Today we are going to check out and review one of Intel’s latest 10th gen processors – the Intel Core i7 10700K. It’s an 8 core 16 thread CPU, with a base clock speed of 3.8GHz and a maximum turbo speed of 5.1GHz. These new 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs are designed for the latest Intel Z490 motherboards with socket LGA1200. Unfortunately, these new CPUs are not backwards compatible with previous chipset / socket. Currently this CPU retails for around $410~$426 USD. Considering its price and performance, is it worth to buy one (if you can find one)? Let’s find out in our Intel Core i7-10700K review below.
Intel Core i7-10700K Review – Better Than i9-9900K But…
Right off the bat, I’d like to address some things that you might be wondering or asking during the course of this review. I didn’t get a review kit from Intel; thus, I currently don’t have an i9-10900K or the i5-10600K. I have to buy the 10700K and frankly it was quite difficult to get a “K” variant at that time; well, even until today.
So, in this review, it’s more on the performance of the Intel Core i7-10700K when it comes to productivity and gaming. I also have the Ryzen 7 3700X to compare it against the i7-10700K. The Ryzen 7 3700X is also an 8 core 12 thread CPU, but with a (slightly) lower clock speed of 3.6GHz base and 4.4GHz max boost speed. However, the Ryzen 7 3700X retails for just around $275 USD at the time of writing.
I am curious to find out how a cheaper Ryzen 7 3700X would fare against the more expensive i7-10700K. Later, I’ll be comparing the i7-10700K with the two generation older i7-8700K. I primarily use the i7-8700K in benchmarking graphics cards and other components. It would be interesting to see if there’s a significant improvement from the 8700K to 10700K. But that would be a topic for another review article.
For now, let’s see how good, or not, the Intel Core i7-10700K is; and should you even consider getting one instead of a Ryzen CPU counterpart. In this review, I tested the Core i7-10700K in both productivity and in gaming. Below is a specification table of the 10th gen Intel Core CPUs for reference.
If you want to see a specs comparison of the Intel 10th gen vs 9th gen and 8th gen CPUs, you can check out the table here.
10th Gen Intel Core CPU Specifications
| SKU | Cores / Threads | Base Clock Speed | Turbo Boost Tech 2.0 | Turbo Boost Max Tech 3.0 | TVB Single / All Core Turbo Freq | All Core Turbo Freq | TDP | iGPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i9-10900K | 10C / 20T | 3.7 GHz | 5.1 GHz | 5.2 GHz | 5.3 GHz / 4.9 GHz | 4.8 GHz | 125W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i9-10900KF | 10C / 20T | 3.7 GHz | 5.1 GHz | 5.2 GHz | 5.3 GHz / 4.9 GHz | 4.8 GHz | 125W | |
| i9-10900 | 10C / 20T | 2.8 GHz | 5.0 GHz | 5.1 GHz | 5.2 GHz / 4.6 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i9-10900F | 10C / 20T | 2.8 GHz | 5.0 GHz | 5.1 GHz | 5.2 GHz / 4.6 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 65W | |
| i7-10700K | 8C / 16T | 3.8 GHz | 5.0 GHz | 5.1 GHz | NA | 4.7 GHz | 125W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i7-10700KF | 8C / 16T | 3.8 GHz | 5.0 GHz | 5.1 GHz | NA | 4.7 GHz | 125W | |
| i7-10700 | 8C / 16T | 2.9 GHz | 4.7 GHz | 4.8 GHz | NA | 4.6 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i7-10700F | 8C / 16T | 2.9 GHz | 4.7 GHz | 4.8 GHz | NA | 4.6 GHz | 65W | |
| i5-10600K | 6C / 12T | 4.1 GHz | 4.8 GHz | NA | NA | 4.5 GHz | 125W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i5-10600KF | 6C / 12T | 4.1 GHz | 4.8 GHz | NA | NA | 4.5 GHz | 125W | |
| i5-10600 | 6C / 12T | 3.3 GHz | 4.8 GHz | NA | NA | 4.4 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i5-10500 | 6C / 12T | 3.1 GHz | 4.5 GHz | NA | NA | 4.2 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i5-10400 | 6C / 12T | 2.9 GHz | 4.3 GHz | NA | NA | 4.0 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i5-10400F | 6C / 12T | 2.9 GHz | 4.3 GHz | NA | NA | 4.0 GHz | 65W | |
| i3-10320 | 4C / 8T | 3.8 GHz | 4.6 GHz | NA | NA | 4.4 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i3-10300 | 4C / 8T | 3.7 GHz | 4.4 GHz | NA | NA | 4.2 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| i3-10100 | 4C / 8T | 3.6 GHz | 4.3 GHz | NA | NA | 4.1 GHz | 65W | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
The Test Setup Used for this Review
For this review, I am using two test systems; one for the Intel Core i7-10700K and another for the Ryzen 7 3700X for the comparison. Below are their respective specifications.
