alright guys so you may have noticed that we haven't put up any content
during Intel's copulating launch day and that's because I was working on
something very interesting for you guys so I won't be talking about the
technical specifications or the technical details about Intel's newest
architecture since I've already covered that in this video
instead I really want to cover what people can expect when they decide to
upgrade to Intel's newest processor the i7 8700K this isn't gonna be the usual
Intel vs AMD thing but rather in comparison of an older system to a newer
one provided you want to stay within Intel's platform so the only further ado
let's get into it but first a quick message from our
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the description below alright so let's talk about the older system because our
editor Mike aka skyMTL has been teasing it for about a week on Twitter this is
Intel's z68 platform that was launched all the way back in January 2011 but
don't let its age of more than 6 years fool you many people jumped on to Sandy
Bridge platform and they have skipped Ivy Bridge as we as Skylake and Kaby Lake
entirely because it really wasn't any reason to one of the main reasons behind
Sandy bridges lasting popularity is this processor the i7 2600k about 320 dollars
and was actually well priced compared to some previous generation Lynnfield
processors this is why Coffee Lake launch is such a big deal right now
after six years the evolved 40 nanometer plus plus manufacturing process on these
new processors has allowed Intel to finally move their I7 Series away from
that quad core layout that's been with us in Sandy Bridge was launched the
i7 8700K uses six cores along with 12 threads and it costs $360 while that's a
good 40 dollars more than the i7 2600k launched at and the premium reflects the price of inflation between 2011 and 2017 almost perfectly so in today's
dollars this coffee lake CPU doesn't technically cost more now with its high
speeds and more cores intel also claims that there are notable performance
improvements over older processors but that's also a matter of platform
improvements to z68 or other chipsets of the Sandy Bridge generation are actually
considered very capable by today's standards but there are some key
technologies which they are missing back in 2011 features like USB 3.1 gen2
Thunderbolt MDOT to nvme wearing around and even the current SATA 6 gigabits per
second interface was added to z68 through slow third party controllers the
same goes for PCI 3.0 which wasn't natively supported by Sandy Bridge but
was tacked on to motherboards later on even though motherboards like this Asus
z370-e Strix and gaming may not be all that much different from z270 it does
have more connectivity options density 68 so you can consider that as a benefit
to looking at these newer components but what I'm after here isn't to compare Z
370 and C 68 what I want to find out is whether or not people with Sandy Bridge
processors should finally look into upgrading basically the test setups will
consist of these Z370 Strix and I 787 under K or the Asus PZ 68 V Pro and the
i7 2600 with those I'll be using a gtx 1070 16 gigabytes of memory all the
other components you see in this chart there's also a completely fresh install
of Windows 10 and multi-core enhancement was turned off the only major difference
will be the memory speeds with Sandy Bridge operating at 1333 megahertz
while the coffee Lake system will be operating at 2666 megahertz those beads
were chosen since they represent the upper range of Intel's stock
specifications don't worry though I'll get into overclocking later on ok so now
on to benchmarks and I'm actually gonna skip these synthetic tests and move on
to real-world testing and gaming something else I should mention is that
there should be no doubt that the 8700k is gonna win and the question is whether
or not it wins by enough to make upgrading worth a while let's start
things off with Adobe Premiere Pro since it happens to be a program I use all the
time honestly a video editor would have likely upgraded away from Sandy Bridge a
long long time ago and this is why just remember the 2600k
operates at a maximum speed of 900 megahertz lower than the 8700k and has
for less processing threats so of course coffee lake will win in rendering tasks
the 8700k walks all over the 2600K and in a big way - it takes less than
half the amount of time to render the same scene at stock settings like many
of the programs since GIMP is natively a single-threaded program Coffee Lakes
additional threats and other optimizations can't be put to full use
that means it still beats Sandy Bridge by noticeable margin but nothing like
we've seen in previous multi-core tests if you're someone done edits photos for
a living I'd still recommend you look into an upgrade since this amount of
time being saved could lead to money being saved on your end switching back
to a program that benefits from both multi-core enhancements and over all
frequencies tells us the i7 8700k jumps way out of a massive lead
again but honestly guys remember that coffee Lake is being compared against a
processor that was launched six years ago so the improvements were expected we
just wanted to properly put them into context by now it should be pretty
obvious that coffee Lake will keep winning rendering tests by a big margin
and that's what pov-ray shows I was actually expecting winner results to be
a bit closer since its algorithms typically benefit from faster platform
storage the lower memory latency and high clock speeds however after I looked
a bit closer at the output it looks like the i7 2600k the SSD from writing
