This is as underwhelming and disappointing as it is predictable from Intel. :(
Pretty much underwhelming, I bought my i7 4790k and board from Scan earlier this year and cannot see any reason to buy anything from the newer generations at all.
Seems very underwhelming that they have had to increase the power draw to give it the extra clocks over the 6700K, so much for tweaking the manufacturing process to be more efficient!
Would be interesting to see the 7700K down-clocked to 6700K speeds and then see what the power draw figures are between them.
Intel are probably confident that the new ZEN's from AMD, whilst being competitive in terms of IPC, are not going to be able to reach such high clock speeds as Kaby Lake.
I've not seen even the slightest hint anywhere that first gen Zen's will go higher than 4.2Ghz on air.
Why test an early sample ? Why not just wait for the official one given to the Press/review sites to Test
poor review.
Jace007
Why test an early sample ? Why not just wait for the official one given to the Press/review sites to Test
poor review.
I don't expect the retail chip to be significantly different performance wise to be honest.
Bagpuss
I've not seen even the slightest hint anywhere that first gen Zen's will go higher than 4.2Ghz on air.
On first release it would be pretty remarkable if it did.
I presume this is where Intel expect to maintain some lead, because sadly single threaded performance still matters. There are some games/apps like Watch Dogs 2 which thread really nicely, but for each game/app like that there must be two that do most of their work on a single thread.
Roobubba
This is as underwhelming and disappointing as it is predictable from Intel. :(
Couldn't agree more. Though as expected I'll still be waiting for at least Zen to consider upgrading from my 2600K.
It seems my purchase of my I7 4790k in 2016 wasn't a mistake after all. DDR4 and Kaby/Skylake have not offered any reasons to go their route and abandoned my kit of 16GB of DDR3@2166mhz.
This is more Nehalem (2008) polished than Sandy Bridge. :(
I'd still be using my i7 920 today if I didn't want better control over my fans, which modern motherboards are far greater at.
this_is_gav
This is more Nehalem than Sandy Bridge. :(
I'd still be using my i7 920 today if I didn't want better control over my fans, which modern motherboards are far greater at.
I'm still using my Rampage II mobo, just upgraded the i7 920 (c0) to a Xeon 5650 and clocked it to 4GHz, I reckon my 6 core will probably (in threaded apps) match the 7700k closely enough to not bother upgrading for another generation or two yet.
I've just about given up with both the desktop and E variants, it seems only the Xeon range is making decent strides.
I'm happy to see what Zen has to offer first before making my next move but if Intel its a Xeon.
It's all very well to run the standard tests on the chip, but it seems silly to completely ignore the areas where there have been big advancements. Integrated graphics seem to be 20-30% faster, and HEVC Main10 and (supposedly) VP9 decode is much improved.
Hopefully the full review will test the new features and major improvements.
EndlessWaves
It's all very well to run the standard tests on the chip, but it seems silly to completely ignore the areas where there have been big advancements. Integrated graphics <b>seem</b> to be 20-30% faster, and HEVC Main10 and (supposedly) VP9 decode is much improved.
I though the EUs haven't changed between HD520 and HD620, nor have the frequencies.
Now for laptops, NBC did say the HD620 turbos more:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Kaby-Lake-Core-i7-7500U-Review-Skylake-on-Steroids.172692.0.htmlBut that was for a 15W laptop part which used to throttle like made. But did the 91W desktop parts ever suffer from this?
Aren't these chips only being released so 4K content can be run with just a CPU ? Netflix 4K or something else I can't remember, the only chip that'll work with it is this.
I'm guessing this is more for mobile, so people can stream 4K on their laptops, but missing out the desktop would cause people to pitch a fit.
EndlessWaves
It's all very well to run the standard tests on the chip, but it seems silly to completely ignore the areas where there have been big advancements. Integrated graphics seem to be 20-30% faster, and HEVC Main10 and (supposedly) VP9 decode is much improved.
Hopefully the full review will test the new features and major improvements.
To many of us the on chip graphics never gets used to which the improvements mean nothing.
Don't get me wrong it does need to be included in the full review, but right now why bother?
Why even bother releasing it? That's probably the worse gain for a new release we have seen yet. What a joke. Look's like my 4670k will be in use for a long time yet.
Sub £250 and I'd be interested.
