Intel Core i7-8700K Review

For years, Intel has been the establishment of PC enthusiasts. To stretch the current British political metaphor, it was ‘many cores for the few' people who had enough cash to buy a high-end processor and ultra-expensive motherboard.

Huge six-core power; Highly overclockable; Stable and easy-to-use platform; Mighty single-core speeds and gaming performance; Cheaper than Ryzen 7 1800X

Doesn't compete with Ryzen 1700 or 1700X on price; Cheaper 8-core Ryzens offer similar multi-core performance; Not compatible with older motherboards

Intel Core i7-8700K review

Intel had to push the core count on its mainstream processors with Coffee Lake . This was inevitable, and frankly, would have been unthinkable had chip maker introduced yet another generation of quad-core CPUs in light of how AMD has redrawn the battle lines with Ryzen and Threadripper .

Hyper-threading overtakes Ryzen; Low-impact overclocking

Overclocking only on K models; Requires new motherboard

Intel Core i7-8700K Processor Review

When AMD launched their Ryzen processors back in March things were a little shaky at first with stability and memory issues, which we talked about in our review of the Ryzen 7 1700X.

– 6core in a mainstream Intel chip; – 36% multicore performance improvement over the i77700K; – Can easily overclock to 5.0 GHz; – Singlecore performance improvements; – Beats Ryzen in gaming performance; – Platform has 40 PCIExpress 3.0 lanes

– New motherboard needed; – Sort of upsetting if you've bought an i77700K recently

Intel Core i7 8700K processor review

Intel's new Core i7 8700K manages to impress. Strictly speaking though as you have seen, if you look at IPC at 3500 MHz then Coffee Lake certainly isn't faster compared to the previous gen product. However, Intel benefits greatly from the fact that they can reach high clock frequencies.

Intel Core i7-8700K Review

To say 2017 has been a busy year for desktop-PC processors would be an understatement the size of Texas—or at least, Oregon. The best way to sum it all up might be to say, simply: In 2017, you'll get more cores (and more threads) for your CPU dollar than ever. That keeps getting reaffirmed as the year goes on—and it's not over yet. We still have the Intel Core i7-8700K ($379) to discuss. But first, AMD kicked off the trend with its eight-core Ryzen 7 chips in March, topping out on that platform with the Ryzen 7 1800X ($375.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . And the new-CPU conveyor belt really hasn't stopped running since then, with AMD following on with six-core Ryzen 5 chips like the Ryzen 5 1600X, and quad-core, four-thread Ryzen 3 options like the AMD Ryzen 3 1300X. Intel countered with impressive, expensive enthusiast-class offerings in a new family called the Core X-Series, topped by the 18-core Core i9-7980XE Extreme Edtion. That mega-chip made AMD's competing counterp...

With high clocks and hexa-core design, Intel's top eighth-generation/"Coffee Lake" desktop CPU impresses as a mainstream "do-it-all" processor. It's an excellent gamer, too, when paired with a high-end video card.

50 percent more cores and threads (and higher boost clocks) than previous-gen mainstream chips; Best gaming performance we've seen at 1080p, when paired with a GTX 1080; Consistently tops AMD's similarly priced Ryzen 7 1700X

Higher MSRP than Core i7-7700K; Requires a new motherboard, despite Z370 chipset offering no substantive new features