information at its peak speeds the processor became a bottleneck okay guys
so you probably didn't need any of those last charts to tell you that coffee Lake
could beat Sandy Bridge without a problem but for people who are rocking
the 2600K and will care about saving time with processor intensive tasks
could benefit from making a step up to coffee like but what about gaming you
see with modern processors we've shown that more cores don't necessarily lead
to higher frame rates in fact in most cases the GPU becomes the bottleneck
long before the CPU does so what happens when we throw a 6-0 processor into the
mix now to run these tests I'm gonna be using this gigabyte gtx 1070 which
should give us a good balance of performance for the price you pay just
to make things a bit more interesting I'm also going to throw in a comparison
with one of the fastest graphics cards available when the 2600K was
the NVIDIA GTX 680 just remember that the GTX 680 is technically compatible
with DX 12 but many of the api's primary rendering optimizations just won't work
with the GPUs hardware that and its smaller two gigabyte frame buffer cause
performance to suffer in a big way and I know a lot of you guys came here for
this and let me tell you the results are pretty eye-opening at slightly low
resolution of 1080p the results are really interesting with the 2600K being
only a few frames per second behind in i7 8700 and okay remember 1080p is
supposed to put more stress on the CPU but it looks like the 2600K is
completely able to hold its own for the most part but there is a difference when
we look at the bottom 1% frame rates in dx11 titles like call of duty Grand
Theft Auto and overwatch it looks like the 8700k delivers a much smoother
gaming experience the DX 12 shows both cards pretty much even though there
really isn't much to say about this six-year-old setup of a 2600K and a GTX
680 since just adding a gtx 1070 could double or even triple your frame rates
okay let's move on to a bit more demanding resolution of 1440P now since
even more of the processing needs are directed towards the graphics card both
the 2600K and 8700K end up running neck-to-neck even though it's lower 1%
frame rates get closer but there are still a very few dx11 games where the
8700K provides a slight improvement in overall smoothness but that smoothness
is subjective since it's doubtful that many will see the on-screen difference
between these two processors meanwhile the GTX 680 drops even further behind
since it's to be by frame buffer just gets overwhelmed at this resolution but
not so fast here what about overclocking remember these are two unlocked Intel
processors and actually the i7 2600k was one of the best clocking processors
we've ever had here at Hardware Canucks so let's see what kind of additional
performance we can squeeze out of these things let's start with how far they
overclocked with proper stability the i7 8700k hits five point one four five
gigahertz with a memory speed of 3600 megahertz
while the 2600K ended up getting all the way to just over 4.8 gigahertz with
the memory running at just 20 300 megahertz the results are pretty good
for both processors in both Adobe Premiere and handbrake the jump and
clunk speeds results in much better
performance for the i7 2600k but it still doesn't come anywhere closer to
beating a stock 8700k the 8700 K doesn't really extend its
lead by all that much in handbrake but that extra clock speed works wonders in
premiere switching to gaming and the results are pretty much the same as
before since the graphics card ends up being in
bottleneck in all of the cases but what you can see here is that the overclock
did improve the 2600K is 99 percentile frame rates in overwatch bringing its
overall performance closer to the 8700k and okay that's pretty impressive guys and
we only needed to upgrade the graphics card just to be completely thorough I
also decided to test power consumption and those results weren't really a
surprise either from a performance per watt standpoint the coffee Lake
processor is miles ahead of the 2600K but the 8700K does consume quite a
bit of power when it's overclocked just remember that because I don't feel the
eighties sooner k delivers additional performance to justify that 51 increase
well there you have it guys and I'm gonna wrap this up quickly since the
results do speak for themselves now if you're someone who's in much need of
faster encryption of faster rendering for day-to-day professional tasks the 8700k
is an awesome upgrade provided you can find one in stock and yes you
will need a new motherboard in memory but those are good investments for the
time you'll save what really shocked all of us here at Haruka Knox was just how
closely matched the 2600K and 8700K we're in games especially in dx12 and
Vulcan applications meanwhile dx11 seemed to very slightly favored the
higher clock speeds of coffee lake but is that minor difference worth the price
of a new system absolutely not if the primary use of your system is
gaming you are much better off maximizing your graphics card upgrade
even if your motherboard still has a pcie 2.0 interface while the newer Z370
platform does bring connectivity benefits and potentially more processing
cores at least with games I tested recommending it to a pure gaming upgrade
is extremely hard so what do you guys think about this comparison
we're you surprised by the results and are you planning on upgrading
let me know in the comments down below i'm Eber with Hardware Canucks thank you so
much watching make sure to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you
and then one