Intel 'Kaby Lake' Core i7-7700K CPU details leaked in benchmark results

[Shawn Knight]

Intel’s processor roadmap has looked vastly different as of late compared to say, several years ago. Gone is the normalcy, replaced with odd occurrences like Broadwell’s unusually short run before being replaced by Skylake.

Nevertheless, Intel pushes forward with plans to launch its third processor family based on the 14-nanometer process in the not-too-distant future. Now, thanks to a leaked SiSoft Sandra benchmark, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect when the next flagship arrives.

Also see: Intel Core i7-6850K 'Broadwell-E' CPU benchmarked, compared against 5820K Haswell-E @ 4.2GHz

The Core i7-7700K is a quad-core processor (eight logical cores with HyperThreading) clocked at 3.6GHz (Turbo up to 4.2GHz) that packs 256KB of L2 cache and 8MB of L3 cache. In comparison, today’s Core i7-6700K is clocked at 4GHz with a max Turbo frequency of 4.2GHz. As for the integrated graphics, the chip packs 24 execution units with Sandra showing a clock speed of 1,150MHz. Scores from the runs can be found by clicking here.

Like its predecessor, the i7-7700K will support the LGA1151 package and will be compatible with current motherboards.

Kaby Lake will also add native USB 3.1 support, native HDCP 2.2 support, full fixed-function HEVC main10 and VP9 10-bit hardware decoding. Or in other words, users can expect slightly more efficient versions of Skylake with a handful of new features.

As always, keep in mind that these results have not been confirmed. If legit, they could have been run on an engineering sample which may or may not reflect what the final consumer hardware will look like.

A combination of the complexity involved in die shrinks mixed with less urgency (AMD isn’t exactly a threat these days) plus a cooling PC market has ultimately led us to where we are today – an uninspired desktop CPU market. Improvements are still coming but they’re at a rate that’s slower than before and much less impressive.

That said, if you’re running an Intel chip that’s even a few generations old, you’d probably be best served to wait until the 10-nanometer Cannonlake chips arrive next year versus upgrading to Kaby Lake. Hell, I’m still running a Core i5-2500k (non-overclocked) that’s more than five years old at this point. Combined with 16GB of RAM and a solid state drive, it rarely shows its age (it also helps that I'm not much of a PC gamer these days). With the right chipset (I'm on an H67-based motherboard), I could easily run the chip at 4GHz 24/7 without breaking a sweat. It defaults at 3.3GHz and has seen 4.4GHz on a few occasions many years ago.

Outside of Cannonlake, hardware enthusiasts are keeping a close eye on developments surrounding AMD’s next microarchitecture. Codenamed Zen, AMD’s forthcoming 14-nanometer offering was designed from the ground up and is thought by some to be stout enough to once again compete with Intel’s dominant Core family. Only time will tell if that prophecy pans out. AMD is expected to release its new flagship in October 2016.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/64663-intel-kaby-lake-core-i7-7700k-cpu-details.html

 

[cliffordcooley]

That said, if you’re running an Intel chip that’s even a few generations old, you'd probably be best served to wait until the 10-nanometer Cannonlake chips arrive next year versus upgrading to Kaby Lake.

Outside of Cannonlake, hardware enthusiasts are keeping a close eye on developments surrounding AMD's next microarchitecture. Codenamed Zen, AMD's forthcoming 14-nanometer offering was designed from the ground up and is thought by some to be stout enough to once again compete with Intel's dominant Core family.

Until then I'm happy with Sandy Bridge and even then may continue to be.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That said, if you’re running an Intel chip that’s even a few generations old, you'd probably be best served to wait until the 10-nanometer Cannonlake chips arrive next year versus upgrading to Kaby Lake.

Outside of Cannonlake, hardware enthusiasts are keeping a close eye on developments surrounding AMD's next microarchitecture. Codenamed Zen, AMD's forthcoming 14-nanometer offering was designed from the ground up and is thought by some to be stout enough to once again compete with Intel's dominant Core family.

Until then I'm happy with Sandy Bridge and even then may continue to be.

No kidding. I love that I can keep my machine even longer with no upgrades though. Three gens of GPUs have been in this thing, but the CPU has remained throughout.

And it gives me an excuse to finally use all those expansion slots for new interfaces.

 

[mrtraver]

I'm still rocking my LGA775 Core 2 Duo with 4GB DDR2. My wife's computer is my first build, with an Athlon X2 3200+ and 2 GB DDR.

