Intel Core i7-10700K

[W1zzard]

The Core i7-10700K is Intel's second strongest overclockable Comet Lake CPU, with a powerful 8c/16t configuration. We saw pretty amazing tweaking potential from the 10700 non-K, so we'll definitely compare against that in the Core i7-10700K review, and of course against AMD's Ryzen 9 3900X.

Show full review

 

[RandallFlagg]

Not real surprised after the excellent showing of the 10700, that with a good OC, the 10700k is a monster. Still a bit pricey vs the 3900X but if you're in this range I doubt $70 one way or the other matters much.

Still, I tend to think the 10700 (non-K) with some fast DDR4 is a better fit for most people since using the OC on the 10700K to its fullest will require expensive cooling and such.

Looks like Intel has a weak midrange (i5) excepting the 10600K, OK but slightly overpriced low end (i3), and really strong top end (i7+) in their lineup vs AMD. Also, looks like the 10900K has little reason to exist, except for bragging rights. Status quo is restored.

 

[heflys20]

Good luck getting this thing at the suggested retail price. LOL. I've seen it almost $200-250 more than the 3700x. Atrocious price/performance. IMHO.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Good luck getting this thing at the suggested retail price. LOL. I've seen it almost $200-250 more than the 3700x. Atrocious price/performance. IMHO.

The 10700K is wiping the floor with the 3700X. It’s also beating the 3900X in almost everything except some rendering workloads. In many cases, it’s a significant difference.
None of the high end cpus are cost effective when looked at as a single component in isolation. But if you are building a new system for say $1200, I think it would be foolish to leave a 10% performance gain on the table to save $70. In the context of a new build, it’s very cost effective.

 

[heflys20]

Wiping the floor with the 3700x? It's only between 8-9% faster than the 3700x at base clocks, yet costs nearly $200-250 more (before factoring in additional costs) in the wild . Of course it dominates in single-threaded productivity, no surprise there.

 

[timta2]

Good luck getting this thing at the suggested retail price. LOL. I've seen it almost $200-250 more than the 3700x. Atrocious price/performance. IMHO.

This happens with just about all new hardware. Give it a few weeks.

 

[heflys20]

This happens with just about all new hardware. Give it a few weeks.

True. Part of me is skeptical these pieces will ever retail for the suggested price. I imagine it'll always hover around $180-200 (even including heatsink) more than the 3700x. I digress though.

 

[1d10t]

Kinda agree with GN, while 10300 doing great for office PC, 10600K is best bang for buck, 10900K for bragging rights, these 10700K serves no purposes.

 

[silapakorn]

Kinda agree with GN, while 10300 doing great for office PC, 10600K is best bang for buck, 10900K for bragging rights, these 10700K serves no purposes.

In a few years the gaming performance gap between 10600k and 10700k could grow wider, as more games will fully use 8 cores after the release of new consoles. The gaming tests that we are doing right now are all based on current generation games, most of which are optimized to run on 6-7 years old hardware.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Wiping the floor with the 3700x? It's only between 8-9% faster than the 3700x at base clocks, yet costs nearly $200-250 more (before factoring in additional costs) in the wild . Of course it dominates in single-threaded productivity, no surprise there.

Yes, that $200 premium will likely last all of 2-4 weeks. It's a new release, it'll have a premium for a while. The 10700 non-k did too for about a week, but right now you can get them for $335. The MSRP of the 10700K is $75 more than the 3700X and with the 3700X discounted to $275 right now it's $100 more. Your "argument" is a total red herring.

Like I said before, if you are building a system that costs ~$1200, you'd be at parity for price performance forking up $100 (8.3% of the total system cost) to get a definitive 8-9% boost in performance. At +$75 you'd be spending 6.2% more to get 8-9% more performance. If the system costs more than $1200 as many do, it gets even dumber not to pay that small premium for that boost.

Of course, if you aren't building a new system you may not spend that, but then you probably have other bottlenecks and would be better served looking at the low end CPUs where the price/perf ratio on the individual component beats everything else.

Frankly using your logic of price/perf above all at a component level, you will probably wind up with an APU and a grenerally crap system that you won't be happy with in short order. You can buy 3 Kia Rios for the price of one well equipped Toyota Camry or Honda Accord too you know.

