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Ready to leave Devil’s Canyon? Core i7-6700K benchmarks leak

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Well, guess the cat’s out of the bag. The Intel Core i7-6700K was confirmed not long ago, and Chinese blog Techbang has already spilled the beans on benchmark results for the upcoming chip.

From what we know of the new quad-core Skylake-S chip, it has a 4GHz base clock and a 4.2GHz Turbo Boost. The K suffix indicates the chip is unlocked and ready to be overclocked, and that Intel won’t be shipping a cooler standard with it, so you’ll have to buy one separately or pick up an aftermarket cooler. The chip has a TDP of 95 watts, up from 88 on the i7-4790K, and also supports DDR4-2133 memory.

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Image used with permission by copyright holder

For their benchmarks, Techbang put together a system with 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and OCZ Vertex 128GB SSD, and for the 3DMark tests, threw in an Asus Strix GTX 970. That’s not a super competitive system, but it is a good comparison point for Intel’s other chip, the Devil’s Canyon i7-4790K.

PCMark 8 Home

Intel Core i7-4790K

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Intel Core i7-6700K

HomeConventional-6700K
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The 6700K is predictably faster than the 4790K, but not by much. The newer chip proved between three and ten percent faster in PCMark 8 tests. Where the 6700K gained a lot of ground over the Devil’s Canyon was in graphical tests, like 3DMark.

3DMark Fire Strike

Intel Core i7-4790K

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Intel Core i7-6700K

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Image used with permission by copyright holder

When paired up with a GTX 970, the system saw not only a reasonable jump in benchmark scores, but also a noticeable bump to the frame rate. Most users who pick up a high-end CPU like the 6700K will be using high-end dedicated graphics, so these results are good news.

Cinebench

Intel Core i7-4790K

Cinebench-4790K
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Intel Core i7-6700K

Cinebench-6700K
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s interesting to note that in the Cinebench test, both chips have practically the same score in the single-core test. Part of the reason for that is that when only using a single core, the i7-4790K will kick its Turbo Boost all the way up to 4.4GHz. On the 6700K, all of the cores have a maximum rated Turbo Boost of 4.2GHz.

If these benchmarks are to be believed, then it makes less and less sense every day to upgrade to a Broadwell chip. Rumor has it this Skylake-S chip will be available as early as August, but if you want it you’ll have to upgrade to a new motherboard as well, so you’d better start saving your spare change.

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Brad Bourque
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…
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