Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake

[Tunnah]

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.

[Percy1983]

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?

[pastymuncher]

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.

[jigger]

Sub £250 and I'd be interested.

[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.

[imadaily]

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


Also, I think the scale on the AIDA Memory test graph is wrong, should probably read "higher is better"?

[chj]

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.

[marshalex]

Are intel just trolling us now?

[Tunnah]

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.

[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.

[Tunnah]

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

[Percy1983]

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.

[rainman]

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!

[Markosz]

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.

[Anomander]

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.

[WizFiz]

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.