Hey guys, Jarrod here and today we’re going to compare two Intel Kabylake laptop CPUs
against each other, the 7700HQ and 7820HK.
We’ll go through some benchmarks to see how they perform, and discuss the differences
between them to help you decide if it’s worth paying more for the higher performing
7820HK.
First let’s note the similarities between these two Kabylake CPUs.
Both were released in Q1 of 2017, have a 14nm manufacturing process, and have 4 physical
cores with 8 total threads with hyperthreading.
Both CPUs also have the same TDP of 45 watts
That’s where the majority of important similarities ends, so how do they differ?
The 7700HQ has a base clock of 2.8GHz and can turbo up to 3.8GHz, while the 7820HK has
a base clock of 2.9GHz and can turbo up to 3.9GHz, so a small 100MHz improvement over
the 7700HQ.
The 7700HQ also has 6MB of cache, while the 7820HK has a larger 8MB of cache.
The main difference is the “K” in 7820HK, which means that this is an overclockable
chip.
I was able to temporarily borrow a laptop with a 7820HK CPU in order to run these benchmarks,
unfortunately out of the box the laptop did not allow me to overclock the CPU, despite
this being an overclockable chip.
It should be possible to do by installing a custom BIOS for it, however as that would
void the warranty and the laptop wasn’t mine, that was not an option here.
Most of the value in the 7820HK CPU is undoubtedly due to the fact that it can be overclocked,
unfortunately I wasn’t able to test this and instead will only be comparing both CPUs
at stock speeds, and spoiler, the 7820HK still performed better than I expected even without
overclocking.
Despite not being able to overclock, I still wanted to find out how the extra 100MHz and
2MB of cache changes things.
To test this I’ve run some CPU specific benchmarks on the two different laptops with
these processors to find out.
I didn’t test any games, as both laptops have different graphics cards which introduces
too many variables, I was just interested in pure CPU performance.
Both laptops are otherwise mostly the same, they had the same speed RAM, an SSD, and Windows
10 with latest updates installed.
In Cinebench the CPU score for the 7700HQ was 740, while the 7820HK received 772, so
only a small improvement there.
In the PassMark CPU benchmark the 7700HQ got a CPU score of 8,820, while the 7820HK did
a fair amount better with a score of 10,408.
Based on other PassMark results, this put the 7700HQ in the top 79th percentile of results,
and the 7820HK in the top 90%, which is pretty impressive at stock speeds.
In GeekBench 4 the 7700HQ got 4,402 for the single core score, and 12,293 for the multi-core
score.
The 7820HK received a single core score of 4,803 and a multi-core score of 14,646, so
again the 7820HK was ahead by a decent amount considering it’s small improvements over
the 7700HQ.
The 7-Zip benchmark was run for 10 passes with a dictionary size of 32MB.
The 7700HQ got a total rating of 19,602MIPS, while the 7820HK got a total rating of 21,810MIPS.
Again the 7820HK was a decent amount ahead.
I then used Handbrake to encode a 500MB MP4 video file that I recorded from 1080p down
to 720p.
The 7700HQ completed the job at an average speed of 37.928 FPS, while the 7820HK completed
encoding the same file at 39.667 FPS, so less than two frames per second of an improvement
by the 7820HK.
So as expected the 7820HK performs better, but how hot does it get in comparison?
The idle temperatures are fairly similar, with the 7700HQ sitting at 25 degrees celsius
and the 7820HK sitting at 28 degrees celsius.
Under load for an hour, the 7700HQ maxed out at 56 degrees celsius while the 7820HK maxed
out at 70 degrees celsius.
These tests were done in a room with an ambient temperature of 23 degrees celsius.
Again keep in mind that’s before any overclocking, so if you’re overclocking you’ll probably
want to look at repasting the CPU to keep it as cool as you can.
In all tests the 7820HK came out ahead of the 7700HQ as expected, it’s 100MHz faster
and has a 2MB larger cache which has definitely helped it do well in these tests, it really
would be interesting to see how much more could be gained by overclocking and I’m
a little sad that I won’t be able to find out right now.
So based purely on the stock speeds is it worth getting the 7820HK over the 7700HQ?
That depends, personally I probably would not get it.
In this particular laptop model the 7820HK is a $250 AUD upgrade over the 7700HQ.
This is around $190 USD.
While the performance increase is actually more than I expected at stock speeds, the
fact is that I still use a laptop with an even older Skylake 6700HQ most of the time
with absolutely no issues.
We haven’t seen that much performance increase in Kabylake over Skylake so to me the extra
money isn’t really worth the performance as I’m more than satisfied with what the
7700HQ can provide.
If you already have a 7700HQ there’s no point looking to upgrade to a 7820HK, as the
7700HQ is soldered onto the board and not user replaceable.
This video was aimed at someone who was deciding between the two prior to buying a laptop.
Now of course if you’re looking to overclock then the 7700HQ is no good to you and you’d
want to look at the 7820HK, however I’d argue that in a laptop overclocking isn’t
always that useful as it will increase power draw and heat output, resulting in lower battery
life which limits portability, which is kind of the whole point of having a laptop over
a desktop.
I suppose you could just overclock when plugged into power though if you really wanted.
So what did you guys think about the differences in performance between the 7700HQ and 7820HK
CPUs from Intel?
Again I’m sorry about not being able to overclock the 7820HK to test its full potential,
I still found the results quite interesting as I didn’t expect the 7820HK to do as well
as it did even at stock speeds!
Be sure to let me know your thoughts down in the comments, leave a dislike on the video
if you’re mad about the lack of overclocking, it’s ok I’ll understand, otherwise leave
a like if you still found it useful.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this
one!