This first ‘Intel Core i7-9700K review’ may uncover minor performance bump

Intel Core i7-9700K

As if the Intel Coffee Lake Refresh leaks weren't widespread enough, the first review of the rumored Intel Core i7-9700K has appeared well ahead of its official announcement.

The very first Intel Core i7-9700K review comes by way of El Chapuzas Informatico, and it seems to confirm all the rumors we’ve heard thus far. This includes its 14nm architecture, 8-core/8-thread layout and complete lack of hyper-threading, as well as its maximum 4.9GHz boost clock on single-core (4.6GHz boost across all cores).

More importantly, the review allegedly contains complete benchmarks that show a disappointingly small improvement in performance over last-generation chips.

Tests like Cinebench R15 show the 9700K performing 300 points below the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and just 50 points ahead of the last generation Intel Core i7-8700K. The rumored Coffee Lake Refresh CPU fares better at gaming benchmarks, like 3DMark Fire Strike and Time Spy, as well as Unigine Heaven 4.0, but only barely so.

In terms of gaming, the 9700K only gains up to 10 frames more than AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel Core i7-8700K in titles like Battlefield 1 and Far Cry 5.

Easy to fabricate

Before we take too much stock into this self-proclaimed first official review, know it's very easy to Photoshop a screenshot of the CPU-Z interface. It’d be child’s play to spoof our own screenshot to say we reviewed the Intel Core i9-10700K if we wanted to, and the same goes for the image of the chip.

Likewise, there’s no way to check the validity of these benchmarks, and they could have been completely made up with random numbers. We’re also a bit skeptical because these benchmark results seem antithetical to the impressive performance we’ve seen from other Intel Core i7-9700K leaks – regardless, we’re skeptical of all benchmark data thus far.

Regardless of whether this review is to be trusted, you can be assured we’ll have our own review in the near future.

  • Meanwhile, Whisky Lake is the future for Intel's mobile processors

Via TechPowerUp

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.