Overclocking Intel’s Core i7-7700K: Kaby Lake Hits The Desktop!

[Crashman]

Intel's new Kaby Lake CPU delivers on the clock speeds the company promised, but the power consumption and thermal characteristics were disappointing based on a leaked sample of the new chip we received and tested weeks ahead of its official launch.

Overclocking Intel’s Core i7-7700K: Kaby Lake Hits The Desktop! : Read more

 

[sarinaide]

The results are kind of disappointing for a 200mhz clock bump and 200mhz overclock head room you get twice the heat and power used, and 10% at best gains but more or less less than 5%. Sorry but maybe I missed something but that is not very good.

 

[envy14tpe]

I'm salivating and excited to get this. Yeah...2017 upgrade time!

 

[Daniel Ladishew]

Why would you use a motherboard with known issues (BLCK and RAM timings) to test a brand new CPU? It seems like you would have been better served taking the extra time to switch out to a motherboard that actually performs as expected with all previous hardware, so your baseline isn't questionable. If I were Intel, I wouldn't respond to these results either. Please test again with a better performing motherboard.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Does it really deserve the exclamation point?

Kaby Lake has the expected identical IPC to Skylake but slightly higher clocks. The thermal figures are surprising, I would have thought that they wouldn't have done that bad.

Anyone with Skylake shouldn't bother upgrading. As expected, Intel has produced a filler chip simply because their 10nm fab is taking longer than expected.

 

[elbert]

Looks like the 14nm+ is real given +200mhz overclock gain. Now just wonder what the leaked i3-7350K can get in overclock.

 

[MusenMouse]

Maybe Intel's letting AMD get a free punch before they roll them next round . Anyways maybe Kaby Lake will be like the Broadwell lineup, fleeting and in small numbers.

 

[logainofhades]

Does it really deserve the exclamation point?

Kaby Lake has the expected identical IPC to Skylake but slightly higher clocks. The thermal figures are surprising, I would have thought that they wouldn't have done that bad.

Anyone with Skylake shouldn't bother upgrading. As expected, Intel has produced a filler chip simply because their 10nm fab is taking longer than expected.

Depends on what skylake they have. An i3 6100 user may be interested in an i5 7500 or an i7 7700.

 

[ubercake]

At max graphic settings, gaming performance differences are negligible.

I'd like to see the 7700K versus a Sandy Bridge with gaming. It's probably not a whole lot different since the year 2011.

Hopefully AMD's Zen lives up to the hype "bulldozer" never did because Intel has no competition right now.

 

[Jamie_Lannister]

Im going to wait for cannonlake. For now I'll stick with my good old Ivy Bridge i5 3570k.

 

[Aristeid3s]

@ubercake, There are quite a few pieces of content out there showing a skylake i5 vs a 2500k. I don't remember specifics, but it was a pretty handy increase.

 

[InvalidError]

The thermal figures are surprising, I would have thought that they wouldn't have done that bad.

If you overclock Skylake to the same frequency as Kaby, Skylake catches up pretty quickly. They appear to be about the same on performance per watt. Nothing disappointing there, just unexceptional. I suppose that can be disappointing in its own way - another cycle of negligible performance and power efficiency gain.

 

[Malik 722]

so in oder to give kaby-lake full race i am gonna have to wait for november and december,because this is the time when ambient room temperature is lower on the equator side.

 

[why_wolf]

pretty much what I expected it to be like.

 

[weilin]

Tick -> Tock -> Tock should really just be Tick -> Tock -> Tweak

 

[joex444]

Is killing Skylake chips by overclocking really such an epidemic that the author needs to suggest twice that the intended reader of this article is one who has killed their 6700K?

 

[Rookie_MIB]

At max graphic settings, gaming performance differences are negligible.

I'd like to see the 7700K versus a Sandy Bridge with gaming. It's probably not a whole lot different since the year 2011.

