Intel Core i7-2700K Sandy Bridge 3.5 GHz CPU Review

Intel Core i7-2700K CPU

Intel has finally launched the Intel Core i7 2700K Sandy Bridge processor! It wasn’t a well kept secret that Intel was going to be releasing the Core i7-2700K processor this fall. The Intel Core i7 2700K first popped up on our radar last month when Intel listed the upcoming processor in a Material Declaration Data Sheets (MDDS) database that was publicly available on the Intel website. This CPU is interesting to us here at Legit Reviews as it is now the flagship Sandy Bridge CPU for the Intel LGA1155 platform. Intel didn’t send these out to review sites for some reason, so we had to source one on our own.

The Intel Core i7-2700K is clocked at 3.5 GHz, which is 100 MHz faster than the previous flagship model for socket 1155, the Core i7-2600K. Like the 2600K, the 2700K has a 95W TDP, an unlocked clock multiplier, 8 MB L3 cache, 4 CPU cores, and can execute up to 8 threads at once. If you have figured out that this processor launch is nothing more than a speed bump, then pat yourself on the back as that is what it is. There are no new architecture differences here, so the only ‘new’ thing with this processor is a higher multiplier. With the 100Mhz increase we can expect to see right around a 3% performance increase over the 2600K.The Intel Core i7-2600K was unlocked, so many might argue that we already had a 2700K on the market. That said, Intel has priced the 2700K at $332 when bought in 1K quantities. This means that the Intel Core i7-2700K is priced $15 more than a Core i7-2600K.

Here is a look at the Intel Core i7-2700K processor sitting at an idle
state on the desktop of our Windows 7 64-bit test system. Notice that
the processor is only running at 1.6 GHz thanks to Intel’s SpeedStep and
low power state technologies. This is key as it will have lower idle
power consumption and generate less heat. The base clock of the
processor is 100MHz and our motherboard is running the base
clock at 99.8MHz, which isn’t too far off from default. Notice that
the Core i7-2700K has 8MB of shared L3 cache and that each core has 64KB
of dedicated L1 cache and 256KB of dedicated L2 cache.

During regular use with all four cores under load the Intel Core i7 2700K can jump up to the rated
clock frequency of 3.50GHz or 3.60GHz if Turbo mode is enabled. The screen shot above is of the Intel Core i7 2700K running at full load across all the available cores. This is a fully unlocked processor, so you can manually raise or lower the multiplier if you’d like to overclock the processor.

Since this processor release is just a speed bump let’s jump straight into benchmarking!