Intel Core i7 7700Okay evaluation: a vastly uninspiring, barely iterative CPU replace

The top-end Kaby Lake chip is a miserable slice of silicon as a result of, regardless of how resolutely unimpressive an improve it’s, the Core i7 7700Okay continues to be probably the most superior desktop CPU you should purchase proper now. It’s pretty much as good because the seventh Gen Core structure will get till we see Kaby Lake-X in direction of the tip of this yr, however in contrast with the sixth Gen Skylake chips there’s little new right here to get enthusiastic about. Sigh.

And that is going to be a little bit of an issue for Intel’s already-abandoned Process>Architecture>Optimisation product launch cadence. The optimisation stage appears like having the least attention-grabbing releases and that is the half that is getting prolonged with additional 14nm releases like Coffee Lake…

Click on the short hyperlinks under to leap to your favorite class. I likes benchmarks, me… ooh, have a look at the graphs on that.

Intel Core i7 7700Okay specs

The Core i7 7700Okay is the direct substitute for the Core i7 6700Okay and is nearly similar to the earlier chip in various methods. For a begin we’re nonetheless kind of the identical 14nm manufacturing course of at play with the Kaby Lake i7, it’s nonetheless basically utilizing the identical Skylake structure in addition to the identical 4 cores / eight threads HyperThreaded configuration.

It additionally slips into the identical LGA 1151 slot as Skylake, has the identical TDP and the identical cache. That means you possibly can both drop a Kaby Lake CPU into an current Z170 board or select one of the Z270 motherboards as the house in your new CPU. You also can do the identical with last-gen Skylake chips; so in case you fancy a number of the items on provide with a 200-series board however don’t really feel the necessity to improve your sixth Gen Core CPU you don’t need to.

And that is largely as a result of they’re principally the identical damned chips with simply the very slightest of tweaks. Sadly this appears like what we will need to reside with for the tertiary part of Intel’s new Process>Architecture>Optimisation cadence.

Previously Intel’s CPUs have been both constructed on a brand new transistor node or featured a wholly new microarchitecture. This was the idea for the ol’ tick-tock launch schedule the place the tick was a die-shrink on an current architectural design and the tock was a complete new CPU structure. This modified to a 3 step, Process>Architecture>Optimisation, method due to the elevated issue in successfully shrinking the scale of purposeful transistors.

That’s been deserted earlier than we have even had one launch cycle, so it is now tick, tock, stutter, flail, flog an outdated manufacturing course of. We have a few optimised chip generations popping out to increase the lifetime of a CPU structure that includes each the present design and the present manufacturing course of. At least Intel are giving us one other couple of cores to mess around with in change for nearly zero architectural adjustments with the upcoming 14nm Coffee Lake designs.

I assume the pondering is that with each a mature processor design and a mature lithography Intel will be capable to squeeze out each final drop of potential efficiency from their chips.

As the title suggests, the 7700Okay is one other Okay-series variant, which suggests it has an unlocked multiplier and, given the optimised course of, we should hope the overclocking efficiency of the Kaby Lake technology has been boosted.

In actuality although we’re simply getting a processor which maintains the earlier technology’s dominance however is incapable of actually pushing issues any additional.

As I stated although, there are some slight tweaks. The foremost one being the change in base and Turbo clockspeeds. Out of the field the Core i7 7700Okay comes with a four.2GHz base and four.5GHz Turbo frequency. This is a perform of Kaby Lake being an optimised model of the Skylake structure’s 14nm design. Twelve months after then inaugural Skylake launch Intel have been capable of wring just a little extra efficiency out of the silicon with solely just a little further vitality required utilizing small adjustments within the manufacturing course of, now referred to as 14nm+.

The different massive change is the brand new Kaby Lake media engine. This signifies that as of now 4K media streaming is accessible on the PC as a result of Intel have enabled hardware-level acceleration for the encoding and decoding of 10-bit HEVC content material. Despite having the facility to run 4K media the Skylake and Broadwell generations haven’t had the native hardware acceleration essential for streaming the 4K out of Netflix. Though you’re nonetheless going to have to make use of the Edge browser in order for you it operating in your PC.

When it involves the CPU-based graphics contained in the i7 7700Okay they’re precisely what you would possibly count on, totally irrelevant to us. We’re devoted to PC gaming right here at SE7EN.WS, and Intel’s HD graphics are usually not. End of.

Intel Core i7 7700Okay benchmarks

Intel Core i7 7700Okay efficiency

We posted an early preview of the Core i7 7700Okay’s efficiency within the Skylake technology’s Z170 motherboards and have been largely unimpressed. Things haven’t actually modified since we’ve been capable of take a look at the capabilities of the Kaby Lake i7 in its personal Z270 platform. 

Put up in opposition to AMD’s octa-core Ryzen chips, just like the R7 1800X, the Intel chip continues to be capable of ship superior gaming efficiency even when it may possibly’t match the total multi-threaded chops of the Zen structure. That’s going to be just a little irritating in case you have been hoping the $500 Ryzen flagship would be capable to change the Core i7 as the height mainstream CPU, however contemplating the 7700Okay is cheaper and might nonetheless overclock like a hero it’s a higher chip for players.

