A new year, a new (-ish) CPU; something of a new experience with Intel's CPU lineup. Skylake impressed us with solid performance and efficiency improvements over Haswell, and perhaps benefited from Broadwell's absence from the the performance end of the spectrum, so Kaby Lake has large boots to fill. Sadly, whilst retrograde replacement for Skylake, it really fails to impress due to relatively static performance compared to its predecessor.

Taken purely from a stock speed perspective both the Core i7-7700K and i5-7600K are genuine upgrades over the 6700K and 6600K, but realistically overclocked performance is a critical metric. In that respect we found the Kaby Lake processors to be a distinct disappointment, clocking no better than their Skylake counterparts whilst also exhibiting worse thermal performance and being more power hungry to boot. This may partially be down to the silicon lottery, but these retail chips are deeply underwhelming.

Thankfully the pricing for Kaby Lake is identical to that for Skylake, so consumers aren't being asked to pay any more. In this respect the new design should be roughly as good as those they replace, but the question is whether that's reasonable given its release almost 18 months later. In essence, as with Skylake, the CPU is a reasonable upgrade for anyone still on Ivybridge or earlier platforms whilst being lacklustre for replacement from a newer generation.



Where Kaby Lake as a CPU generation does win is in the integration of new media features. Hardware video encode/decode, including support for 4K and 360-degree imagery, is fantastic for the lower power sector which doesn't have access to discrete graphics hardware that will already have this baked-in. Practically, it will increase battery life and productivity with little downside beyond a need for tailored software support, a factor which Intel and software vendors need to coordinate. For our purposes, given both Core i7-7700K and Core i5-7600K will in the majority of cases be paired with a discrete performance GPU, it's not particularly relevant; however it's critical when evaluating the architecture as a whole for all segments.

It would be great to make a recommendation base on Intel Optane Memory support, but without more information on this product including likely performance figures and real-world impact on systems any recommendation is foolhardy. If your decision is between Skylake or Kaby Lake you could keep an eye to the future and opt for the latter based on this feature, but in general it shouldn't figure into your purchase decision. Hopefully that will change later in the year as Intel release more info on their new product.

Rumblings from retailers indicate that availability of unlocked Kaby Lake processors will be constrained at launch, which could drive up the street price. Sadly we didn't have UK exact price information when this article when to press, but it the Core i7-7700K CPU fails to hit a <£350 price point consumers in dire need of this performance may want to consider the entry-level Broadwell-E Core i7-6800K. A six-core unlocked CPU, it may well fit your workload better if you're in particular need of multicore hyperthreaded performance (for video rendering in particular).

Intel's 7th Generation CPUs hold no surprises and few performance improvements over the well regarded Skylake CPUs. Whilst baseline performance exceeds that of the 6th generation thanks to increased default clock speeds, overclockers will be disappointed to see that the top end overclocking potential of the chip may not exceed the 6th Gen designs. In that vein Kaby Lake feels like a refresh of Skylake, rather than a new product line worthy of its own unique branding.

On the flip side, mobile and low-power PCs are poised to take full advantage of Kaby Lake thanks to new media encode/decode capabilities, whilst businesses will be intrigued by new secure log-in options in conjunction with Windows Hello. New 15-45W SKUs could take the sector by storm, especially if the promise of support from major players such as Netflix in their 4K streaming service holds.

Two underlying uncertainties remain with this launch: Intel Optane Memory and the Core i3-7350K. Little is known of the former, whilst the latter could be the budget overclocker enthusiasts have been waiting for. The 7350K lands later this month, and Intel Optane Memory is scheduled for later this year.

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