Presumably the gains with i5 will be similarly slim. My i5 3570K will live on, at a stable as a tripod 4.5GHz, for another year. Still no reason to upgrade from it.
In some ways I'm glad to see such a small improvement; it means that my 3570k will not be left behind in performance compared to the latest gen of processors. No need to upgrade for a few years :D
Also, I think the scale on the AIDA Memory test graph is wrong, should probably read “higher is better”?
I'm still on a nehalem i7 930 @ 4GHz and still don't feel the need to upgrade after 6 years. Funny how GPUs have come a long way in comparison.
Are intel just trolling us now?
Friesiansam
Presumably the gains with i5 will be similarly slim. My i5 3570K will live on, at a stable as a tripod 4.5GHz, for another year. Still no reason to upgrade from it.
Unless you're using your CPU for a CPU intensive workload that is time sensitive, you'll be fine for another 5 years I reckon.
The typical Hexus reader will be a gamer-centric user, and as long as you have an unlocked core i CPU, upgrading is more about the chipset than anything else. I just moved from a 2500 to a 2700K and gained MASSIVE amounts of performance. The only reason I can see myself upgrading past this is for motherboard features, and even that's a long way off considering PCIe SSDs are over 2x the price of SATA, minimum.
With consoles starting out as several years behind PC, and 99% of games primarily developed for them, it's going to be a long way away that you need a higher end CPU. And I'm OK with that. I'll take the awesome GPU leaps from only 2 generations apart any day of the week.
My 3570k also at 4.5ghz is doing just fine for everything, but I am doing a lot of video/photo editing to which some extra cores would be nice, its looking more and more likely I will be going the way of Zen.
Percy1983
My 3570k also at 4.5ghz is doing just fine for everything, but I am doing a lot of video/photo editing to which some extra cores would be nice, its looking more and more likely I will be going the way of Zen.
You should look at second hand xeons, they can be found for redonkadonk prices because of the constant upgrading they get
Tunnah
You should look at second hand xeons, they can be found for redonkadonk prices because of the constant upgrading they get
Just had a look, not many would work with my chipset but its certainly an option, will wait for the zen benchmarks/prices and then have the whole picture.
Looks like my 5 year old Core i7-3930K on an Asus RIVE is going to stay for another year. Best investment I've made in a long time as this thing will never die and won't need upgrading either.
In reality, I know Kaby Lake is only a modest uplift from Skylake, but does anyone with a Core i5 or i7 Sandybridge CPU really feel like they need something faster anyway? It seems you only need anything newer for bragging rights. I do much more than just play games - I do a fair amount of CAD and model slicing for my 3D printer, some photo and movie editing, and I never feel that I could benefit from more CPU. It's all about the storage. So long as your motherboard supports SATA 6Gbps and if you've not got an SSD hooked up then that would where you need to spend your money. Stick with your Sandybridge i7 and instead of a Kaby Lake i7, buy yourself a 1Tb SSD, and if you already have one then buy another!
So insignificant performance gain. I hope the new AMD processors will change something, even if it's not higher performance, but much better performance/price ratio, and maybe they will get the prices down to a reasonable level.
3570k at 4.5Ghz here as well. The only reason I'd like to upgrade is to move to DDR4. Although they say there isn't much of a difference between DDR3 and DDR4 I'd still like to keep up to date, but considering lately I don't have much time for games and I mostly read/code and watch something, it's just not worth it.
Sad that Moore's law is no longer relevant and not having something to look forward to. 2017 approaches and instead of getting excited at new breakthroughs in CPU technology it continues to be stagnant. It's all up to AMD unless they come up with something spectacular nothing will ever change I guess.
Yep, CPU's seem to stay relevant a lot longer these days. Still the incremental increases add up eventually.
i7 3770k not overclocked and still doing all. There is no point at the moment to upgrade at all.
Intel does not care about AMD. AMD is so far behind. Soon as AMD comes out with something new (if ZEN ever gets here) Intel will blow it away with a new chip. AMD FTL
5ghz with sub 1.4volts for £250 and £100 for an OK Z270 motherboard and I'm interested. Otherwise I'll probably stick with what I have until Zen.