| Intel Test System | AMD Test System | |
|---|---|---|
| System | Windows 10 Pro 64bit version 2004 | |
| Processor | Intel core i7-10700K | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X |
| Motherboard | Asus ROG Maximus XII Formula | MSI MEG X570 ACE |
| Memory | Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB DDR4-4000 CL18 | |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition | |
| OS Drive | Crucial P1 1TB NVMe | ADATA Spectrix S40G 1TB NVMe |
| Power Supply | Silverstone ST1000-PT | Seasonic Primte TX-1000 |
| Chassis | Thermaltake Core P3 | Thermaltake Core P5 |
Here is a CPU-Z screenshot of the Intel Core i7-10700K installed on the Asus ROG Maximus XII Formula:
I tested the i7-10700K in 3 methods: running at stock, MCE enabled and applying a 5.1GHz on all cores.
In stock settings, only XMP is enabled so that the memory would run at 4000MHz. Limits are enforced so the motherboard won’t “enhance” the performance while benchmarking. Meanwhile, MCE meaning I enabled Asus’ multi-core enhancement and any limit has been removed. Finally, during the overclock settings, all cores are set to run at 5.1GHz with a CPU voltage of 1.35v.
I also matched their respective color schemes to make it easier to identify. Blue for the Intel i7-10700K and orange for the Ryzen 7 3700X; since those are the colors that these two CPU companies are currently using. Below are the results that I got.
Intel Core i7-10700K Review – Productivity Benchmarks
First, we look at the CPU scores that I got in 3DMark Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme. The benchmark results are in alphabetical order, by the way. We can see that the i7-10700K is faster than the Ryzen 7 3700X. Enabling MCE didn’t seem to help the 10700K in this test.
In 7zip, we can see that the Ryzen 7 3700X outperformed the i7-10700K in decompression. The 10700K needs to be overclock just to match the 3700X in decompression. However, looks like the 10700K is performing slightly better when it comes to compressing files.
In Aida64 GPGPU benchmark, the i7-10700K is faster in single-precision and double-precision tests.
In Blender test, it took the Ryzen 7 3700X 187 seconds to finish rendering the BWM demo. The i7-10700K was able to finish rendering the image in 173 seconds. Overclocking the CPU, we see that it was able to finish rendering the image faster. The 3700X is at a disadvantage here due to lower clock speeds, despite having similar core and thread count.
Both in Cinebench R20 and R15, we can see that the i7-10700K performed better than the 3700X. The 10700K outperformed the 3700K thanks to its higher or faster clock speeds.
In Corona 1.3 benchmark, we can see that the i7-10700K is 18 seconds faster than the 3700X. But notice that there is no difference when running the 10700K in stock or when enabling multi-core enhancement.
Again, just like in Cinebench, we can see that the Ryzen 7 3700X is being outperformed by the 10700K. Although, not by a huge margin.
In Geekbench benchmark, the Ryzen 7 3700X didn’t stand a chance against the i7-10700K. However, if you look at the single-core crypto test, the 3700X is faster than the 10700K by around 18%. I double checked the numbers, re-run the test and the results were quite similar.
In PCMark 8 Creative benchmark, using the conventional method, we can see that the Ryzen 7 3700X outperformed the i7-10700K. The 10700K was able to catch up to the 3700X only after overclocking it to 5.1GHz on all cores. However, overall, the 3700X is still (a bit) faster in this test.
PCMark 10 is a newer and more updated benchmark tool than the PCMark 8. Here we can see that the i7-10700K outperforms the Ryzen 7 3700X in productivity and digital content creation. However, the 3700X was a bit faster when it comes to the essentials.
For reference, the essentials include apps start-up, video conferencing and web browsing. Meanwhile, productivity include spreadsheets and writing. Under digital content creation are photo editing, rendering and visualization and video edition.
