with 4 MB L3 cache and 512 KB of L2 cache. The chip was tested on a platform with DDR3L memory. DDR4L and LPDDR4 support will also be included for Kaby Lake-U processors.
Image Source: SisoftSandra Database
The graphics chip is likely to be a GT2 series with clock speeds of around 1000-1100 MHz. It’s predecessor, the Core i7-6500U has a 15W TDP which the Core i7-7500U is likely to retain. The chip will be available in several 7 th generation notebooks in 2H of 2016.
Intel Core M7-7Y75 Kaby Lake-Y Core M, Low TDP Processor
The last chip is the Core M7-7Y75 which as the name suggests is part of the Kaby Lake-Y series. These ultra low TDP chips don’t exceed the 4.5W range which will likely be true for the Kaby Lake series. On the specifications side, the Core M7-7Y75 is a dual core design with multi-threading enabled.
Image Source: SisoftSandra Database
This chip is clocked at a base clock of 1.30 GHz and boosts up to 1.60 GHz. The chip has 4 MB of L3 cache. We don’t know about the graphics part of this chip but it will be featured on ultra-slim form factors such as ultra-books and Apple’s Mac Air. The Kaby Lake lineup is currently planned for launch in second half of 2016 so we should be expecting some early board samples for the desktop lineup to appear at Computex 2016.
Intel CPU Generation Comparison:
| Processor Architecture | Sandy Bridge | Ivy Bridge | Haswell | Broadwell | Skylake | Kaby Lake | Coffee Lake | Comet Lake | Ice Lake |
| Processor Process | 32nm | 22nm | 22nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm+ | 14nm++ | 14nm++ | 10nm |
| Processors Cores (Max) | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 6/12 & 8/16 | 10/20? | TBD |
| Platform Chipset | 6-Series “Cougar Point” | 7-Series “Panther Point” | 8-Series “Lynx Point” | 9-Series “Wild Cat Point” | 100-Series “Sunrise Point” | 200-Series “Union Point” | 300-Series | ICL PCH? | ICL PCH? |
| Platform Socket | LGA 1155 | LGA 1155 | LGA 1150 | LGA 1150 | LGA 1151 | LGA 1151 | LGA 1151 | TBD | TBD |
| Memory Support | DDR3 | DDR3 | DDR3 | DDR3 | DDR4/DDR3L | DDR4/DDR3L | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR4 |
| TDPs | 35-95W | 35-77W | 35-84W | 65W | 35-91W | 35-91W | 35-95W | TBD | TBA |
| Thunderbolt | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Platform | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA | Desktop LGA |
| Launch | 2011 | 2012 | 2013-2014 | 2015 | 2015 | 2017 | 2017-2018 | 2019 | 2020? |
wccftech.com
Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake Review
Intel’s Kaby Lake micro-architecture represents a new move for the company. It breaks away from Intel’s long-standing “tick-tock” release cadence. A “tick” has traditionally represented a CPU die shrink, which we mostly recently got with Broadwell in early 2015. A “tock” represented new architecture, which we got in late 2015 with Skylake. With this logic, you would expect Intel’s seventh generation Kaby Lake CPUs to be a die shrink, but Intel says that we aren't likely to get another one until the end of 2017. This means Kaby Lake represents a new optimization phase for Intel. Does the company make enough improvements to justify an upgrade? Let’s put the company’s new leading 7700K quad-core CPU through its paces to find out.
Like Skylake before it, Kaby Lake is built on a 14nm production process, but Intel asserts that it has made under-the-hood improvements to allow the architecture to reach higher clock speeds, and is thus calling the process “14nm+.”
Kaby Lake represents a new optimization phase for Intel
The 7700K is the leading Kaby Lake SKU and it has a thermal design point (TDP) of 91 watts. Because it is a K SKU, which means it's overclockable, Intel does not include a cooler with the chip. The company figures that most people who purchase high-end overclockable CPUs will slap on higher-performing aftermarket coolers.