Compared with the Skylake i7 it is changing although it isn’t as clear lower. As anticipated, the clockspeed bump from a Turbo of four.2GHz with the Core i7 6700Okay to four.5GHz with the i7 7700Okay means the Kaby Lake chip is ready to produce larger benchmark efficiency throughout the board in contrast with the Skylake CPU. Realistically although the efficiency uplift is observable however not tangible. The 7700Okay is a few 6-7% faster in our straight CPU benchmarks, however lower than 2% faster once we use Futuremark’s system-wide assessments.

The PCMark and 3DMark scores are indicative of what little distinction the optimisation of the Kaby Lake CPUs has made upon gaming efficiency. I’ve chosen the Hitman and Doom benchmarks, utilizing the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs respectively, as they’re those with the best distinction in benchmark scores. The DX11 Total War: Attila and DX12 Deus Ex: Mankind Divided assessments confirmed completely no variance between the Skylake and Kaby Lake chips.

Where issues do make just a little extra sense is on the facility aspect of the equation. Kaby Lake makes use of each an optimised CPU structure and manufacturing course of and that ought to equate to better effectivity. While issues don’t look that spectacular once you’re evaluating the 2 stock-clocked Core i7 processors the optimisation of the Kaby Lake chip turns into evident once you begin to push them additional.

It’s straightforward to get the 6700Okay to run on the similar degree because the 7700Okay. Our Skylake chip is an ordinary retail pattern and might fortunately hit four.8GHz overclocked, so clocking in on the Kaby Lake chip’s four.5GHz is not any downside. With clock-for-clock parity although the 7700Okay runs 10°C cooler than the 6700Okay and makes use of 5% much less vitality to take action.

But in case you have been hoping, like me, the efficiency optimisations would result in a CPU technology very happy to spice up over the 5GHz mark for larks then you definitely’ll be dissatisfied. I’ve solely been capable of full a full benchmark run at four.9GHz, simply 100MHz larger than the Skylake i7. Inevitably that’s not going to translate to any significant efficiency lead. 

I did handle to get the 7700Okay booting at over 5GHz, however it was not at all steady. I may run comparatively CPU-light workloads at that pace, resembling video games, and even managed a couple of runs of Cinebench, however the aggressive X264 v5 benchmark saved making the system fall over. It didn’t appear to matter how a lot further voltage I gave the system, it couldn’t get by way of a full run. 

The different concern is that with the additional voltage temperatures undergo the roof, even with a closed-loop water cooler whirring away atop it. I needed to shut down the X264 v5 take a look at once I began upping the CPU voltage as a result of my 7700Okay was operating as much as 100°C. Even within the steady four.9GHz configuration it was peaking at 92°C which simply feels too excessive to be run like that as regular.

Frustratingly this appears to be all the way down to the thermal interface materials (TIM) Intel are utilizing on each the Skylake and Kaby Lake CPU generations. The heatspreader sits between the processor itself and the cooling block of your chip chiller, inside that heatspreader is a thermally conductive compound designed to permit as environment friendly a switch of warmth from CPU to cooler as potential.

Unfortunately in case you use a poor high quality TIM the warmth isn’t pulled away from the silicon effectively sufficient and the CPU will get tremendous sizzling. Someone with an early 7700Okay pattern, and probably a technological death-wish, delidded his processor (eliminated the heatspreader) and altered out the default TIM inside. That netted him a thermal distinction of round 26°C. That’s a giant distinction in temperature and would make a four.9-5GHz overclock really useable day-to-day. As one of many premium Okay-series chips, designed for overclocking, you would possibly count on Intel to place higher TIM in these processors. As all i7s are created equally within the manufacturing facility nonetheless that’s not practicable. 

Intel Core i7 7700Okay verdict

Here it comes, the $350 query: do you have to purchase the Core i7 7700Okay? The reply will not be a simple one as a result of whereas the top-end Kaby Lake processor is probably the most superior CPU silicon round it’s not at all essential part. 

Realistically I can’t advocate you purchase a 7700Okay except you’re upgrading from a 4 or 5 year-old i7 and completely want that mixture of cores and threads. But even then, it’s not lower and dried – the Core i7 6700Okay is virtually pretty much as good and will even flip up a great deal cheaper than the 7700Okay.

The excellent news there’s that in case you’ve bought a 6700Okay in your system and have been beginning to really feel just a little jealous of the brand new CPU technology then you definitely’ve bought no cause for concern. No-one with a Skylake CPU ought to contemplate a Kaby Lake chip except they’re switching from i3 to i5 or i5 to i7. And in case you’re a gamer first then the body charge efficiency distinction between an i5 and an i7 CPU is minimal, so I’d advocate you make a beeline for the more interesting i5 7600K slightly than the top-spec Kaby Lake. 

Though, that stated, in case you’re seeking to put collectively a brand new rig from scratch then AMD’s fantastic Ryzen 5 1600X is the CPU I might advocate constructing your new rig round. It’s bought thrice the thread-count of the Okay-series i5 and might just about match if for gaming efficiency for a similar value. And that additionally makes it considerably cheaper than the i7 7700Okay and nonetheless has a better core and thread-count for any video games or apps that do profit from multi-threaded CPU efficiency.

Kaby Lake’s high chip then is totally uninspiring. The Core i7 7700Okay isn’t a worthy CPU improve, solely actually of any curiosity in case you’re lifeless set on shopping for a model new, pre-built i7 rig. So, deliver on Zen. Don’t allow us to down.