Last but not the least, we tested the CPUs in SiSoft Sandra cryptography benchmark. Remember how the 3700X outperformed the 10700K in Geekbench’s single-core crypto test? Well, it looks like the Ryzen 7 loves cryptographic computations. The 3700X is faster than the 10700K when it comes to cryptographic workloads.
Intel Core i7-10700K Review – Game Benchmarks
First, let’s see how the Intel Core i7-10700K performs by running some synthetic benchmarks. Below you can see synthetic benchmarks from 3DMark and Unigine’s Superposition.
The Intel Core i7-10700K is generally faster, however, notice that the 3700X is a bit faster in Fire Strike and Fire Strike Ultra compared to a 10700K running at stock speeds.
In Superposition, we can see a significant difference in 720p low settings. However, the performance difference between the 10700K and 3700X is very small in 1080p high and 1440p high.
Is it going to be the same case with real games? Let’s check out the graphs below.
I am not going to explain the graphs one by one, since the conclusion are basically the same for most of the games. Generally speaking, the Intel Core i7-10700K is faster than the Ryzen 7 3700X when it comes to gaming. It’s no surprise actually, since Intel is always on top when it comes to gaming.
What’s surprising is the fact that the Ryzen 7 3700X is faster in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I’m not sure what happened there, but the results were similar after running the benchmark sequence several times.
There are some games where the performance difference between the 10700K and 3700X is very slim. And sometimes, the difference in average FPS and/or 1% lows are negligible. That’s actually good news for AMD. Well, time to wrap up this review.
Pricing and Availability
To put things in a better perspective. The Intel Core i7-10700K currently retails for around $410 to $426 USD. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 3700X sells for around $275 at the time of writing. When it comes to availability, the Ryzen 7 3700X is pretty much available everywhere. However, it’s very difficult to get a 10th gen K variant CPU. I was lucky enough to get a 10700K before they got sold out pretty fast. The i9-10900K and i5-10600K is literally nowhere to be found at this time.
If you are interested in getting one of these CPUs, you can check out the links below. (#ad)
- Intel Core i7-10700K check at Amazon.com here.
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X available on Amazon.com here.
- AMD Ryzen 9 3900X available on Amazon.com here.
Intel Core i7-10700K Review Conclusion
Wrapping things, the Intel Core i7-10700K is generally faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, especially in gaming. However, if we include the price in the equation, the i7-10700K becomes less appealing since there is a 49% to 55% price increase from the 3700X to the 10700K. To make matter worse for the 10700K, the Ryzen 9 3900X is currently selling for just around $417 USD. With the 3900X you get 4 more cores and 8 more threads for just about the same price as the 10700K.
I don’t have an i9-9900K since I skipped that, but based on other reviews, the i7-10700K is a bit or slightly faster than the previous gen’s flagship CPU. On top of that, the i7-10700K is cheaper than the i9-9900K, making the 10700K a better value. Also, Intel’s CPU are still better than AMD when it comes to overclocking.
Usually, with Intel’s K CPUs, you can push them by a few more hundred MHz. If you are lucky enough, 5.3GHz is achievable with these 10th gen CPUs. However, with AMD CPUs, usually the highest boost clock speed is pretty much the limit for an all-core overclock.
I was able to push the 10700K with an all core overclock of 5.1GHz. Actually, I was able to push it even further to 5.3GHz but with an AVX offset of 2. I haven’t fully tested that overclock yet so I decided not to include it in this review. Nevertheless, I think Intel’s CPUs are more fun to overclock than AMD’s Ryzen CPUs.
Price to performance is not the only problem that the current 10th gen Intel CPU faces. These 10th Gen CPUs doesn’t support PCIe Gen4 interface, which AMD already support in their Ryzen 3000 CPUs. Perhaps many of us do not need a fast Gen4 SSD right now, but another issue is availability. These 10th gen CPU are literally nowhere to be found at the time of writing. It’s almost impossible to get a 10900K or a 10600K, and even the non-K CPUs are either sold out or out of stock.
At the back of my mind, I can’t help but think that these 10th gen CPUs are just stopgap products. We’ll have to wait for the next gen Rocket Lake CPUs if we ever want to see more features in Intel’s platform, aside from the WiFi 6 standard offered in Z490 chipset.
TL; DR, the Intel Core i7-10700K is a good CPU for gaming and some productivity workload, but it is not very attractive when it comes to price/performance or value.