 

[heflys20]

The MSRP for the 10700k is $75 more? Are you talking about the 10700 non-k? The current MSRP (non-inflation) for the K edition is $400. $135 more. The 3700x has been around $270-280 for months now , and it's unlikely to go anywhere near $300 again. Not to mention you'll likely spend $20-30 more for a competent cooler. Sure the 3700x Wraith cooler is nothing spectacular, but it's free. So even if you're going by the MSRP price, the 10700k is nearly $160 more expensive. All for a whopping 8-9% performance advantage. I actually think most people would do I fine with 3600. I have no what your Kia vs Camry reference is alluding to, entirely. Oh, well.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

"

• Processor Number i7-10700K
• Recommended Customer Price$374.00 - $387.00

"
Techspot also noted the $375 MSRP.

Given that the MSRP and going price for the i7-10700 is $335 that is in line.

The MSRP for the 3700X is actually $320. It is discounted to $275 online.

So as I said, $75-$100 difference once the release pricing settles down. Unless they have to fire-sale more of those 3700X's and lower the price more...

Learn to use google to do your own research.

 

[heflys20]

Lol. You seriously believe retailers are only going to only charge a $40 -50 premum between the 10700 and 10700k (2.90 ghz vs 3.80, not the the standard .5-.6 dif). Got you bud. To your other point, no duh the msrp for the 3700x is over $300. I never said it wasn't. I said price currently, which is all that matters. In terms of where I got the Msrp for the 10700k. Try reading the review on the site that you're currently on. Why go to Google when the review already provides the price? Lol. Makes no sense initially. Only when a point needs to be argued.

 

[1d10t]

In a few years the gaming performance gap between 10600k and 10700k could grow wider, as more games will fully use 8 cores after the release of new consoles. The gaming tests that we are doing right now are all based on current generation games, most of which are optimized to run on 6-7 years old hardware.

Yeah, "could". Is it though ?
Nextgen console will implement some sort of RTRT in its core engine, and here's some example of core scaling in DXR title

CONTROL PC Performance Explored - All In On RTX

Keith firmly believes that Control is best played and enjoyed on PC with all of the ray trancing NVIDIA features enabled.

wccftech.com

As you can see in "this generation", CPU already irrelevant, it will become "obsolete" when RTRT become standard

 

[tfdsaf]

Too little too late. I'd give it to Intel that their 14nm process has proven to be golden, but they need to make their cpu's run at extremely high out of the box frequencies, which increases power consumption massively, interestingly heat doesn't appear to be that bad, but some reviewers have found higher temps using heat measurement tools, rather than software monitoring apps, so qurious to see if Intel are cheating somehow and reporting lower temps on purpose!

Anyways these cpu's require yet another new motherboard, require you to purchase a cooler, are way too expensive for what they offer and where their competition is at. Intel is pricing these as if we are 6-7 years back in time where they had no competition, reality is AMD is ahead in almost every metric, offer more value, have a longer and cheaper chipset, have more upgradibility and are more future proof with more cores for less money!

I think if Intel reduces prices on these new cpu's by about 20% on average they can be competitive once again, but as it is with very expensive Z490 motherboards, with cooler costs, with the high msrp its an expensive choice to own Intel.

Considering next gen consoles use Zen 2 architecture and 8 cores, I expect literally ALL next gen games to perform better on Zen 2 and future Zen processors.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Kinda agree with GN, while 10300 doing great for office PC, 10600K is best bang for buck, 10900K for bragging rights, these 10700K serves no purposes.

and yet for TPU, like just about any product they review: "Highly recommended""

 

[wolfsen]

The 10700K is wiping the floor with the 3700X. It’s also beating the 3900X in almost everything except some rendering workloads. In many cases, it’s a significant difference.
None of the high end cpus are cost effective when looked at as a single component in isolation. But if you are building a new system for say $1200, I think it would be foolish to leave a 10% performance gain on the table to save $70. In the context of a new build, it’s very cost effective.

Well the price difference is much higher than $70, Ryzen 3700x costs $275 and its new MSRP is $285 and Z490 MB are much more expensive than B450 (you get a decent one for $120).

