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Not the long ago, things moved fast in the CPU industry. Between 2005 and 2010, little 100 million transistor single-core desktop CPUs to six-core, billion-trannie beasts capable of implausible feats of number crunching have been progressed.

Indeed, Intel has committed itself to rolling out either a new CPU architecture or a new production process every single year. And yet here we are at the apex of 2011 and 2012 wondering where it's all gone wrong. The evidence comes in the form of both of Intel's new PC processors.

The new chip, of course, is the Intel Core i7 2700K. In many ways it's much more interesting processor than the 3960X. Don't mean that in a technological sense. Deep down, the Intel Core i7 2700K is nothing new. It's the same four-core Sandy Bridge generation die seen in several existing chips, including the Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K.

However, the Intel Core i7 2700K is the new defacto king of Intel's line of LGA 1155 models. It's the LGA 1155 socket that's really relevant to PC enthusiasts and gamers, not the highfalutin', server-derived LGA 2011 platform and its quad-channel silliness. The Intel Core i7 2700K, then, is the fastest chip any mere mortal is likely to run in his PC any time soon.

Intel Core i7 2700K Clock-speed

Unfortunately, what it ain't is a big step forward over the existing Core i7-2600K. Your suspicions will first be aroused by the pathetic clockspeed bump from 3.4GHz to 3.5GHz. Needless to say, at stocks clocks, the Intel Core i7 2700K achieves absolutely nothing of interest.

Yes, it's a very nice little quad-core chip. Yup, it has the edge on AMD's ostensibly eight-core flagship, the FX 8150, across the board. And yey, it hammers said AMD chip in any benchmark that majors on per-core performance rather than multi-threaded thoughput. All of which means the 2700K's only hope of giving something we haven't already got is overclocking.

What'll she do, mister? The answer during testing and in the context of air cooling and a modicum of extra voltage is 4.8GHz. A very good result, you'll agree. But not materially better than you can expect form most 2600K processors.

That said, the hefty 1.3GHz gap between what the 2700K in nominally clocked at from the factory and what it will do with a bit of tweaking is perplexing. Why on earth doesn't Intel give us a 4GHz chip?

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