With their 10th Generation Comet Lake processors, Intel has made HyperThreading available to their whole lineup. For the Core i7 this means that the processors that were 8-thread/8-core during the 9th generation now run in a 8c/16t configuration, which on its own will bring with it large performance improvements, especially in highly threaded applications. Intel had to do something—still stuck with their 14 nanometer process, they risked falling too far behind AMD's offerings, which made big improvements last year with their "Zen 2" architecture. Intel also increased the size of the L3 cache on many SKUs; our reviewed Core i7-10700 has 16 MB cache, while the Core i7-9700 had 12 MB cache. TDP remains unchanged at 65 W.

Averaged over our mix of single/low and multi-threaded applications, the Core i7-10700 can't impress. It is only 5% faster than the Core i5-10600K, which is $75 cheaper, with a 6c/12t configuration, but 125 W power limit. The Core i7-10700 falls behind because it is specified to run at 65 W TDP only, we'll discuss this in more detail later. Pitted against last generation's Core i7-9700K, the new Core i7 does better—it's 10% faster, which was a decent generation-over-generation improvement when Intel's tick-tock set the pace for x86 performance. This performance uplift is enough for the Core i7-10700 to almost match the Core i9-9900K in applications, with the difference being just 2.5%. AMD's offerings are strong though; the Ryzen 7 3700X is 3% faster at much lower pricing, and the Ryzen 7 3800X will add a few percent on top of that, at still lower pricing.

Things are different in gaming. Here, the Core i7-10700 performs admirably, delivering framerates that are pretty much identical to the Core i9-10900K. AMD's fastest, the Ryzen 9 3900X, is 10% behind in 1080p gaming, but the differences shrink as you go up in resolution: 1440p is at 4%, and 4K at 1.5%. Ryzen 7 3700X is right behind the Ryzen 9 3900X, I'd declare them close enough for gaming purposes. While Intel is a clear winner in the pure gaming scenario, I'm not sure if this win is significant enough, especially when pricing is taken into account as well.

Things are different once you start unlocking the power limit. Intel intended for the Core i7-10700 to operate at 65 W, which is simply way too low for this 8-core/16-thread processor. In order to achieve their 65 W TDP promise, Intel has set the PL1 power limit to 65 W. For short, in bursty workloads the PL2 power limit will override PL1 for a few seconds as it is set at a generous 224 W. Manually adjusting the power limit is possible on all multiplier-locked "Comet Lake" processors; on all motherboards, with all chipsets. While in previous reviews, we saw very little benefit from playing with those power limits, this capability has turned into a wonderful new overclocking knob for the Core i7-10700.

Our "Max Turbo" benchmark run shows impressive results. In applications that scale across all cores the gains are up to 30% (!!); that's better overclocking potential than I've seen in a decade, even on overclocker-friendly processors. Unlike traditional overclocking, unlocking the power limit is guaranteed to leave the processor in a 100% stable configuration because it will continue to use the factory-programmed boost algorithms and voltage-frequency tables—it just works. Unlocking the power limit is best for applications like rendering, encoding, science, and simulation. For low-threaded applications, it makes no significant difference because with those, the power limit is hit rarely, so removing it brings no improvements. Gaming is similar—while it surely doesn't hurt to have a lot of cores available, these are usually only lightly loaded because the bottleneck is at the GPU. At the scientifically important resolution of 720p, we can clearly see that unlocking the power limits helps in some games.

Dialing the power limit up to the maximum has some drawbacks, though. First of all, temperatures will go up. Previously, the processor operated at 65 W, and now, it runs closer to 150 W, even 180 W with Prime95. This energy is converted into heat, which the heatsink has to transport away from the CPU surface. We measured an increase in temperatures from 43°C to 76°C—same Noctua cooler, same fan settings, just with the power limit adjusted. The Core i7-10700 comes bundled with the Intel standard stock heatsink—it won't be powerful enough for the fully unlocked processor. The good thing is that the power limit settings are very fine-grained, in 1 W steps, so you can dial in exactly the power output your cooling solution can handle, and the processor's boost and turbo algorithms will take care of the rest. The beauty of this solution is that you get to keep the boost ladder and all power savings mechanisms at low thread counts. With multiplier-based overclocking, you usually force the CPU to xxxx MHz all the time, losing a lot of power efficiency in the process.