At the end of the day, you pay $400 for 3700x+MB+ stock cooler while the 10700k option costs you $400 for cpu, $200 for MB, at least $30 for cooler. It's a $200 price difference that you could have spent on a better GPU that performs better all the time instead of giving you a 10% boost in the rare CPU limited situations (which might often be irrelevant, when you're above 150 fps you don't really mind about increasing fps in most situations).

You really have to need those extra cpu performance to chose 10700k over 3700x (and I'm not saying that nobody does)

 

[coozie78]

The 10700K is wiping the floor with the 3700X. It’s also beating the 3900X in almost everything except some rendering workloads. In many cases, it’s a significant difference.
None of the high end cpus are cost effective when looked at as a single component in isolation. But if you are building a new system for say $1200, I think it would be foolish to leave a 10% performance gain on the table to save $70. In the context of a new build, it’s very cost effective.

I would n't say it's " wiping the floor " with the 3700X except in the academic 720 rez gaming benchmarks, sure it's a fair bit faster in known Intel favouring games but elsewhere the <>10 FPS difference isn't really that significant.

Yeah, "could". Is it though ?
Nextgen console will implement some sort of RTRT in its core engine, and here's some example of core scaling in DXR title

View attachment 158012

CONTROL PC Performance Explored - All In On RTX

Keith firmly believes that Control is best played and enjoyed on PC with all of the ray trancing NVIDIA features enabled.

wccftech.com

As you can see in "this generation", CPU already irrelevant, it will become "obsolete" when RTRT become standard

I'll get interested in RTRT when it doesn't require a >£1000 GPU to make it work without a savage FPS drop.

 

[Vader]

Like I said before, if you are building a system that costs ~$1200, you'd be at parity for price performance forking up $100 (8.3% of the total system cost) to get a definitive 8-9% boost in performance. At +$75 you'd be spending 6.2% more to get 8-9% more performance. If the system costs more than $1200 as many do, it gets even dumber not to pay that small premium for that boost.

Considering the total cost of the system in order to justify incremental costs of one specific piece of hardware is flawed logic IMO.
You could see how someone might want a more expensive case, or need a higher storage capacity, or want a more efficient psu... suddenly these people should be buying i9 or R9 because the percentual increase over base spending is lower? What does cpu performance has to do with aesthetics, storage, or power efficiency?
If your focus is performance, you should only factor in your calculation the base price of the hardware that has influence in that metric, in the specific task(s) you're budgeting for.
Although having said that, i think a quick and fair way of calculating cpu value is to consider the cost of cpu+motherboard+ram and go from there.

 

[nguyen]

Basically an 9900K for 50usd cheaper but requires a new and expensive motherboard. Not to mention the 9900KF can reach 5.2-5.3ghz more readily too...

 

[cucker tarlson]

intel's been to a good pretty start to 2018 this year.

 

[Vario]

Just 9900K all over again with new socket.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Considering the total cost of the system in order to justify incremental costs of one specific piece of hardware is flawed logic IMO.
You could see how someone might want a more expensive case, or need a higher storage capacity, or want a more efficient psu... suddenly these people should be buying i9 or R9 because the percentual increase over base spending is lower? What does cpu performance has to do with aesthetics, storage, or power efficiency?
If your focus is performance, you should only factor in your calculation the base price of the hardware that has influence in that metric, in the specific task(s) you're budgeting for.
Although having said that, i think a quick and fair way of calculating cpu value is to consider the cost of cpu+motherboard+ram and go from there.

I can get a good performing Z490 for $150, right noe. How much can you get an X570 for?

Oh and if you want to talk B450, I can get an H470 for $110 and a B460 for $80.

If anything, the high end Intel motherboards are cheaper.

 

[Bee9]

@W1zzard can you fix this?

 

[heflys20]

Oh and if you want to talk B450, I can get an H470 for $110 and a B460 for $80.

Neither the H470 or B460 support ram over 3000mhz, nor ram overclocking. The B450, on the other-hand....Some models support up 4000mhz, plus OC. Like the $120 ASUS Tuf-Pro.