Intel Core i7-6700K Review

The Core i7-6700K is one of Intel's high-end Desktop processors. It was released in 2015 with 4 cores and 8 threads. With base clock at 4GHz, max speed at 4.2GHz, and a 91W power rating. The Core i7-6700K is based on the Skylake-S 14nm family and is part of the Core i7 series.

Core i7-6700K is also the successor of Intel's last gen Core i7-4770K processor that was based on the Haswell and 22nm process and was released in 2013.

Intel Core i7 6th Generation, and the Skylake-S architecture itself, is notable because it leads 14nm processors to the mainstream for the first time. But, there’s a lot more going on under the hood than just a smaller manufacturing node.

Intel Core i7 6 Generation is finally here, and the Intel Core i7-6700K might just be the poster child for what this generation of processors has in store for consumers. Sure, it might have stuck with the 4-core, 8-thread setup, which it inherited from its predecessor, the Core i7-4770K. However, with the new 14nm manufacturing process, it delivers a far better performance at lower power consumption.

This decision to 14nm has brought a beefy 15% boost to IPC (instructions per clock) performance. Effectively, compared to a Core i7 4-Generation processor at the same clock speed, you will get a straight 15% increase in performance. That’s not big enough to be evident in day-to-day workloads, but it does still mean something.

What this all means is that the Intel Core i7-6700K is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Core i7-6700K.

Our look today at the Intel Core i7-6700K showed that it is a very capable processor. A 4-core processor sounds like it would be really under-powered these days, but we were pleasantly surprised with a snappy and very capable system. Having just 4 cores had this processor coming in at the back of the pack for heavily threaded workloads, but it performed better than some of its more expensive siblings in lightly threaded workloads where it shined thanks to its high base clocks.

Now the biggest question is can Intel’s Core i7 processor play games? The answer is simply yes as it got a respectable gaming score of 81% in our benchmarks.

That said, to squeeze out all the potential of this surprisingly potent high-end chip, you’ll want (and need) to splurge on an enthusiast-grade Z270, Z370, Z390 motherboard.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Core i7 CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the high-end with its Core i7-6700K processors, which the company is making available as of Jul 2015.