The End of the Quad Core Flagships | i7-7700

Testing the Intel i7-7700 quad core CPU in 9 popular and demanding games in 2022, using an RTX 3070 discrete GPU.

When AMD released 6 and 8 core Ryzen CPUs in early 2017, you might have expected the mighty Intel to move swiftly to counter this threat to their HEDT monopoly. Seemingly, though, Team Blue were caught unawares by AMD’s new affordable range of high core count processors. It would take a further 12 months for Intel to respond to this new Red Threat, but in the meantime it was business as usual for the 7th gen, including what would prove to be the company’s last ever quad core desktop i7s. How are they holding on in 2022, is a locked quad core still a viable option, and are they really worth as much as they are selling for?

Pick one up USED on eBay:

00:00 i7-7700 vs. 2022
00:36 Background: History of the i7-7700
02:27 Test System: i7-7700, 16GB DDR4-2666, RTX 3070
02:53 Gaming Benchmarks
02:56 Benchmarks: Valorant
03:44 Benchmarks: Battlefield V
04:33 Benchmarks: Fortnite
05:08 Benchmarks: Overwatch 2
05:56 Benchmarks: Spider-Man Remastered
06:40 Benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077
07:14 Benchmarks: Red Dead Redemption 2
07:48 Benchmarks: Elden Ring
08:23 Benchmarks: Civilization VI
08:38 Synthetic Benchmarks: CPU-Z, Cinebench R23, Time Spy & Firestrike
08:52 Is the i7-7700 still worth it?

A D S
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C O N T A C T
Twitter/Insta @IcebergTop10s

#intel #i7 #scalperpandemic

[Mrio]

The fact that this thing is still $100 is crazy. Great cpu, I remember lusting over over this chip when it released. I only had i3 6100 money at the time.

[darkfalzx]

At one point upgraded an i5 6600k to a i7 7700k. Didn't realize 7700k is a hot boi.

[thomaswest]

It's not the end of quad cores not by a long shot. But the normal quad cores have become the new hyperthreaded dual cores. Hyperthreaded quad are some where in the middle nor as bad as a quad core but not as good as a six core. Six cores are the new norm.

[ClayWheeler]

Just so you know, at the time of writing this comment, Core i3 12300 holds the world record for the Fastest Quad Core processor ever. Which I would expect succeeded by Core i3 13300.

The Core i3 12300 is faster than Core i7 8700K OC'd in almost literally everything, From Gaming, to Productivity, the 12300 still faster than 8700K.

[kskin]

I still have an i7 7700K/1080ti gaming PC as my secondary/backup rig as I'm constantly tweaking my newer Ryzen rig. That CPU when slightly OC'ed holds its own when it comes to most games even against newer 6 & 8 core CPU based rigs that I've built (R5 3600, R7 3700X and i9 9900K are just some) but, I usually only game with games released before 2021 as that seems to be right around the time when game developers started to make use of the 6 core CPUs (especially in open world games).

[realnamesnotgiven]

I still have a i7 7700 as a back up system, it's pretty good. I upgraded to a 5900X night and day upgrade.

[johnconnor]

This is quickly becoming my new favorite tech history channel. Your editing, narration and presentation is top notch. You will be at 100k subs in no time.

[probablyanadult]

whenever this gets mentioned i remember the 6th and 7th gen have the same instructions set as 8th gen but are not w11 compatible.




Useful for when w10 is no longer being updated

[ScubaSteveo]

Awesome, I still have the i7 7700k and know I'll upgrade sometime soon, very helpful, thank you

[couriersix]

This is why I held onto my i7-2600k for as long as I did. Aside from the "most powerful" GPU I ever paired with it being a RX 580, it could easily hold 4.5-4.7Ghz all day on an air cooler. Which still blows my mind compared to modern CPU core clocks. I (rather ironically) upgraded to the R5 2600 when my mobo died from the good ol Sandy Bridge chip. That too was a great CPU that definitely helped improve 1%/0.1% lows with the same RX 580. But alas, I was finally able to achieve a more substantial upgrade and now have the R5 5600 paired with a 3060ti. AMD has come a long way, and Intel equivalent offerings are also much better value for money when you go with something like the i3-12100F or i5-12400F.

[keulloe]

7700K was way better than 6700K what came to overclockability. I ran mine @ 5.2GHz (AVX -2) back in the day.

[oli]

I bought a 7700k from silicon lottery.. it was fast af at the time.. I managed 5.1 GHz on all cores with a 360 mm AIO.. it was and still is a fast chip .. RIP silicon lottery 😔😔🙏🙏

[watercannonscollaboration]

The coolest 7th gen CPU are the 8th gen Kaby Lake Gs, which is basically a i7-7820hq glued with a very custom Polaris + HBM GPU that had official graphics driver support that lasted until only around late 2020 (and that was a driver for Vega 56)

[natetete]

Haswell was such a good investment. That platforms instruction set lasted till the end of quad core era. I'm now looking to grab an i5-13600k

[wellsbengston]

I recently upgraded my i5 6600k to a i7 7700. The reason I did so was because I bought an insta360 camera and I was hoping that the 7700 would export video faster. The 7700 does not export any faster, but it does leave 30% overhead so I can do other things while exporting. The 6600k ran at 100% while exporting. The graphics card is a GTX 1660 Super.

I also bought a Lenovo Legion 5i with a 12700H and 3070ti. I was hoping it would export insta360 videos much faster than the 7700, but it is actually about 20% slower while using considerably more power. The Legion 5 is over twice as fast as my 2012 MacBook pro though, and is Much better at editing.

[greatwavefan]

I've thought of getting an i7-7700T for a dream efficiency build; this caught my interest.

[wargaminglab]

Appreciate your production quality. Keep up the good work! I think this channel is going places.

[rogerfloyd]

6700k at 4.8ghz still goes extremely hard

[RobFRC]

My wifes i7 7700K is coming up on 6 years of running overclocked in a Maximus Hero IX board.
5Ghz for gaming and typically around 4.8Ghz for cpu mining. Between those two tasks, its only been turned off for update restarts and a power outage like once. Can't ask for more reliability than its given.

[DavidFregoli]

moved my 7700K + GTX 1080 system to an HTPC and it still plays games very well on my old 1080p tv