Intel 7700K - Complacent CPU or Ryzen Killer?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,405 words · ~7 min read
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While most of the hype in the CPU world right now is centered around AMD's
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upcoming ryzen release Intel has no plans to take that lying down and has
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just unveiled their seventh generation core processors for desktop code name
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kbl
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Lake evga's dg-87 full tower case
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features optimized airf flow pathing to help keep your Hardware cool check it
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out at the link in the video description they claim to be taking Computing to the
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next level but I'm pretty sure marketing
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guys would just get fired if they don't say that kind of stuff only performance
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will tell whether a shiny new KB Lake will be worth 350 of your hard-earned
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dollars we'll be looking at Intel's newest consumer grade Flagship the core
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i77700 K and if you think that just means the usual features you know quad
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core hyperthreading and overclockability on Z series chipsets well Sarah you'd be
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100% correct out of the box there's a
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bump on the clock speed compared to its Skylake predecessor the 6700k and you
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also get Intel HD graphics 630 as opposed to 530 though if you spend this
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kind of money on a high-end i7 you're probably using discret Graphics from the
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likes of NVIDIA or AMD anyways so to find the differences we clearly need to
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dig a bit deeper there doesn't seem to be much else on paper to separate these
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chips they have the same TDP of 91 Watts
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the same 16 P Lanes and even the same
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manufacturing process the old Tick Tock
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Cadence meant a new process so smaller
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processors every 2 years but kbl lake is
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still using the same 14 nanometer finfet transistors we've had since Broadwell in
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2014 so at this point I wouldn't blame
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you for not being mega super excited
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about the 7700k itself but that doesn't
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mean there isn't anything worth talking about with respect to the platform one
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thing that will be immediately relevant to a lot of folks that own a 4K display
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will be the ability to watch Netflix in
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4k this is thanks to a new DRM scheme
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that I'm sure consumers will just love
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because it has nothing to do with processing power at all and everything
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to do with a special hardware-based decoder that can only be found in kbl
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lak CPUs at this
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time on the subject of 4K content you also get 4k 10bit video decoding through
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the vp9 codec used by YouTube so if you
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have a monitor with 10bit color and a supported video card you can get
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smoother color transitions when watching supported content very cool
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perhaps more interesting than that is support for optane which is Intel's
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version of 3D Cross Point a new type of
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memory with cells that are packed more densely meaning higher capacities and
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faster speeds that is expected to perform somewhere between system RAM and
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an SSD pretty freaking cool but kind of
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like SATA Express back in the day there's no word on if and when we'll see
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it on consumer PCS but hopefully we'll get this one there are also new chipsets
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we tested our CPU on an ASUS Rog Maximus
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99 code featuring The Zed 270 chipset
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which adds native support for USB 3.1 10
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gbit and an additional 4 PCI Express 3.0
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Lanes which is actually a welcome change considering how popular P based storage
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is becoming in the form of tiny and increasingly affordable m.2 drives some
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other fun features of this board spefic specifically include a water flow sensor
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a USB 3.1 10 GB front panel header Aura
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and Aura sync to add some RGB to your case reinforced PCI Express slots for
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heavy gpus and a built-in headphone
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amplifier but enough chitchat did this 7700k Z 2712 punch impress us with its
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performance gains we compared it to a Skylake 6700k both at stock and at
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overclocked speeds using ASUS's AI tuner automatic overclock and setting
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temperature and voltage targets to 80°
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and 1.35 volts to keep things safe which
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gave us 4.9 GHz on kbl lake and 4.6 on
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Skylake let us know in the comments if you'd like a full OC guide including
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manual tuning in the future let's start with thermals and power draw
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temperatures were quite similar though kbl Lake showed a slight Improvement at
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load though both chips were comfortably below below their thermal throttling
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point in Ida 64 kbl lak similarly showed a small
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Improvement in power draw nothing dramatic and it won't affect your system
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build planning since it's easy to run an Enthusiast single graphics card system
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on an inexpensive 450 to 500 wat power
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supply anyways now let's dive into performance numbers our synthetics which
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included CPU Mark y cruncher cin bench
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and Rog re bench showed Lake offering
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improvements of about 5 to 7% across the
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board including in single-threaded applications which isn't terrible but
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isn't horribly impressive either and
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when you compare KB lake at stock versus our overclocked Skylake chip which ran
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within 100 MHz of each other the Gap
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becomes smaller making these improvements an even more minor selling
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point for enthusiasts who well
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overclock gaming performance wasn't much
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different as there was no appreciable difference between Generations when
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gaming with a discret GTX 1080 with kbl
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Lake actually performing slightly worse in some situations for Onboard video
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efficient Autos the integrated HD 630 Graphics do show a small improvement
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over Skylake but the 1 to two extra frames per second don't really make it
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viable for for new AAA titles bringing us to the conclusion these small
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improvements don't make KB Lake a bad
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platform if you liked last year's Madden game you'll probably like the new one
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with all the updated player stats and special team jerseys too they just mean
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that kbl Lake isn't really a sensible upgrade for a core i7 machine built in
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the last one to 3 years something that
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could be a product of the challenges associated with building fast F chips on
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current technology or could be a product
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of a complacent Intel that hasn't really had a real competitor in almost a decade
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I'm sure the next couple of years will tell us once and for all which one it is
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