Hardware Intel Core i7-7700K, Core i5-7600K (Kaby Lake) and Z270 Chipset Review

Um, the IPC is identical but Kaby Lake consigns Sky Lake to the history books?

We'll agree to disagree on that one, Mr Leather.

 

lol...yeah right, In your dreams.

 

It's actually nearer to £350.

 

£60 is quite a big `approx.` !

 

While it doesn't render an already purchased Sky Lake cpu worthless there is also exactly zero reason to opt for a Sky Lake once Kaby Lake hits store shelves in quantities for those who are on older systems.

 

Still no reason to upgrade from my 3770K.

 

Well from that review, the Sky lake uses less power and is almost as fast with a lower overclock, so unless you want peak overclock performance all the time I can't see the point of this cpu.

It's a shame it wasn't tested at 4.8GHz to give a better comparison.

 

Good review, nice to see Kaby Lake released (from the NDA at least).

Doesn't look like an overly worthwhile upgrade from Sky Lake which I know was expected, but it might give Zen an open goal of sorts if its launch matches some of the hype.

 

Well, that might be true over there, here where i live (argentina) an i7 6700k is aprox 395u$s+VAT 21% (best price i can get), so when kaby lake gets here i assume ill get an 6700k for ~325u$s, and of course a 7700k will get here at aprox 425u$s

 

UK is seeing nearly 1-1 price conversion on computer hardware at the moment.

 

Unsurprising with a $1.20:£1 average exchange rate plus 20% VAT.
Admittedly it was REALLY annoying to still see £=$ when the exchange rate was $1.40:£1 and higher.

 

Personally I feel the i3K is going to be the gem that sparkles brightest - it's been suggested it can best the 4670K and 2600K when OC'd.

Still only time will tell...

 

So are we at the point now where a Kaby Lake CPU (and presumably a subsequent mainboared & ram upgrade) would be beneficial to those of us on an older i2500k intel setup? Or is it still a case of questionable cost vs. benefit and the kind of thing only worth doing if you suffer hardware failure?

Every time in the past few years I have posed this question to friends, they have mostly suggested a GPU upgrade offers a better performance boost for the money.

 

Have the 7700 and 7600 (K and non-K) parts dropped VT-d?

The Intel ARK pages don't show it listed at all.

 

sat here with a 4790K and thinking this is not the droid I'm looking for...

 

Do these work in existing boards or do you have to have the new board for it to work? also, do skylake cpus work in these boards?

 

Barely an improvement. Still don't see a reason to upgrade from my XP1700+

 

It's the same socket so they should be compatible, but will probably be BIOS-dependent (similar to Haswell & Haswell Refresh with Z87 and Z97 motherboards). So Skylake CPUs should work in all Kaby Lake boards (e.g. Z270) but Skylake boards (e.g. Z170) will probably need a BIOS update to recognise Kaby Lake CPUs.