Kaby Lake CPUs use the same socket as their old Skylake equivalents (LGA 1151), and you can use the same Z170 motherboards with Intel’s new CPUs, as long as you update their BIOS. The company has also created a new Z270 chipset for Kaby Lake. These 200-series motherboards will support Intel’s upcoming Optane memory. We still don’t know a lot about Optane, but Intel has asserted that its Optane is up to a 1,000 times as fast as traditional NAND memory.
While the 7700K offers 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes like the 6700K before it, which is enough to effectively power two graphics cards, Z270 motherboards will also offer up to 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes, which is four more than Z170 mobos that debuted with Skylake. This will allow motherboard manufacturers to add more support for features like additional M.2 NVMe ports.
The four CPU cores are centered around the chip with the shared cache sandwiched among them. Intel’s HD 630 integrated graphics take a sizeable footprint and is located towards the bottom of the chip.The 7700K is essentially a souped-up version of the 6700K. Both processors have four cores and eight threads with 8MB of SmartCache memory. Their TDPs are also the same. The 7700K’s main advantage is its higher clock speed. The Kaby Lake CPU carries a 4.2GHz base frequency and a 4.5GHz boost frequency, which is notably higher than the 6700K’s respective 4.0GHz and 4.2GHZ speeds.
The 7700K is essentially a souped-up version of the 6700K
The Kaby Lake K Family
| CPU | Cores/Threads | Intel Smart Cache | Base Frequency | Max Turbo Boost | TDP | Price |
| Core i7-7700K | 4/8 | 8MB | 4.2 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 91W | $339 |
| Core i5-7600K | 4/4 | 6MB | 3.8 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 91W | $242 |
| Core i3-7350K | 2/4 | 4MB | 4.2 GHz | NA | 60W | $168 |
Intel is releasing a whopping 16 Kaby Lake desktop CPUs. We’ve highlighted the three overclockable SKUs in the chart above. All of Intel’s Kaby Lake processors here will support 2400MHz DDR4 or 1600MHz DDR3L RAM in dual-channel configuration.
Testing Methodology
To put the 7700K through its paces, we’re testing it against its predecessor, the 6700K. To achieve testing parity, we used the same PC for both chips, which is a rig equipped with Gigabyte’s Z170X-Gaming 7 motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 RAM clocked at 2133MHz in dual-channel mode coupled with NZXT’s Kraken X61 cooler and a GeForce GTX 980. Complete PC tech specs are in the chart below.
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-170X-Gaming 7 |
| RAM | Corsair Vengeance 2133MHz |
| GPU | GeForce GTX 980 |
| Storage | Seagate 600 Series 240GB |
| Cooler | NZXT Kraken X61 |
| Case | NZXT h540 |
| OS | Windows 10 |
| PSU | NZXT 1200W |
Benchmarks
Blender is an open-source 3D graphics and animation program. The program effectively utilizes multi-core CPUs. We ran a short benchmark that rendered a 3D model of a flying squirrel. With its seven percent faster boost clock, the 7700K was able to complete the benchmark eight percent faster than the 6700K.
Cinebench is another 3D animation benchmark that really takes advantage of cores. Like Blender, the 7700K was able to perform eight percent better than the 6700K.
The Persistence of Vision Raytracer (POV-RAY) is a 3D ray tracing program. The application also has a built-in benchmark that really pushes multi-core processors. The 7700K performed nine percent better than the 6700K here.
POV-RAY also has a benchmark that stresses single-core performance, which is useful considering many games and applications still only use one core. The 7700K outperformed the 6700K by eight percent here.
GeekBench 3.0 is a synthetic benchmark that provides a score. In its multi-core test, the 7700K scored five percent better than the 6700K.
GeekBench 3.0’s single-core test also yielded a five percent win for the 7700K.
PCMark 8 is another synthetic benchmark, but it aims to simulate real-world tasks that include web browsing, word processing, video conferencing, and more. It also leverages our GPU. While this takes some stress off the CPU, it’s more indicative of a real-world scenario. Unexpectedly, the 6700K beat the 7700K by six percent here. We ran the test twice and got the same result. It’s the only benchmark in our suite of tests where the Skylake CPU beats the Kaby Lake processor.
