Gadgetory

hey guys welcome back to harbor unboxed today I have Intel's new core i3 73 50k on hand that's right an unlocked k processor the first ever for the core i3 series technically these cable 8 chips aren't being released until early next month but at this point Intel's latest seventh generation series is anything but a secret for the past few weeks I've been slaving away at the benchmark rig gathering results for the upcoming Core i5 7600 K and core i7 7700 reviews for next month's release in that time countless reviews or previews as they're often being referred to have been linked making our release day coverage next month a bit pointless Intel tells me that the reviews have been released so far have been based on CPU sourced anonymously and not supplied directly from them well hell my i5 7600 and I 777 arcade chips work supplied by Intel either so I guess I have to ask myself why I've been waiting till the official release next month to release my review honestly I just didn't expect Intel to sit on their hands and do nothing about all these leaked reviews that said they probably aren't too fussed about this release it's not exactly anything new at this point we know KB Lake is well a huge disappointment when compared clock for clock with sky lake there is quite literally no difference in performance and efficiency has only been mildly improved the kind of improvement you might expect to see with a more mature process the new motherboards we've seen so far look great but truth be told the new Intel 200 series chipsets really don't offer anything new either so with the combination of all the leaked benchmarks and the fact that KB Lake just doesn't deliver I was struggling to find motivation to finish my own coverage then out of nowhere a pair of core i3 73 50 K processes landed on my lap and with no NDA in sight I thought what the hell let's take a look obviously when match o'clock 4 o'clock with a skylight core i3 process so there isn't going to be anything new here just the same performance we've come to expect from a modern core i3 however this little fellow features an unlocked clock multiplier just like the skylake core i5 6600 K or Core i7 6700k assessors so what we have here is a core i3 processor featuring two physical cores but of course like all core i3 processors hyper threading is enabled here allowing for four threads out of the box they are clocked quite aggressively this chip runs at 4.2 gigahertz but it can step down below that to save power when at idle if the speedstep technology is enabled at the bias level and of course it can also be boosted up higher because this is an unlocked chip finally like the previous generation ships or the majority of the previous generation Core i3 chips the higher end ones this does have a four megabyte level three cache last generations core i3 6320 was the fastest i3 model we'd seen thus far clocked at 3.9 gigahertz it got along quite well that said at a cost of around 160 us one could argue that spending around say $20 more on the core i5 6400 was a much smarter investment anyway we'll talk more about that later in the video for now let's talk about testing since the 200 series boards are still under NDA we decided to test using an updated z170 motherboard the asrock fatalities at 170 gaming k-6 plus it's proudly in our core i7 6700k test machine and with the latest biased revision support to these 70 350 K so we swapped out the 67 okay and got to it as you might imagine the i3 73 50 K isn't exactly slow at 4.2 gigahertz but I was keen to see how much higher the chip could be pushed using the thermal right exp 200 our CPU cooler I reached a 100% stable overclock of 4.8 gigahertz not bad but not amazing either this overclock was stable using 1.3 volts and temps never went above 65 degrees for those wondering I was able to boot into Windows with the chip as high as 5 gigahertz but it failed to pass the more stressful tests the 73 50k enjoyed a memory bandwidth of 32 point 8 gigabytes per second and ours at 170 tests machine using ddr4 3,200 memory this is slightly more bandwidth than these skylake processors had at their disposal despite using the same configuration using Cinebench r15 let's take a look at the single and multi-threaded performance of the 73 50k at the stock 4.2 gigahertz frequency it roughly matches the multi-threaded performance of the much-loved 2500 K which is of course a true quad-core processor albeit an almost six year old one now thanks to that high operating frequency the single threaded performance is quite strong overclock the score is boosted by 13% and while this is a decent improvement it doesn't really help the 73 50 K close in by a meaningful margin on the more modern Core i5 processors before jumping to the gaming and application results here's a quick look at the PC mark 8 creative benchmark here the overclock netted