In our 2D test suite, mainly thanks to the increased clocks, the new Core i7-7700K blows the other mainstream competition away. The available computing power is breathtaking and is still getting boosted year after year. Let us see how this fairs in several games or synthetic benchmarks.

In Ashes of Singularity the Kaby Lake flagship tops the charts again in 1080P  or 4K mode. Gaming has become less and less dependent on raw CPU power over the years and the bottleneck at current gaming resolutions is far more GPU driven than before.

It still surprises me why Intel's PR machine still says the high end X99 platform is the way to go for maximum Gaming performance. Maybe if you stream, download, record and game at the same time, they could have a marketing point. However for casual gamers that run, also the usual Team Chat, a quad core solution is more than plenty. Investing in a higher specced GPU is way more beneficial to achieve higher Frames Per Second. Investing in the most extreme processor on the market, really no need for a casual gamer.

Benchers will applaud the extra MHz capabilities of the new Kaby Lake generation. As most synthetic benchmarks still scale with added processor oomph under the hood. But as soon the GPU becomes the bottleneck we are observing similarities as in the above game tests. At Ultra resolutions and maximum detail preset not even the fastest processor will contribute a lot to produce them extra Frames Per Second.