HardOCP: Intel Kaby Lake desktop CPUs to be a snoozefest

More benchmark results of the Intel Kaby Lake processor hit the web as HardOCP managed to get its hands on a retail version of the Intel Core i7-7700K plus a yet-to-be-released 200-series motherboard with full support for Kaby Lake and updated INF drivers.

While we've heard some encouraging comments about the laptop version of Kaby Lake, the conclusion of this sneak peak is that the desktop version of Kaby Lake is nothing more than another snoozefest. The good news is the integrated graphics are a lot better than before, and overclocking potential looks better too. But in terms of performance gains, enthusiasts will be severely disappointed:

I ran all of these synthetic benchmarks last week and intended to publish those at that time, however, to be fully transparent, I was extremely concerned that our scores were not accurate. I reached out to various tech companies over the weekend and have verified that what we are seeing here today is very much representative of the Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K when compared to the Skylake Core i7-6700K processor at the same clock speed. We will see some bigger advantages in specific real-world applications, but do not expect any of those to be "barn burners" either. It was suggested to me that I should not expect more than a 3% performance advantage in CPU-centric benchmarks. The new Intel Kaby Lake iGPU is much more robust compared to the Skylake's however.

You can read the full preview at HardOCP, the site expects to have a more detailed review up later this week.