9700K vs 10700K

The Comet Lake series drop has been making waves for the last few months. As with any new release of PC parts, it’s inspired comparisons with the line’s predecessors. Today we’re singling out the Intel Core i7-10700K CPU and its Coffee Lake counterpart, the Intel Core i7-9700K.

Obviously, there’s a performance jump, but it’s not drastic enough to justify a full upgrade of your CPU just yet if you have the 9700K. The 9700K is a great CPU that you should still get a few years out of, so upgrading for the 10700K doesn’t make much sense. By comparing them, we prefer to judge these processors from the newcomers’ perspective, deciding what to buy rather than upgrades.

If that describes you, or you do need an upgrade for a CPU that’s older than the 8th or 9th generations, then you’ll want to pay attention. We’re going to do a deep dive into the specs of both the Intel Core i7-9700K and i7-10700K CPUs to determine which one is the best to get.

While we’ll go into specifics below, we have the important specs all outlined right here. Here you can see a direct comparison chart between the 9700K and the 10700K, which is handy for those who want to see where one beats the other.

So, what’s the story of the Intel Core i7-9700K processor? When the Coffee Lake series burst onto the scene in 2017, they fielded 8th Generation microprocessors for a time.

However, as technological innovations continued over the next year, Intel delivered a whole new collection of 9th Generation processors. These were called the Coffee Lake Refresh series. Among them were i7 CPUs, and here was where the 9700K was introduced.

The K variant of the 9700 is the most powerful i7 processor in the Coffee Lake collection, too, so you’re in a great position where the less powerful processor is one of, the stronger ones still being sold.

Eight cores help this processor do its job, helped out by the single threads that appear in each one, allowing it to achieve 3.60GHz as a base clock speed. That said, the lack of multi-threading on this model is suspicious. It’s typical for i5s not to get the multi-threaded love, but the lack of Intel’s Hyper-Threading in the i7-9700K raised some eyebrows at the time.

This CPU is unlocked to allow for overclocking and having soldered heat spreaders designed to distribute weight more effectively, making it safer to overclock. Speaking of heat, the Thermal Design Power of the 9700K is kept at 95 watts, alright for the time at which it was released but relatively low compared to Intel’s recent processing offerings.

It has Intel’s UHD 630 graphics, the same as most processors from Coffee Lake Refresh, while supporting 2666MHz on DDR4 RAM, which can also be utilized in Dual-Channel Mode. The native graphics unit isn’t anything to write home about, and we both know it’ll be overshadowed by whichever powerful standalone GPU you end up using when gaming.

With the 10700K, we have a similar processor to the 9700K, just a year and a half later, so what changed? The 10700K has eight cores still but they didn’t skimp on the multi-threading this time around.

The 10700K has Intel’s Hyper-Threading tech and is definitely much better off for it, boasting sixteen threads to its name along with the performance enhancements you’d expect. Also, where the 9700K’s L3 cache was 12MB, the 10700K has expanded this to 16MB.

It can overclock just like the 9700K and boasts the higher frequencies that you’d expect from a more advanced model, but we’ll go into more detail about those figures below. What the CPU does lack is a Thermal Velocity Boost function.

In comparison with 8th and 9th generation processors, this means nothing, but it is lacking what many other of its fellow Comet Lake CPUs have. As for its Thermal Design Power, it’s set at 125 watts, making the 10700K more durable than the 9700K when it comes to heat.

It’s the same as the 9700K where its integrated graphics are concerned, sporting the classic Intel UHD 630, but as we’ve said, it’s not that important. What the 10700K does have over the 9700K is that it’s capable of supporting higher megahertz RAM with its DDR4-2933 compatibility.

When we refer to architecture, we’re talking about each processor group’s physical and chipset formatting. This ranges from how it connects to the motherboard and other components to hyper-specific processing technologies that get updated between the leap from one architecture to the other.

They’re codenamed by Intel, so they have cryptic names like Coffee Lake and Comet Lake. Those are the two we need to focus on when comparing and contrasting the 9700K and the 10700K.

The 9700K belongs to Coffee Lake, and in particular a sub-architecture called Coffee Lake Refresh, while the 10700K is part of the newer Comet Lake series. So, what makes these two processor families different from one another?

Coffee Lake actually began with the 8th generation Intel Core processors in 2017, but these first CPUs are largely irrelevant when talking about the 9700K. This is because they revitalized the series with the Coffee Lake Refresh a year later, a new set of 9th generation CPUs with more cores that the 9700K belongs to.

The Coffee Lake S, the first 8th generation desktop CPUs, had six cores in their i5 and i7 models, while the Refresh series brought forward i7 and i9 models that have eight cores, allowing them to do more.

Given an extra year and a half of innovation, the folks at Intel one-upped themselves again with the Comet Lake series introducing up to ten cores in their i9 models along with the potential for twenty threads in them.