 

[Adhmuz]

"A combination of the complexity involved in die shrinks mixed with less urgency (AMD isn’t exactly a threat these days) plus a cooling PC market has ultimately led us to where we are today – an uninspired desktop CPU market. Improvements are still coming but they’re at a rate that’s slower than before and much less impressive."

Easy there, the AMD community doesn't like the cold hard reality **** slap to the face, when in fact we need AMD to get their act together and compete with Intel so they can stop with these mind numbingly bland CPU releases year after year. At this point I think my motherboard will die of old age before my Westmere CPU becomes any form of bottleneck, pretty sad, 6 years old and still more exciting than this, granted without the overclock it wouldn't be the same story.

 

[Ascaris]

Until then I'm happy with Sandy Bridge and even then may continue to be.

Same here. Why upgrade when the performance gains are so small? The rule of thumb used to be to upgrade when the performance would be doubled; Skylake hasn't even come close to doubling Sandy's performance, and neither will Kaby, I am sure. The margin apparently gets even smaller if you're I conservatively overclocking, as later generations seem to require bigger voltage increases to achieve the same level of OC as compared to Sandy.

Not only that, but Sandy has the soldered-on IHS, while all the newer i5/i7s all use thermal grease, which strikes me as a poor engineering shortcut, a designed-in flaw that smacks of planned obsolescence (since TIM dries out eventually). Even if it doesn't dry out, it leads to higher temperatures than are necessary, and that is the sort of thing that would always bug me.

 

[madboyv1]

Coming from the 2500k to the 6700k I do notice quite a bit of a performance jump, probably a chunk of that is doubling the number of threads though... The newer chipset adds several new features that I am using (native USB-C, more USB 3.0, PCIe M.2 to name the big ones for me) and makes that part of upgrade worth it. ITX systems need everything they can get on board ha ha ha... but I probably should have saved my money and went with the 6600k especially since I was impatient and bought the 6700k at the height of it's price inflation late last year/early this year.

 

[robb213]

The 400MHz decrease is surprising to see. Are they integrating more crap on the die as usual?

 

[Raoul Duke]

Coming from the 2500k to the 6700k ... The newer chipset adds several new features that I am using (native USB-C, more USB 3.0, PCIe M.2 to name the big ones for me) and makes that part of upgrade worth it......

I agree, the best part of a cpu upgrade is not the cpu, it's the chipset and the many new features supported, PCI-E 3.0 throughout, M.2 support (I'm running a Samsung 950 Pro roughly 2,500 MB/s, writes circa 1400 MB/s, DMI 3.0, DDR4, all these far more exciting than the processing power difference between i7-2600K and i7-6700K

 

[amstech]

Im still running X58. (Asus P6T Deluxe/i7 930)
4.0Ghz i7 24/7, SoundMax 7.1 HD Audio, Dual LAN, Tri-Channel DDR3 up to 2000MHz, The SATA3 runs my Samsung Evo nearly as fast as SATA6 for everyday computing, and the CPU will push a 980Ti with flying colors.
Not the fastest pig anymore by any means, but quick enough for me.
Almost time to upgrade the 670 though.

 

[Sochsun]

Man, this is great. I'm currently pricing out a friends upgrade build (Moving from Core2 Q6600 to a modern system) and his upgrade path is about 6 months away. I can just wait it out and get a Skylake at reduced cost as Kaby Lake comes out.

 

[gamerk2]

"A combination of the complexity involved in die shrinks mixed with less urgency (AMD isn’t exactly a threat these days) plus a cooling PC market has ultimately led us to where we are today – an uninspired desktop CPU market. Improvements are still coming but they’re at a rate that’s slower than before and much less impressive."

Easy there, the AMD community doesn't like the cold hard reality **** slap to the face, when in fact we need AMD to get their act together and compete with Intel so they can stop with these mind numbingly bland CPU releases year after year. At this point I think my motherboard will die of old age before my Westmere CPU becomes any form of bottleneck, pretty sad, 6 years old and still more exciting than this, granted without the overclock it wouldn't be the same story.

The reason your Westmere CPU isn't a bottleneck is because most software doesn't need that much processing power on the CPU. Pretty much simple as that. Heck, even games aren't THAT bad aside from the driver overhead, which is greatly reduced in DX12.

I seriously want to know what so good about having to shell out $300 for a new platform every few years. Isn't it a good thing that we've basically hit "peak CPU"?

 

[SirGCal]

Yup, I moved from my older AMD 1100T to my now I7-3770k OCed to ~ 4.2GHz quite easily. I have no need to change any time soon. I keep thinking about it but there's really nowhere to go. Perhaps a GPU upgrade. Already running SSD RAID so that's taken care of.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

And this is what happens when there is no competition, you get fed scraps and are expected to be eternally thankful while happily overpaying.