3DMark 11 is predominantly a GPU benchmark, but it does generate a physics score, which is more CPU-bound. Running the test on its Extreme 1080p preset, the 7700K performed three percent better, which represents one of its more modest wins.
We also wanted to run the benchmark on its performance mode, which renders multiple scenes at 720p. Since it’s less graphically demanding than its Extreme preset, it leans less on the GPU and more on the CPU. Here, the 7700K performed 22 percent better than the 6700K, which is massive.
Whereas 3DMark 11 is more of a graphics test, its sister synthetic benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, calculates physics and acts as a CPU test. The 7700K performs nine percent better than the 6700K.
Tech ARP’s x264 benchmark is a demanding video encoding test that really pushes multiple CPU cores. It simulates encoding and converting a 1080p video clip into a high-quality x264 video file. The benchmark offers two passes and in its first pass, the 7700K performs 10 percent better than the 6700K.
In the second pass of Tech ARP’s benchmark, it also garnered a 10 percent better score.
7-Zip is a popular, free tool for compressing and decompressing files, which can be very CPU-intensive tasks. The program does a great job leveraging CPU cores and has a built-in benchmark. The 7700K was able to perform six percent better than the 6700K.
Developed by Oxide Games, makers of Ashes of the Singularity, the Star Swarm Stress Test is a real-time tech demo. With hundreds of space ships flying about the galaxy, it’s one of those rare game tests that utilizes multi-core processors really well. Running the benchmark on its lowest settings at 1080p to leverage the CPU as much as possible, the 7700K performed 22 percent faster than the 6700K, which is huge.
Bumping the test up to its extreme preset, the 7700K’s lead diminished with the benchmark leaning more on the GPU, but it still maintained a highly respectable 13 percent advantage.
Irrational Games’ BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter that leverages multiple cores well. When we tone the graphics down to the game’s low preset to leverage the CPU, the 7700K performed four percent faster than the 6700K.
When we cranked up Infinite’s graphical settings to max, which represents a more real-world scenario, both CPUs end up in a statistical tie with the game leaning heavily on the GPU.
Intel is marketing the 7700K as a great chip for VR experiences. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many VR benchmarks. When we ran Valve’s SteamVR Performance Test, which is more of a GPU test, but both CPUs ended up in a statistical tie.
Temperatures and Overclocking
High clock speeds usually equate to high temperatures, and because the 7700K features aggressive clock speeds right out of the box, heat becomes a legitimate concern. At idle just sitting in the operating system, we measured the processor at around 29 degrees celsius. Running the CPU-intensive x264 test to put a stress on the chip, temperatures shot up to around 85 degrees C, which is pretty hot. Traditionally, anything above 80 degrees C treads into uncomfortable territory.
In terms of overclocks, your mileage may vary as every single CPU overclocks differently (even CPUs of the same SKU), but with our setup, we were able to push our 7700K to 4.8GHz with around 1.3 volts of power. This represents a six percent overclock, which was reflected with our six percent performance gain in our x264 test. That’s not a huge overclock, but perhaps the bigger concern is that our temperatures rose to the 90s. It even hit 100 degrees C on more than one occasion. That’s really hot, especially since our NZXT Kraken X61 water cooler is quite good.
Conclusion
The 7700K outperforms the 6700K by 7.5 percent when you take the average of our 18 benchmarks. While that’s not a mind-blowing upgrade, it is in line with Intel’s more recent generational jumps. Perhaps its biggest sin is that it gets hot, especially when you overclock it.
It’s really not worth upgrading to if you have a 6700K. As a matter of fact, if you have an i7 Haswell CPU (4th generation processor), it still probably isn’t worth the upgrade unless you want new features such as native NVMe, Thunderbolt 3, and DDR4 support.
If you’re not in a rush to build a new PC, it might be a good idea to wait to see how AMD’s Ryzen CPU pans out. The 8-core processor looks quite promising from preliminary tests, and it’s supposedly right around the corner.
But if you simply can’t wait to build a new PC and want a top-of-the-line CPU, the 7700K is what you should get. It's faster than the 6700K, and costs about the same. It’s the best consumer quad-core chip that money can buy today.
www.gamespot.com