Since we’re looking at i7 processors, we’re more interested in how the Comet Lake Core i7s benefit from Hyper-Threading to double their thread counts. I7s have eight cores but now have sixteen threads since it’s possible to fit an extra thread into each core, something the 9700K lacks and suffers for.

Facilitated through an LGA 1151 socket, the Coffee Lake relied on Intel 300 chipsets to connect to the rest of the motherboard. Comparing the CPUs is all well and good, but your CPUs way of connecting to the motherboard is important, and it’s likely that you need to change the motherboard when you upgrade.

It’ll also be another cost to add to the equation when working out which CPU is the more budget-friendly one. The current chipset for the 9700K is Intel’s Z390, while the 10700K takes the Comet Lake Z490 chipset via an LGA 1200 socket.

Coffee Lake’s Refresh processors also continued the refinement of Intel’s 14 nm process, and this only continues into the Comet Lake models too. The nm is in reference to nanometers since that’s how tiny many of the surfaces inside these CPUs are.

They’re called microprocessors for a reason, after all. This process, in particular, is proprietary, so it’s unique to Intel and designed to lower transistor current densities in their CPU models. By innovating this process, it’s possible to increase the peak power that the processors are capable of.

The Thermal Design Power changes between Coffee Lake and Comet Lake architecture too. Whereas the 9700K and other Coffee Lake series processors have a humble 95-watt TDP, the Comet Lake series increases this by a substantial amount at 125 watts.

Clock speed is how fast a processor can create synchronizing pulses that combine and control the functions of your computer. Think of it as the heartbeat of your computer’s motherboard.

Measured in gigahertz, the clock speeds of modern processors are very, very fast. For example, the 9700K has a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, or 3,600,000,000 clock cycles in just one second. The 10700K’s default clock speed is just a bit higher at 3.8GHz.

Alongside the standard clocking speed of a CPU, there’s also the boosted clock speed. This is where you use turbo functions and/or overclocking to improve the power your computer has for a period of time. The 9700K reaches 4.90GHz if you do this while the 10700K only just beats it out at 5.10GHz.

The 9700K and the 10700K are i7 processors which should give you an idea of their performance power. Like the i9s, the i7 CPUs tend to be owned by computing enthusiasts, usually, editors and pro gamers, who need the added performance they give over the commercially popular i5.

The i7 has two cores over their i5 cousins, both of our featured CPUs sporting eight each. The main difference between the Coffee Lake processors and the newer Comet Lake processors is the addition of Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology.

This is where they double the thread that can be found in a single core, so while the 9700K has eight cores with eight threads, the 10700K and its Hyper-Threading functionality means it has eight cores but sixteen whole threads, allowing it to tackle more intense workloads at once.

Overclocking is a great way to add some extra power to your CPU when you need it. It’s done by forcing your CPU beyond the manufacturer’s pre-set clock frequency limit.

Sure, it’ll void the warranty since you’ve technically tampered with the processor, and that means your purchase won’t be covered if something goes wrong, but there are ways to overclock safely. It’s best to overclock for periods of time when you’re playing videogames or doing some other intensive task that needs enhanced performance.

By cooling and pacing gameplay sessions, you can overclock without damaging your PC components. We’d advise you to check if you even need to use overclocking before you make it a habit, however, because the i7-9700K and the i7-10700K are pretty powerful processors anyway.

Both should manage most high-end games out now at a high FPS, so why overclock if you don’t need to risk it?

Both the Coffee Lake and Comet Lake processors are still relative to today’s gaming environment, especially when those CPUs are i7 ones.

The 9700K only came out in 2018 while the 10700K is very recent in 2020, so there should be no problems whatsoever in obtaining one of these components. They’re plentiful online too, as we’ve proven by linking them earlier on this page.

As far as pricing goes, the 9700K and the 10700K are very close at the time of writing. There’s very little difference between the two, to the point that we’d argue the 10700K is worth getting over the 9700K almost every time. We say that because the price is so similar yet you’ll get better specs with the 10700K than the 9700K.

Intel Core i7-9700K

CHECK PRICE

Intel i7-10700K

CHECK PRICE

That’s it, our quick primer on the 9700K and 10700K CPUs is complete. While it isn’t worth transitioning from the 9700K to the 10700K, we’d certainly recommend getting one of them if you’re sporting an older CPU or no CPU at all. Our two cents? We think the cost is a huge game-changer here.

The cost may have changed by the time you read this but you should still get the point of what we’re saying. The 9700K and the 10700K are similarly-priced right now, but in the future or with the addition of any deals, we’d recommend you go with whichever fits your budget and your performance expectations.

Assuming the cost is similar, however, we’d tell you to grab the 10700K every time. A ten to fifty dollar price differential is so small for the additional power you get from the 10700k.

The only downside here would be that you’d need a more recent motherboard too which may be more expensive for the 10700K than the 9700K. Weigh up your options and see which processor is the most viable for you.