Intel Core i7 Coffee Lake Refresh i7-9700K BOX (BX80684I79700K)

8 cores, 8 threads

At the release of the Core i7-9700K, this processor had a somewhat strange and intermediate positioning — it is actually a flagship processor with the appropriate performance and price tag, but ... This "but" was the older Core i9-9900, which also had to be sold. Intel didn’t want to take a piece of the pie from themselves, so they simply didn’t add support for Hyper-threading to the “younger” Core i7.

Optimal price-performance ratio

As a result, the Core i7-9700K got 8 physical cores without additional virtual ones. Operating frequencies are in the range of 3.6 — 4.9 GHz, and on top of all this is seasoned with 12 MB of third-level cache. That is, add multithreading here, throw an extra 100 MHz on all cores and get the Core i9 mentioned above. But the Core i7 is doing better with overclocking and, in general, turbo-boost stability across all cores.

"Junior flagship" from Intel

Given that parallelizable tasks like rendering 3D models or calculating chess positions are of interest to a fairly narrow circle of users, the Core i7-9700K with its eight cores looks like what the doctor ordered. Within the framework of traditional workloads (office, multimedia, heavy games), it shines brightly and will do so for more than one year. Considering that in some places it can be bought even cheaper than the recommended $374, it turns out that the “junior flagship” from Intel looks more profitable, and the Core i9 is more likely to enter the territory where only HEDT heavyweights used to live. For 99%, this will be excess power. In addition to the excellent combination of price and performance, we were pleased with the use of a new thermal interface material, which performed well in overclocking stress tests.