us 9% more performance resulting in a score of 8410 points that's actually higher than the stock clocked Core i5 processors still this is of course a synthetic benchmark so let's not read too much into those results just yet out of the box the 73 50k was surprisingly capable in Gears of War for delivering an average of 96 FPS overclock the frame rate was boosted by 14% 209 FPS which was enough to overtake the stock clocked core i7 2670 8 percent faster than the previous generation 6100 model which makes sense given it has a 30% clock speed advantage testing overwatch saw the overclocked 73 50k boost the average frame rate by 16% allowing it to reach 219 FPS this made it a good bit faster than the stock core i5 2500 K but still quite a bit slower than the 46 70 K at the stock clock speeds I did notice occasional stuttering with the 73 50k in battlefield 1 this is despite pushing well over 60 FPS at all times overclocking the CPU to 4.0 gigahertz seemed to solve this and we're now achieving a 130 FPS average matching the core i7 2600 the last game I tested was the CPU intensive watchdogs to hear the 73 50k only allowed for an average of 46 FPS out of the box dipping down to 37 fps time's the game didn't appear to suffer from stuttering issues that said stuttering was a major problem with the 2500 K at its stock clocks we'd overclocked we extracted 30% more performance out of the core i3 processor and it was now delivering a very smooth experience moving on from gaming we have the Excel Monte Carlo workload which took the 73 50k a total of seven point six seconds to complete overclocking reduced that time to 7.2 seconds and this is a 6% reduction but you aren't exactly going to notice it this also only placed the 73 50k alongside the stock 2500 K in terms of performance okay so how about content creation on a budget once again we find when overclocked these 73 50k is only able to match the stock 2500 K and AMD FX 8350 kind of encoding work you're best off getting a true quad core processor as we've come to expect from Intel's Core i3 range the 7350 K is very efficient overclocking kills efficiency with that added voltage we saw an 81% boosting consumption for a 14% increase in frequency similar results can be seen when testing with prime95 here the consumption increased by 66% placing the one sufficient 7350 K alongside the much more powerful core i7 processors in terms of power usage for the longest time now myself and many others have been asking Intel to release an unlocked core i3 processor finally the time has come and I'm starting to think you should be careful what you wish for actually in this case it really is just a matter of too little too late an unlocked Ivy Bridge core i3 would have been amazing and unlocked as well would have been pretty cool as well and unlocks sky like maybe but for what's going to be a 2017 release and unlocked dual core with hyper-threading support is pretty underwhelming in terms of performance it isn't exactly slow though having said that for the most part it only kept pace with these stock clocked Sandy Bridge chips which as I said earlier they are approaching the six-year-old mark and in the life of a CPU this pretty much makes them great-great-grandparents that kind of performance becomes an issue when you take cost into account and I'm not just talking about the price of the 73 50k though that in itself could be a real issue as well the previous generation i3 6320 currently costs a hundred and sixty us and we can pretty much guarantee Intel will introduce the 73 50k at a ten to twenty dollar premium but let's give them the benefit out and say $10 at a hundred and seventy u.s. that is a mighty expensive dual-core processor and for roughly ten dollars more you can land the core i5 6400 keep in mind we did test the 6600 K at its stock frequency and here isn't much faster than the 6400 so you can safely assume the 6400 is going to demolish an overclocked 73 50 K making matters worse the core i5 6400 doesn't require an aftermarket cooler to achieve maximum performance the stock box cooler is ample here it also doesn't require an expensive ZD Series motherboard a cheap h1 10 board will work fine since the z2 70 boards are the only models with overclocking support I have to imagine this is what the 70 350 K will require then throw in another $30 or so for a decent air cooler and you are now head and shoulders above what an entry-level core i5 setup would cost then there's that little matter of power consumption overclock those two cores drink like it's their last night on earth so taking all that into account what do I think about the new KB lake core i3 processor particularly this unlocked model well I think you guys ought to steer clear of it anyway that's my opinion what do you guys think let me know in the comments below I'm your host Steve and I'll catch you guys next time you