Kaby Lake Leaked Sample Review

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/inte...,4836.html

Intel’s Kaby Lake efficiency pretenses are thrown out the window in the Core i7-7700K, at least when paired with this motherboard. Perhaps we have something to look forward to when Z270 finally gets here?

For true performance enthusiasts, the real news is that Intel’s new mainstream-socket enthusiast CPU will reach new overclocking heights. Unfortunately, getting its extra heat out of the core was quite a challenge, as even stepping up from Noctua’s NH-U12S to its NH-D14 saved a mere 3°C. This overclocking experiment even required a 15°C room temperature, which is something most readers won’t be able to accomplish. Big liquid might help, but since the cooler’s heatpipes were barely warm to the touch, there’s a possibility that 4.8 GHz may be the limit of this sample while using any ambient-temperature cooling solution. Still, the fact that it reached 4.8 GHz without sub-ambient cooling is encouraging.

Other points of interest, such as built-in HEVC and VP9 8/10-bit encode/decode, may be revealed when our CPU team is able to publish their full review. Until then, the extra overclocking capability at least gives performance enthusiasts who don’t yet (or still) own a (functioning) Skylake processor a reason to wait for the Kaby Lake release.

[SteelCrysis]

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-c...33119.html

The greatest takeaway from our initial Core i7-7700K overclocking test was that at high operating frequencies, Kaby Lake processors behave much like the Skylake models they replace. Adding voltage adds more stability for overclocking, with a corresponding heat penalty. After pushing our platform beyond 180W at full CPU load and stock clocks, and then noticing that peak power dropped by over 40W under abnormal firmware behavior, I postulated that a truly stable firmware would put actual energy consumption numbers between those highs and lows. A public firmware update for MSI’s Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon gave me the opportunity to test that hypothesis. Other than the new motherboard, the test configuration remains the same as our previous article.

Locked and loaded on the Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon, Core i7-7700K power numbers begin to fall in line with expectations set forth by Intel, when it added only a few watts TDP compared to the Core i7-6700K. It looks like the Z170X-Ultra Gaming firmware needs a little more work.

Temperatures are a different matter, but rather than blame a poor Core i7-7700K sample for the vast increase, I’m crediting this specific Core i7-6700K for producing lower-than-expected temperatures. Some samples are just a little bit better than others when it comes to moving heat from the CPU core to its integrated heat spreader.
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Using that average of both Core i7-6700K configurations as a baseline, you can see that the Core i7-7700K performs about 8% better in applications that are primarily CPU limited. Adding benchmarks that aren’t limited by the CPU diminishes that advantage.

Even with a better-balanced motherboard, Intel’s big performance boost still looks incredibly like an overclock, and just as incredible is that this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Intel try that. At least the processor is stable this time, even though the better-balanced Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon still loses approximately 11% of its efficiency when going from a Core i7-6700K to a Core i7-7700K at firmware defaults.

It’s a little hard to fault Intel at all for wanting to push a little more out of its revised core, as we found an extra 200MHz of overclocking capability in the Core i7-7700K. And because the Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon’s firmware functioned a little more smoothly than the previously-used model, I was even able to boot it at 5.00GHz, only to find that it wasn’t stable enough to run Prime95 at any frequency above 4.80GHz. And yes, I did try more voltage.

Other findings include that at 4.80GHz and 1.30V, the MSI-based platform still drew a mere 170W, and the CPU reached only 86°C. That extra thermal headroom is exactly what I needed to play around with more voltage, before finding that 4.80GHz is the best OC setting for this Core i7-7700K sample.

Chasing clock rate always incurs power and thermal penalties. Today’s news is that the penalties seen in our previous Core i7-7700K overclocking article are roughly cut in half simply by using a better-optimized motherboard. That makes this the perfect CPU to buy instead of its predecessor, for those of us who really want the extra performance and overclocking capability.

[happy medium]

A guy over at AT has a 7700k and is benching it.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/my-...t-38606464

[ocre]

Surprising results



Dont know what I was expecting. I just dont get why intel cant seem to bust thru..these pathetic gains in the top end are so so sad.

I guess its nice to have at least the mediocre progress we have seen on the mobile low power arena. I enjoy all day without being plugged in on my laptop. it never feels hot and it fans are inaudible..thats a plus.

But geez..I was expecting the 14nm+ to be...You know, like a semi node jump or something.

Oh well