FRONTPAGE Intel i7-7700K Kaby Lake CPU Review

[EarthDog]

It seems like only yesterday we were reviewing the Skylake CPU, but it turns out that was nearly 17 months ago! Back then, Skylake was the “tock” of Intel’s “tick-tock” release strategy, but recent times has seen them add a phase to this, almost a tick, tock, and refine. Since we have seen the tock, we now expect even further refinement. Queue the 7th generation of Intel CPUs, dubbed, Kaby Lake (pronounced KAY-BEE). With Kaby Lake, you are looking at “Intel’s most advanced 14nm+ process technology and delivers new levels of performance and security.” Intel has made some refinements which for us overclocking enthusiasts should yield higher overclocks. It will also save power for the lower power/laptop CPUs in the Y, U, and H, series CPUs, and for all of us, better built in security, and a better 4K streaming experience.

Read More: http://www.overclockers.com/intel-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-cpu-review/

 

[Nebulous]

Real nice work there as usual Joe!

 

[dejo]

great read once again Joe

 

[Janus67]

Nice job, Joe!

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks everyone...

Its a solid CPU, seems to overclock better than my above average 6700K under water, but temps do seem high comparitively at the same voltage. But 5Ghz stable, 1.4V... not too shabby. Let's see what real retails will do and other reviews and how they overclocked.

 

[Johan45]

Looks good Joe, seems there's a bit more wiggle room top end. Can't wait to see your LN2 results.

 

[Witchdoctor]

Thanks for taking the time Joe,

Don't think there is enough there is you own a 6700K already

Think it is a nice move for Sandy and Ivy owners

 

[Robert17]

Nice work Joe. Thank you for your time and expertise.

I noticed at the end of your review that you remarked about small performance increases from Intel in the last couple of generations of the tick/tock, likely due to a lack of competition. Perhaps. Certainly if large increases were easy AMD would be more of a competitor lately. This scenario reminds me of getting the last couple of percent of throughput in a production environment. The challenge gets much harder and the ROI to get there is a diminishing returns type situation. On the horizon are replacement technologies and along with them new challenges. Maybe a qubit that can do a double reverse backflip with the lights out, left handed while eating a sammich will be the enthusiast challenges of the future.

 

[Rainwater]

Have you gotten the chance to play around with yet ED?

 

[Janus67]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i7-7700K_vs_6700K_Game_Performance/

another well written article by our friends at TPU, further backing up the statement that it overall is not worth the money at all compared to a 6700k and only so if you are on IB or slower.

 

[Rainwater]

Even then for strictly gaming Sandy Bridge is still a beast besides lack of pcie 3.0 support. I had a 2600k oc to 4.5Ghz with a gtx 1070 before I exchanged it for the 1080. The first 5 days I had my Skylake I still had the 1070. I ran Unigine Valley, I don't think I ran Heaven so there may have been a bigger performance gap with Heaven and Skylake but seriously with Valley and a 2600k 4.5Ghz with the September drivers I literally only gained a few fps when I put the 1070 in my Skylake rig at stock 4.2Ghz

 

[Janus67]

That doesn't surprise me at all regarding Valley (or Heaven), they are almost entirely a GPU benchmark where CPU speed (and architecture) makes a tiny difference. A better benchmark to compare would be something like 3DMark that utilizes CPU is its benchmarks.

 

[Rainwater]

I am one of the most stubborn and overly obsessive people I have ever known of. The chances of me not posting a picture within the next couple months of a 7700k and z270 motherboard are very low. Unfortunately. And the chances of me at least not posting a picture of a 7700k in my current z170 board are even lower. I'm just a hopeless degradant addict that somehow is seriously obsessed with this pc stuff.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Looks good Joe, seems there's a bit more wiggle room top end. Can't wait to see your LN2 results.

+1
5.0 stable is pretty nice as well, Nice work Joe!

 

[trents]

Very informative, ED. Thanks.

I'm curious as to how the overclocking potential might pan out once these get into mainstream production. Will it meet or exceed what you experienced with your "sample" or will the average chip prove to not do that well?

And will there be a difference in overclock potential when running the new chip on a Z270 board vs. a Z170 board? Do any of the Z170 boards have bios updates available yet with microcode for the Kaby lake series?

 

[DaveB]

Over at Anand in their i5-7600K Review, they got the i5-7600K to 5 GHz, with the VCore only at only 1.375V and the max temp at a mere 58C. Here's a direct quote:

Straight out of the box, our retail sample achieved an OCCT stable 5.0 GHz with mixed AVX at a 1.375V setting, with the software recording only 58C peak on the core and a maximum power draw of 111W. That’s fairly astonishing – from the base 3.8/4.2 GHz we were able to get up to 800 MHz in an overclock for just under double the power draw (or, +20W over TDP).


So 5 GHz isn't really that hard with Kaby Lake.

 

[Kenrou]

At the same speed and nearly the same voltage from a 7700k to a 7600k we see a ~25c/~30c drop simply because of not having Hyperthreading ? it's insane. 5ghz ~60c 7600k (with still some room to manoeuvre) must be a gamer's wet dream no ?

 

[EarthDog]

Very informative, ED. Thanks.

I'm curious as to how the overclocking potential might pan out once these get into mainstream production. Will it meet or exceed what you experienced with your "sample" or will the average chip prove to not do that well?

And will there be a difference in overclock potential when running the new chip on a Z270 board vs. a Z170 board? Do any of the Z170 boards have bios updates available yet with microcode for the Kaby lake series?

The overclocking potential between Z170 and Z270 for KL is nill. Z170 will take things as far as Z270 from what we know now. The Z170 boards have had updates for KL since October/November.

At the same speed and nearly the same voltage from a 7700k to a 7600k we see a ~25c/~30c drop simply because of not having Hyperthreading ? it's insane. 5ghz ~60c 7600k (with still some room to manoeuvre) must be a gamer's wet dream no ?

When I was running the Heaven bench, I dropped down to four cores at 5Ghz, not sure exactly how much I saved, but I was in the 60's. Now, that is not a hard bench at all on the CPU, so... consider that as well. Also, its a different chip so the 7600K may not be as leaky (generally better for air overclocks, not as good for LN2).

To get the most out of this particular sample, it needs a delid. When the dust settles on review items, I will do a TIM swap and see where it lands.

 

[Brando]

make it a 6 core with soldered IHS and i'm in

 

[Rainwater]

Thanks ED that's got to be an absolute dream job. I haven't been here long I didn't know you were that involved in the Tech world. That's one thing I've been really wanting to know as well is how the z170 bios updates will perform as to overclocking with Kaby Lake. I may not jump right out and get a new board right away but I will have the 7700k very soon and 5Ghz under 1.4v is being reported frequently and sounds very appealing.