Data point worth noting: scaling for 5GHz (vs. the 4850 they used), the CB R15 score is only 22% higher than my 2700K @ 5GHz, and so far every 2700K I've obtained has run at 5GHz just fine on an ASUS M4E/Z (takes mere minutes to setup). Not really that much better given the amount of time that's gone by since SB. If one needs better threaded performance on the cheap, just bag a used 3930K, they cost diddly these days, though it can be a tad harder to find a suitable mbd. The last 3930K I bought cost just 87.50 (item 262699482618; BIN listings are not much more), for which I also won a top-end ASUS P9X79-E WS for 220. A few months ago I did something similar, won a 4960X for approx. 200, another P9X79-E WS for just over 200.
Sure there's no M.2, but real world differences outside pro tasks are not that significant. 3930K at 4.8 scores 1241 for CB R15.
I'm more interested in picking up a Zen when it's out, though I was saddened to hear that AMD has also jumped into bed with MS to restrict some chip functions to Win10 (I really thought AMD would make Win7 fully supported, that would give Intel a proper thumping).
Thanks for the review; I'd love to see how performance in a more demanding game would be, i.e. with an RTS game that is more CPU limited. Perhaps there are more meaningful differences there….
=assassin=;3740035
Thanks for the review; I'd love to see how performance in a more demanding game would be, i.e. with an RTS game that is more CPU limited. Perhaps there are more meaningful differences there….
Civ, time it for hitting “next turn” 10 times and report the average “seconds per turn”. Would need a carefully set up save game as a set starting point.
danceswithunix
civ, time it for hitting “next turn” 10 times and report the average “seconds per turn”. Would need a carefully set up save game as a set starting point.
OMG, THIS. Civ VI is getting ridiculous.
as much of a disappointment the 7 series is what were we expecting there was probably only so much they could do to the existing arch. hopefully this makes it easier for zen to be good so we get competition
mapesdhs
I'm more interested in picking up a Zen when it's out, though I was saddened to hear that AMD has also jumped into bed with MS to restrict some chip functions to Win10 (I really thought AMD would make Win7 fully supported, that would give Intel a proper thumping).
Why would anyone releasing a new CPU be interested in supporting an OS that went out of mainstream support almost 2 years ago? It's only on “life support” updates for another 3 years and it's gone … like Windows 2000 … or maybe like XP they might extend it some more since it was such a popular OS but seriously, haven't you learned anything yet about persisting with out of support OS's? It's just gonna bite you in the posterior, and with the nature of the threats out there today it's gonna bite hard.
rainman
… but seriously, haven't you learned anything yet about persisting with out of support OS's? It's just gonna bite you in the posterior, and with the nature of the threats out there today it's gonna bite hard.
I sort of agree, though I find Win10 bites me in the neck so it isn't like there is a good choice. I think one of my first jobs over the Christmas break is to upgrade my Windows 10 install on my little laptop to Linux. Games all require a £200 graphics card these days so there isn't any use for Windows on it anyway.
When will you start testing vid quality in handbrake (or something) with cpu vs. quicksync. Does Intel's latest have quality stuff in it that fixes the quality loss on older chips when using quicksync or do I still have to turn the gpu off? Anandtech used to test this and comment, but they quit.
rainman
mapesdhs
I'm more interested in picking up a Zen when it's out, though I was saddened to hear that AMD has also jumped into bed with MS to restrict some chip functions to Win10 (I really thought AMD would make Win7 fully supported, that would give Intel a proper thumping).
Why would anyone releasing a new CPU be interested in supporting an OS that went out of mainstream support almost 2 years ago? It's only on “life support” updates for another 3 years and it's gone … like Windows 2000 … or maybe like XP they might extend it some more since it was such a popular OS but seriously, haven't you learned anything yet about persisting with out of support OS's? It's just gonna bite you in the posterior, and with the nature of the threats out there today it's gonna bite hard.
I would also add that it is not AMD who have not supported their CPUs in Windows 7, it is Microsoft. They would need to make some changes to the kernel to support the new chips and they have said that they are not going to do this for new processors from AMD nor Intel.
So, it's not a case of AMD jumping “into bed” with Intel, as mapesdhs says. I agree with you that it makes no sense to make these changes to an OS that is 2 generations old - even if there is an awful lot of Win 7 still in the corporate environment.
Well, that definitely was not worth waiting for..
I just had a good laugh when I saw the price of the 7700k…
£350 for a quad core processor which is less than 50% faster than a i7 2700k from 6 YEARS AGO.
imadaily
£350 for a quad core processor which is less than 50% faster than a i7 2700k from 6 YEARS AGO.