Multi-threaded power efficiency with the power limits unlocked isn't good. It's around 20% lower than with the Core i9-10900K, which disappointed with efficiency, too. Against the Core i5-10600K, the loss in efficiency is 10%. I'm sure there's some headroom for optimizations because you can always lower the voltage a bit through the CPU Voltage Offset option in the BIOS if you want to mess with that. At stock, the Core i7-10700 is very power efficient, though. In our multi-threaded energy efficiency test, which the Zen 2 Ryzens clearly dominate, the Core i7-10700 manages to sneak into 4th place, which is better than the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X and right behind the 3900 and 3700X.

Just like in all our CPU reviews, we measured the maximum boost clocks of the Core i7-10700, and I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed. While the CPU is marketed with 4.8 GHz boost clock, it tops out at 4.7 GHz nearly all the time, even with a single-threaded load. Once you dial up the threads, clock speeds drop a lot when twelve or more threads are active. Intel rates the Core i7-10700 with a 2.9 GHz base frequency, an extremely conservative estimate. We typically saw around 4.2 GHz with all cores loaded. We recently upgraded our clock frequency analysis test to use three workloads: classic floating point, SSE SIMD, and AVX Vector. Some feedback I got from readers asked why I bother as "it's all the same". This review confirms that there are noteworthy differences. If you look at the AVX curve, it's wildly different from the float or SSE results mostly because AVX drives higher power consumption, so the processor will start clocking down more aggressively once more than eight AVX threads are running.

For the Core i9-10900K, Intel went all out with their boost algorithms; on top of classic Turbo Boost 2.0, they added Turbo Boost Max 3.0 and Thermal Velocity Boost. While the i3 and i5 processors lack both Turbo 3.0 and TVB, the Core i7-10700 has Turbo 3.0, but lacks TVB. I have no idea why Intel would exclude their two most advanced turbo modes on some models; it wouldn't have cost them anything, yet provides free performance. Just as strange is the decision to ban memory overclocking on all platforms except Z490. When a cheaper chipset is used, the Core i7-10700 will run at DDR4-2933 max, which is still better than DDR4-2666 on the Core i5 and Core i3, but not good enough for a CPU architecture with a memory controller that can easily handle DDR4-4000. To set performance expectation on non-Z490 platforms, we ran an extra round of tests called "DDR4-2933". Performance losses are not that big: 1.7% for apps, 3% for 1080p gaming, 2.5% for 1440p, less than 1% for 4K—probably not enough to lose sleep over. However, AMD's processors have no such limitations, and you're free to pair faster memory with the budget Ryzens, which adds an extra tuning knob to gain more performance, especially at today's low memory prices.

At its current retail price of around $340, the Core i7-10700 isn't gonna impress anyone when running at stock. The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is only $275 and just as fast in applications, slightly slower in games. The Ryzen 7 3800X is $335, still a hair cheaper than the Core i7-10700 and with even better application performance. Gaming will run better on the Core i7-10700, no doubt, but for that I would definitely favor the Core i5-10600K, which is just as fast in games, but $80 cheaper—money that can go towards a faster graphics card.

Once you take the training wheels off the Core i7-10700 and remove its power limits, it'll shine. The performance uplift in demanding applications makes a big difference, almost rivaling the much more expensive Core i9-10900K. On the other hand, if you're always waiting for long-running multi-threaded tasks to finish, then you're probably willing to spend another $100 on a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, especially if a shorter wait means you can get more work done and make more money. The 3900X won't give you the Intel gaming performance, though, but as mentioned before, unless you play at 1080p, the differences won't be that big. If you don't need integrated graphics a Core i7-10700F will let you save another $20 for exactly the same performance.

Looking back at the last paragraphs, it seems the Core i7-10700 ends up as a jack of all trades, but master of none despite its huge overclocking potential. For gaming, the 10600K is just as good and cheaper unless you absolutely want to go 8c/16t for future-proofing purposes. Applications will run just as well for less on the Ryzen 7 3700X; if you have more money to spend, the Ryzen 9 3900X will make a difference. That surprises me a little bit—shouldn't there at least be one scenario where the Core i7-10700 with its amazing performance headroom can make a difference? Did I miss something? I would love to hear your thoughts, let me know in the comments.