 

[wiyosaya]

Personally, I went from a new sandy to a used ivy because of a phenomenal deal, but I gained PCIe 3.0 and two cores. At this point, though, I don't see much reason to upgrade anything but my aging GTX 580. I'm waiting for Pascal, but I might go to the used market at that point.

 

[lripplinger]

I'm still rocking my LGA775 Core 2 Duo with 4GB DDR2. My wife's computer is my first build, with an Athlon X2 3200+ and 2 GB DDR.

Great to see the real world here. Depending on the LGA 775 motherboard you have, you could mod it and put a Xeon LGA 771 chip in it, and get way more performance out of your old system. Xeons from that era are dirt cheap on eBay and often they will include the sticker adapter.

 

[lripplinger]

Man, this is great. I'm currently pricing out a friends upgrade build (Moving from Core2 Q6600 to a modern system) and his upgrade path is about 6 months away. I can just wait it out and get a Skylake at reduced cost as Kaby Lake comes out.

Do the Xeon mod, if your LGA 775 board is compatible. Make your system last even longer. Those old Xeons were powerful chips, and are more than capable for gaming.

 

[Sochsun]

Man, this is great. I'm currently pricing out a friends upgrade build (Moving from Core2 Q6600 to a modern system) and his upgrade path is about 6 months away. I can just wait it out and get a Skylake at reduced cost as Kaby Lake comes out.

Do the Xeon mod, if your LGA 775 board is compatible. Make your system last even longer. Those old Xeons were powerful chips, and are more than capable for gaming.

Hmmm, that may be an idea, but since its an old Pre-Built system from Dell, I'm not sure the quality of the motherboard in it. I may stop by his place and open it up to check it out. Thanks

 

[mrtraver]

Great to see the real world here. Depending on the LGA 775 motherboard you have, you could mod it and put a Xeon LGA 771 chip in it, and get way more performance out of your old system. Xeons from that era are dirt cheap on eBay and often they will include the sticker adapter.

Thanks for the tip! I've been trying to save up for a new LGA 1151 mobo, CPU, and DDR4, but I wasn't aware of this mod. I might go this route and extend my system a couple more years.

 

[DaveBG]

Im still running X58. (Asus P6T Deluxe/i7 930)
4.0Ghz i7 24/7, SoundMax 7.1 HD Audio, Dual LAN, Tri-Channel DDR3 up to 2000MHz, The SATA3 runs my Samsung Evo nearly as fast as SATA6 for everyday computing, and the CPU will push a 980Ti with flying colors.
Not the fastest pig anymore by any means, but quick enough for me.
Almost time to upgrade the 670 though.

Same here. x58 with 920 4c/8t CPU@3.8GHz. Enough for me. 770GTX for video and running 4k display at native no problems even in many games.

 

[Badelhas]

I am still rocking a 2500k overclocked to 4.3ghz and it seems it will be enough for virtual reality and all that. Who would imagine that 4 years ago?

 

[DAOWAce]

Until AMD becomes competitive with Intel, they can just essentially do rebrands and get away with it.

Still no major improvements in CPU performance since Sandy Bridge..

What a joke of an industry.

 

[RobStow]

I'm hoping to build a new desktop for myself this summer and this processor sounds like a decent choice. I'm not a gamer and these days I don't do anything more GPU demanding than a little video editing so the built in GPU of this chip should be just fine.

However, I do like having a reasonably powerful video card just for crunching numbers for things like the World Community Grid. It would be nice if I could use the Core i7-7700K's built in GPU for my low-level day-to-day stuff *and* have a decent video card in one of the PCI-E slots - no monitor attached - for number crunching. The last time I had a "K" CPU (a Core i5 iirc) I had to disable the on-board GPU before I could use a PCI-E video card - hopefully things have changed since then.

 

[lripplinger]

Thanks for the tip! I've been trying to save up for a new LGA 1151 mobo, CPU, and DDR4, but I wasn't aware of this mod. I might go this route and extend my system a couple more years.

I haven't tried the mod personally, but TechYesCity on YouTube shows how to do it. Plus there is a website devoted to it out there: delidded.com

 

[lripplinger]

Hmmm, that may be an idea, but since its an old Pre-Built system from Dell, I'm not sure the quality of the motherboard in it. I may stop by his place and open it up to check it out. Thanks

The mod is very unlikely to work if it is a Dell, based on what I have seen on delidded.com and TechYesCity on YouTube.