Intel Core i7 2700k receives £20 price cut

Intel have had a hell of a year, with little competition offered in the enthusiast sector. AMD's Bulldozer chip looked promising, but sadly fell short of the mark, even with double the physical cores. The Core i7 2500k and 2600k have remained the enthusiast number 1 choice, and today we are looking at the 2600k update, the aptly named 2700k. We have to admit, it is hard to get excited about the 2700k, because it only offers a modest clock bump, to 3.5ghz. In Turbo mode, the 2700k will hit 3.9ghz. It is still the same four physical and four logical design (Hyper Threading), with 8MB of cache. The 'K' series has been a popular choice for the enthusiast user, as these processors are unlocked and extremely easy to overclock. I have three or four of each, and they all hit 4.6ghz-4.8ghz without much of a problem. As with all processors, the overclocking capabilities will vary between steppings. Intel have kept this launch rather low key, perhaps conserving all their energy for the upcoming X79 launch. We were shipped an engineering sample for review and have spent several days putting it through its paces with a variety of applications. When it was launched, the price was said to be around £290 inc vat, which was a £40 premium over the 2600k. In the last couple of days however it has dropped to £258 inc vat which certainly sweetens the deal. It seems like a no brainer for only £10 more, right? No retail package for us, just a little blue storage box holding our engineering sample, direct from Intel. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 2600k and the 2700k. CPUz highlights the 'engineering sample (ES)' moniker ... same architecture as the Core i7 2600k, but clocked slightly higher. We updated the Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 bios to the latest version and experienced no problems with system stability or validation. You can see it over here. With the ThermalTake Frio OCK, we found that the Core i7 2700k would often hold constantly at 3.9ghz, even when all 4 cores were loaded 100%. Main Test System: Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK Graphics: XFX HD6870 Black Edition x 2 Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3. Power Supply: Corsair 850W. Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD. Monitor: Dell Ultrasharp U2410 Rev A00. Comparison Systems: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition @ 3.6ghz Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Cooler: Noctua NH D14 Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB) Graphics Card: HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix Power Supply: ADATA 1200W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3 Monitors: 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T @ 3.3ghz Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Cooler: Noctua NH D14 Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB) Graphics Card: HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix Power Supply: ADATA 1200W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3 Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire Intel Core i7 2600k Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k @ 3.4ghz Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3 Cooler: Intel XTS-100H Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) Graphics Card: HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB Intel Core i5 2500k Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k @ 3.3ghz Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB) Graphics Card: HIS HD6970 IceQ Mix Power Supply: Corsair 850W. Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD. SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc. Native ports for all major operating systems are available: Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86) Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64) Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64) Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01) Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02) All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of: SMP – Multi-Processor MC – Multi-Core SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86 IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit Excellent performance from both Core i7 processors, leading the pack by a clear margin. Cinebench R11.5 is the newest revision of the popular benchmark from Maxon. The test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral “No Keyframes” animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor. Great results from the Core i7 2700k, holding at the 3.9ghz turbo setting in our system, with all cores loaded. Fritz is a German chess program developed by Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist and published by ChessBase. We are using the latest version of the benchmark which is V4.3. We like the Fritz Benchmark, because it is a program based on chess related algorithms and indicates processing efficiency when dealing with complex calculations. The Core i7 processors walk away with this test, in the lead by quite a margin. Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file. The Core i7 2700k is the clear leader, almost 10 seconds faster than AMD's flagship FX 8150. CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats. Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology. New and Improved Features Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously. Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention. Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices. Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment. Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A. Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier. For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors. Graphics acceleration is disabled to measure pure processor performance. A new performance champ, completing the encoding duties in a blistering 10 minutes and 32 seconds. V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today. Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results. Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs. Major new features: Slate: A node based material editor. Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU. Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik. Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor FBX file linking Save to Previous Release (2010) We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render. The Core i7 2700k replaces the Core i7 2600k at the top of the performance charts, 6 seconds faster with this rendering test. We had high hopes for the overclocking section but ran into some serious snags with the Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 motherboard, regardless of any voltage settings we tried. We maxed out at 4.65ghz which wasn't too impressive. We decided to try a different motherboard - the Asus P8P67 Deluxe. We updated to the newest bios. We used the settings above to get a stable 5ghz clock, on air cooling with the ThermalTake Frio OCK. Our 2600k processors generally capped out around 4.8ghz with air cooling. Above, the ASUS system with the Core i7 2700k @ 5 ghz with decent air cooling. System validation is available here. We tried to push it further, and managed to post at 5.2ghz, although the system wasn't completely stable and would blue screen when running SiSoft Sandra tests. Upping the voltage past 1.5 didn't work either, causing temperatures to spike at 90c+. More substantial cooling would be required. We reran a few tests at the maximum overclock of 5ghz, comparing against other overclocked settings we achieved from various systems in recent months. A score of 9.73 is a new Kitguru record for a 4 physical core processor, absolutely annihilating the 8 core FX 8150 at 4.8ghz, which scored 7.68 points. The Core i7 2700k at 5ghz returns an encoding time of 8 minutes and 28 seconds, without hardware GPU acceleration. This is the new benchmark figure for raw processor performance and is over 2 minutes faster than the reference clock speeds. Power consumption is a hot topic of conversation in recent months as people are paying more attention to their electricity bills and overall energy footprint. We used a calibrated meter to measure the power at the wall. Firstly we analysed the power drain when all systems were at reference clock speeds (Core i5 2500k @ 3.3ghz, Core i7 2600k @ 3.4ghz, Core i7 2700k @ 3.5ghz and FX 8150 @ 3.6ghz). All systems were loaded with Cinebench R11.5 64 bit. The Core i7 2700k consumes basically the same power as the Core i7 2600k, which is not a shocker. We still can't get over the FX 8150 BE power consumption at reference clocks, almost 100watts more at the socket than the 2600k. Next we increased the processors to 4.6ghz, but cranked the Core i7 2700k to 5ghz at 1.5 volts. At 5ghz, the Core i7 2700k consumes 293 watts when loaded with Cinebench 11.5 64 bit. When the FX 8150 is clocked at 4.6ghz, it consumes 406 watts at the socket. The Intel Core i7 processors are certainly much more efficient. The Core i7 2700k has been released in a very low key manner. The plan was that Intel would release the new chip to redress the performance balance brought to market by AMD's FX 8150 Black Edition. As we all know by now, AMD's FX failed to excite the enthusiast audience and Intel's i7 2600k held strong as the performance leader in the sub £300 market. Intel's i7 2700k has basically just replaced the 2600k as the new leader in this sector. As a talking point, it makes for a rather dull conversation. In reality however, the 2700k is a stunning processor and we found that it was easier to get stable at even higher clock speeds. We have several 2600k processors in our labs and they all hit 4.8ghz with modest air cooling. The 2700k sample we received was stable at 5ghz and more is surely available with quality watercooling. At 5ghz, the 2700k delivers a stunning Cinebench 11.5 result of almost 10 points, which is ahead of a reference clocked Intel Core i7 990X, at a third of the price. With the right cooling, the Core i7 2700k would make for a spectacular, low cost 3D rendering station. It really is a simple product to rate, because there is no competition from AMD. At £258, it is only £10 more than the Core i7 2600k and as such becomes a clear 'must have' purchase. We can't guarantee all 2700k processors will hit 5ghz on air, but if our sample is anything to go by, it looks really promising for Intel. Pros: 1.5 ghz overclock on air with modest cooling. new performance leader in sub £300 sector. efficient power consumption. Unlocked. Overclockers will love it. Cons: Nothing. Kitguru says: The new sub £300 performance leader and a bargain buy considering the performance available when overclocked.