ZoomPhoto 1 of 1Intel
Intel Core i7-9700K
Eight physical cores at up to 4.9 GHz but no hyperthreading — Intel's gaming-first answer to Ryzen 2000, positioned just below the i9-9900K. It games within a few percent of the 9900K and renders noticeably slower, and that single design choice defines the chip.
Pros
- Eight real cores at 4.9 GHz single-core and roughly 4.6 GHz all-core out of the box
- Soldered TIM under the heatspreader, so 5.0 GHz all-core overclocks are routine with an AIO
- Gaming performance essentially level with the i9-9900K at a lower used price
- 12 MB L3 and UHD 630 graphics for Quick Sync and display fallback
- Unlocked and compatible with existing Z370 boards after a BIOS update
Cons
- Eight threads total — rendering, compiling and heavy streaming lose clearly to the 9900K and to 8C/16T Ryzen
- No cooler in the box, and the 95 W rating is nominal: all-core loads pull well past it
- PCIe 3.0 with only 16 CPU lanes, so no CPU-attached PCIe 4.0 storage
- Official DDR4-2666 support; faster memory needs a Z-series board
Below average
Computed from specs & benchmarks via our public methodology.
Full specifications
Everything we track for the Intel Core i7-9700K
General
- Announced
- 2018
- Socket
- LGA1151-v2
- Process
- 14 nm
- Base TDP
- 95 W
- Max turbo power
- 119 W
- Unlocked multiplier
- Yes
- Cooler included
- No
Cores & Clocks
- Cores
- 8
- Performance cores
- 8
- Efficiency cores
- 0
- Threads
- 8
- Base clock
- 3.6 GHz
- Boost clock
- 4.9 GHz
- L2 cache
- 2 MB
- L3 cache
- 12 MB
Integrated GPU
- iGPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 630
- iGPU clock
- 1,200 MHz
Memory
- Memory support
- DDR4-2666
- Max memory
- 128 GB
- Memory channels
- 2
Platform
- PCIe version
- 3
- CPU PCIe lanes
- 16
Benchmarks
- Cinebench R23 (single)
- 1,250Bottom 26%
- Cinebench R23 (multi)
- 9,700Bottom 30%
- PassMark
- 14,397Bottom 30%
- PassMark (single thread)
- 2,856Bottom 36%
Quick answers
Is the Intel Core i7-9700K good in 2026?
The Intel Core i7-9700K earns an Inno Score of 36.6/100 (“Below average”) based on its specs and benchmark results. Eight physical cores at up to 4.9 GHz but no hyperthreading — Intel's gaming-first answer to Ryzen 2000, positioned just below the i9-9900K. It games within a few percent of the 9900K and renders noticeably slower, and that single design choice defines the chip.
What are the key specs of the Intel Core i7-9700K?
Cores: 8 · Threads: 8 · Boost clock: 4.9 GHz · Socket: LGA1151-v2
What are the closest alternatives to the Intel Core i7-9700K?
Its closest rivals on InnoReviews are AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G, AMD Ryzen 7 4700G, Intel Core i7-8700K — open the comparison pages for a spec-by-spec breakdown.
Use this on your site or forum
Copy a ready-made link. Scores on this page update as new results are published, so the link always leads to the current figures.
