Somehow (it’s funny how these things happen isn’t it?), a possible production unit of the next generation i5 processor has been leaked to a tech website. In this case, PCOnline has obtained a unit of the upcoming Intel Core i5-7600K, a 3.8GHz, quad core Kaby Lake processor. The i5-7600K has a 4.20 GHz max Turbo Boost frequency, and 6 MB of L3 cache. Like all its predecessors, it lacks HyperThreading. The i5-7600K succeeds the current i5-6600K, and could be positioned around the US$250 price-point in Intel’s product-stack.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
I quote, from TechPowerup;
In its review of the Core i5-7600K, PCOnline found that the chip is about 9-10% faster than the i5-6600K, but that’s mostly only due to its higher clock speeds out of the box (3.80/4.20 GHz vs. 3.50/3.90 GHz of the i5-6600K). Clock-for-clock, the i5-7600K is just about 1% faster, indicating that the “Kaby Lake” architecture offers only negligible IPC (instructions per clock) performance gains over the “Skylake” architecture. The power-draw of the CPU appears to be about the same as the i5-6600K, so there appear to be certain fab process-level improvements, given the higher clock speeds the chip is having to sustain, without a proportionate increase in power-draw. Most of the innovation appears to be centered on the integrated graphics, which is slightly faster, and has certain new features. Find more performance figures at PCOnline.
[mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
So, is Intel resting on their laurels with Kaby Lake? Or have they begun to hit a limit of the Core architecture? Or, like myself, you question the results from a single sample, and are waiting on real production results before making a judgement? Tell us in the forum!