I think +50% is being very generous.
The review sites have been very easy on Intel and few have compared Kaby to Sandy
at the same frequency.
Did find DigitalFoundry/Eurogamer who compared the KB, SK and SB i5-K at 4.2GHz:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-intel-core-i5-7600k-reviewAverage of their gaming is +34% vs Sandy Bridge:
The non-gaming average is higher, but some (most) of those benefit from new instructions.
Max overclock has gone up with Kaby Lake vs Skylake (and Broadwell + Haswell), but just gets us back up to what Sandy Bridge managed.
Of course, for someone buying new now Kaby Lake is good.
But for anyone who already has Sandy Bridge or later there is little point even if the new platform has plenty of new features.
No wonder desktop is dying. Years ago I never upgraded unless I could ~x2 the performance for a similar cost. That era is long over.
I am not only underwhelmed, but I am downright disappointed in Intel for this.
I know they couldn't give less of a kitten's fart about my opinion, but what the hell is this. You've released a product that basically offers nothing. It offers less than nothing. It offers nothing while trying to pretend it's something
This is the unenthusiastic handjob of hardware releases
Still not had reason to move on from a heavily clocked 2600k yet…
Only lasted me about 5 years so far… when the hell was that EVER a thing before?
Hoping Zen lights some fires.
Same, only reason i've upgraded from from my trusted 2600k is the other half needs a PC. Overclocking my 2600k to 3.7GHz and 16GB Ram, SSD have been fine for everything I need. I cant be bothered to wait until Skylake-X i think this should be a worthy upgrade come June 17.
Just wondering, has there ever been a concensus as to the typical sensible oc potential of a 2600K? For obscure reasons, every SB CPU with HT I've obtained has been a 2700K and all of them (seven so far) have run at 5GHz with ease, ie. good temps, sensible voltage, nothing more required for cooling than a simple TRUE and one fan (though in final builds I normally use H80s). I'm sure the CPUs I've obtained could do more than 5.0, but I've never tried as that's always been my target, at which speed it gives the same multithreaded performance as a stock 6700K. I built a gaming PC for a friend using a 2700K @ 5.0 (ASUS M4E is my mbd of choice for this, works a treat every time and so easy to setup):
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8231433So what's the equivalent it-will-always-manage-this-speed-no-problem for the 2600K? 4.8? 4.6? The more I read forum posts, the more I've wondered whether the jump between the 2600K and 2700K isn't just a mere base clock bump. As review articles for IB said at the time, Intel made SB too good, especially the venerable 2500K (4.7 seems to be easy for that model, even with an average mbd).
As for upgrades, if Intel had ever released a proper SATA3 PCIe card which would work on any system (ie. using its own SATA3 tech which the Intel RST drivers would pick up straight away), I bet there's a lot of users who would stick to systems even older than SB (it's the Marvell/ASmedia chips which let down older mbds). Ditto things like M.2, in theory older mbds could use it with a BIOS update (PCIe cards for booting, would be great for X79 and anything P55 or later), but that'll never happen. As for USB3, there are various addon PCIe cards which work well. Ya gotta love built in obsolescence.
I remember review articles for IB being very critical of Intel for the lack of any significant speedup, plus the meddling with chip cap material which made temps so much higher and thus oc'ing a lot more difficult (re the numerous IB delidding vids on youtube; one guy saw load temps drop by 35C). Where is the equivalent critical eye for this 7700K? It seems like review sites are being overly nice to Intel this time round. Hmm, wonder why.
Meanwhile, SB-E continues to be a very worthy alternative upgrade for someone with an older system, given how crazy cheap the 3930K is these days (IB-E costs somewhat more, but not too bad with some luck). Only tricky part is finding a mbd, as X79 boards are harder to locate than 3930Ks. Even so, for threaded performance, it's hard to beat cost-wise. My 4960X and ASUS P9X79-E WS cost a dribble over 400 UKP, while a 3930K and P9X79 Deluxe I obtained for a friend was only 175. And unlike entry HW-E/BW-E, the 3930K has a full 40 PCIe lanes, so no worries about SLI/CF restrictions. The only thing that would make me consider upgrading is native M.2 for booting, though even then one can get round that to a large extent by for example using an addin card with an SM961 to hold game installation data.
Ian.