Hopefully AMD's Zen lives up to the hype "bulldozer" never did because Intel has no competition right now.

I recently saw a review of Sandy Bridge vs Skylake - on average - there is a fairly decent improvement in FPS when running games at 1080p, indicating that there is a CPU constraint in there. However, the Sandy Bridge setup was quite playable (45+ fps on modern titles at ultra/high). Switch to 1440/4k and the difference drops indicating the GPU constraint. At 1440p the difference was minimal (10%) and 4k they were neck and neck.

And you're right, AMD has a nice chance to get some licks in on Intel with Zen. Lets hope they pull it off and give them a run.

 

[ammaross]

Looks like the 14nm+ is real given +200mhz overclock gain. Now just wonder what the leaked i3-7350K can get in overclock.

Well, the i3 starts at 4.0Ghz, so I'd think it could hit 4.6 to 4.8 depending on board and sample. The i7-7700K can OC to 5.0Ghz on decent boards (not the crap one used in this review).

 

[Crashman]

Looks like the 14nm+ is real given +200mhz overclock gain. Now just wonder what the leaked i3-7350K can get in overclock.

Well, the i3 starts at 4.0Ghz, so I'd think it could hit 4.6 to 4.8 depending on board and sample. The i7-7700K can OC to 5.0Ghz on decent boards (not the crap one used in this review).

Take those with a grain of salt because the same thing was "shown" of Skylake, and what the screenshots actually did show on both cores was a core voltage that's impossible to cool cheaply at full clocks and eight threads of AVX-optimized Prime95.

 

[cordes85]

It adds nothing new, and frankly CPU power has hit the brick wall, we need AMD Zen to be a success, not because i want to buy them, but id like Intel to be cheaper. When will 6 cores be the norm for mainstream desktop Intel processors? Id like to see the next 8700k to be 6 cores@ 4Ghz-4.4 TB. I have a skylake i5 6500 bclk to 4.5GHZ, and an old Ivybridge I7 laptop which just goes on forever. I think only Ram, and GPU matters to a degree and obviously the switch from HDD to SSD. You'd think that M.2 would drive down prices of Sata SSD, but when will 1TB SSD be under £100?

 

[jasonf2]

If rumors are to be believed KabiLake's biggest advantages will be in the new chip-set. I think it is a forgone conclusion that KabiLake is Skylake+ (no one has called it anything different). But all we are seeing here are synthetic benchmarks that for all given purposes will only reflect clock (and power consumption when overclocked). Kabilake is not a new process node or design but a refinement with some extra hardware extensions and on board highly efficient encode\decode systems which will not reflect here but be really nice in real world application. I am also hoping for a little bit of optane love here too (if Wikipedia is to be believed).

 

[littleleo]

Im going to wait for cannonlake. For now I'll stick with my good old Ivy Bridge i5 3570k.

I don't see a reason to upgrade either, still happily running along with my i5-3570K.

 

[dgingeri]

It might not be spectacular, but it still looks like a worthy, if barely, upgrade from my 4790k, which I hadn't seen yet. I think I'll still wait for AMD's Zen and see what it can do before making a choice.

 

[Ryan_229]

I am likely going to be upgrading my Sandy Bridge 2600k system this spring. I am waiting until after Zen comes out to see how that compares price/performance to Skylake and Kabylake chips. I honestly am not doing anything with my 2600k system that even makes it fell like it needs an upgrade, but my wife's Intel qx system is definitely needing an upgrade. So she'll get the 2600k system hand me downs. If it wasn't for that I still probably would not be upgrading my 2600k system. I really hope that Zen is good enough to spur a new generation of improvements. Sandy Bridge was a huge leap forward, but it really feels like the improvement since has stagnated. I'm sure having virtually no competition in the high end is at least part of the reason for that. Go AMD! Deliver on Zen!

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Doesn't seem right that an overclocked 6700K would be cooler (and henceforth use less power) than the stock 7700K...