Intel Core i7-10700K
The i7-10700K is a great option for Adobe’s tools and for applications where low-core ability is crucial
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PRICE £358 (£430 inc VAT) from overclockers.co.uk
The i7-10700K is one of three new chips on test that Intel has released with its new Comet Lake design, and its £430 price means this processor is nearly £100 more expensive than its keenest rival, AMD’s Ryzen 7 3800X.
In truth, anything suggesting a “new design” may be pushing it. Under the literal hood, these chips still rely on the Skylake architecture. That means an archaic 14nm manufacturing process and no significant changes in basic functionality. Instead, Intel has developed these new chips by improving multithreaded abilities and clock speeds.
The i7-10700K has eight cores that are multithreaded, for instance. That’s a big improvement over the i7-9700K, which wasn’t multithreaded, and it brings Intel’s new chip into line with AMD’s Ryzen 7 part.
The cores run at base and boost speeds of 3.8GHz and 5.1GHz, with that latter figure outpacing AMD’s part. That’s impressive, even though this Intel chip doesn’t have the aggressive extra turbo features of the tenth-generation Core i9 processor.
These improvements make more thermal demands on the CPU, though, so this new Intel part has a hefty TDP of 125W – 20W more than its rival from AMD, and further beyond this Core i7’s predecessor. To combat these increased power demands, Intel has had to make its CPU dies thinner, thicken its heat-spreaders and improve its thermal compound.
Its Comet Lake architecture means the i7-10700K needs a new socket. It’s called LGA 1200, and its introduction results in extra cost – you’ll have to buy a new motherboard even if you’re upgrading from an Intel rig. Unlike AMD’s chips, Intel doesn’t include a cooler with the i7-10900K either.
You are getting some nice extras in return for your investment. Intel’s Z490 chipset adds native support for Wi-Fi 6 and 2.5Gbits/sec Ethernet, so networking gets a boost. Its native memory support has been improved to 2,933MHz. AMD’s chips have faster memory but this is moot, especially on pricier motherboards – manufacturers usually override these limits.
Elsewhere, this new part does show its age. Its 16MB of cache is half the amount of the AMD chip, and it has 16 PCI lanes – eight fewer than AMD. Intel’s chipset doesn’t support PCIe 4, while AMD’s chipsets do support this faster protocol.
This omission is an issue for Intel. It means you can’t use superfast SSDs until Intel does add support – while some motherboard manufacturers have added relevant PCIe 4 hardware to Z490 boards, it’s going to be redundant until Intel activates this feature in its CPUs. AMD’s omission of faster networking is less critical, because manufacturers are already able to add these features to motherboards themselves.
The i7-10700K’s benchmark results see this chip play to Intel’s traditional strengths. This Comet Lake part is faster than AMD’s rival in both Adobe apps, and it’s a little quicker in both Geekbench tests. Intel’s part proved marginally quicker in Blender, too, and it unsurprisingly leads in both Cinebench and Geekbench’s single-core tests – and in the Y-Cruncher single-core computation benchmark.
Intel’s great single and low-thread performance mean that this chip will be better than AMD in Adobe’s apps, in Office tools and in web browsers, and in other software that requires more single-threaded speed. The Intel part is superb for games too. Its 3DMark Time Spy score of 13,177 outpaces AMD, and its real-world results were always ahead, often by significant margins. Its Civilization VI and Total War: Warhammer II results, in particular, speak to Intel’s ability when gaming. Note, though, that it’s only a little faster than the i5-10600K, so that CPU is a smart way to save cash if you just want gaming ability.
Note also that the i7-10700K is less impressive than its AMD rivals in multithreaded scenarios. The cheaper Ryzen 7 3800X was faster in Cinebench’s multicore test, while Intel’s part also fell behind in all of our own application benchmarks. The Intel chip was a long way back in SiSoftware Sandra, and nearly ten seconds slower when Y-Cruncher deployed all cores for its computation test. The Intel chip isn’t as frugal as AMD’s part, either – the i7-10700K pulled 155W from the mains when benchmarking and 187W when stressed, but the 3800X topped out at 131W and 144W.
The i7-10700K is an excellent option for Adobe’s tools, and for applications where low-core ability is key – if you need pure speed, it’s better than the 3800X. It’s also a better option than AMD if you want to run games on your rig, and it’s hardly slow in multicore. Be aware, though, that the rival 3800X is faster in multithreaded workloads and better value, thanks in part to cheaper motherboards.
“Its 3DMark Time Spy score of 13,177 outpaces AMD and its real-world results were better, often by significant margins”
3.8GHz/5.1GHz base/peak clock speed 8 cores 16 threads 16MB L3 cache Intel UHD 630 graphics Intel Comet Lake architecture Intel LGA 1200 socket 125W TDP