Here it’s, the large daddy of Intel’s eighth Gen Coffee Lake gaming processors. Once the six-core king of the bestest best gaming CPUs, the Core i7-8700Ok has since been dethroned by each its rapid ninth Gen Coffee Lake successor, the Intel Core i7-9700K, and Intel’s new tremendous duper Core i9-9900K. Both CPUs, nevertheless, are nonetheless comparatively costly in comparison with the i7-8700Ok, so is that this £345 / $350 processor nonetheless value searching for one out on your subsequent PC construct? Here’s wot I believe.
Like Intel’s Core i7-8700 earlier than it, the Core i7-8700Ok is a six-core, twelve thread gaming CPU. The key distinction, nevertheless, is that the 8700Ok is unlocked for overclocking, giving it extra potential for quicker multi-tasking efficiency and nippier gaming speeds. In principle, at the very least. When I attempted overclocking the Core i7-8700Ok with my BeQuiet BK009 Pure Rock cooler, for instance, I wasn’t in a position to push its max Turbo Boost velocity any larger than its default velocity of 4.7GHz. Any quicker and my PC would instantly crash.
As a consequence, you’re going to want a way more substantial cooling resolution to get the perfect out of the Core i7-8700Ok, however that’s to not say it’s not value contemplating should you’ve solely bought a normal tower cooler like I do. Indeed, the Core i7-8700Ok’s gaming efficiency sans overclocking remains to be fairly darn quick within the grand scheme of issues, and positively a heck of rather a lot nippier than what AMD’s prime Ryzen 7 2700X is able to beneath the identical circumstances.
Admittedly, testing any CPU’s gaming efficiency remains to be a little bit of a troublesome endeavor. As our associates at Digital Foundry have explained in the past, plenty of benchmarks both don’t check your CPU correctly, or just aren’t very correct within the first place. Fortunately, a handful of gaming benchmarks have gotten rather a lot higher at this lately, with the likes of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 4, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and extra all offering an in-depth take a look at your CPU’s efficiency in addition to what your graphics card’s doing.
That stated, there are additionally a number of different elements that may impression gaming efficiency, corresponding to your graphics card, the kind of RAM you’ve bought, and even what sort of storage you’ve put in the game on. As a consequence, getting a really correct image of a CPU’s gaming efficiency is difficult, however I’ve executed the perfect I can with the tools accessible to me.
I’ve additionally targeted much more on gaming efficiency on this evaluation than I’ve on, say, software efficiency or media creation ins and outs as a result of, properly, I’m not likely fascinated by that. I’ve included some cursory Cinebench scores as a fundamental indicator of what every CPU might be like for common desktop duties, however actually, my foremost objective right here is to work out what CPU is the perfect for gaming and gaming alone.
And the Core i7-8700Ok definitely places in a fairly good efficiency on this respect – however as you’ll see from the graphs beneath, it’s not truly that significantly better than what I managed with the Core i7-8700. Again, apply higher cooling and also you’ll most likely get higher outcomes than what I’ve bought right here, however even then I’m not solely satisfied will probably be value all the additional expense.
Case in level – simply take a look at what I achieved with its ninth Gen successor, the Core i7-9700Ok, with the exact same BeQuiet cooler. At £360 / $410, it’s fairly a bit greater than the i7-8700Ok (at the very least within the US), however that’s the sort of bounce I hoped to see between the i7-8700 and its 8700Ok counterpart. Its Assassin’s Creed Odyssey efficiency was, admittedly, rather less spectacular than a few of its different outcomes, besides – with positive factors of as much as 10fps in some situations, and at the very least 5fps largely in every single place else, that’s the sort of efficiency increase I’d be prepared to spend the additional cash on. Not a body or two right here and there, however a correct, tangible chunk of them.
It helps, after all, that the Core i7-9700Ok has eight cores versus six, nevertheless it nonetheless has fewer threads than its eighth Gen predecessor (eight vs 12). Indeed, I’ll be very to see what AMD’s new Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 7 3800X CPUs deliver to the desk as soon as they launch on July seventh, as these $329 and $399 chips each have eight cores and sixteen threads. Naturally, I’ll replace this evaluation as soon as I’ve had an opportunity to check them myself, but when the Core i7-9700Ok is something to go by, it will seem that the variety of cores, not threads, is the important thing to superior gaming efficiency.
Indeed, for these shopping for within the UK, you’d nearly be foolish not to go for the Core i7-9700Ok right here, because it’s solely one other £25 on prime of its eighth Gen predecessor. For these within the US, it’s a tougher promote. After all, $60 remains to be a fairly sizeable hole on the finish of the day, and may very well be cash higher spent on one thing like a greater graphics card or one among our best gaming SSD suggestions. By all means go for it should you don’t thoughts spending the cash on an honest cooler to get the perfect out of it, however I’m nonetheless unsure you’ll actually get that rather more out of it to make it value it over the Core i7-8700.
Plus, with the Core i5-9600K being nearly as good as it’s for a heck of rather a lot much less – simply £220 / $230 at time of writing – you’d nearly be higher off dropping again right down to that at this fee than make do with both eighth Gen Core i7. The Core i7-8700Ok was undoubtedly an excellent chip in its day, however in comparison with its ninth Gen cousins, it’s fairly misplaced its lustre.
