Retro review: Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7 2600K - 2018 review - Introduction

The Core i7 2600K - Re-tested
Sandy bridge tested Against Ryzen 7 1800X and Core i7 8700K

Back in 2011, Intel released a new processor series based on what is referred to as the Sandy Bridge architecture, to date many people are still on a platform using such a processor. I can remember that in my review of the Core i5 2500K is loved that proc, and Core i7 2600K I had referred to the processor as nearing perfection. The power consumption was lovely, it tweaked nice, had proper default clock frequencies, and quad-cores where the thing to get.

Ever since Sandy Bridge was released, a lot has changed. Intel, however, remained on a very steady mainstream quad-core pace slowly bumping up clock frequencies and small architecture changes. Platform changes also made heaps of differences, the introduction of faster and more PCIe lanes, technologies like USB 3.x, Thunderbolt, SATA3 and more recently M.2. SSDs changed the PC landscape forever. However processor wise Intel always stuck to their quad-core design, it was only due to the release of Ryzen last year that Intel stepped away from their quad-core dominance, for the simple fact, there wasn't a real reason to make that transition to six and more cores (on the mainstream segment and not HEDT)

To date, many ... seriously many of our readers are still using a platform based on Sandy Bridge or something similar. That platform still offers plenty of enough performance on the processor for most tasks, however, it is aging pretty fast due to platform changes.

Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K

We fired it up as it would be fun to grab that now seven years old processor, update it with the Guru3D 2018 software test suite, but also fire off a couple of games at it and then compare it towards the top Ryzen 7 1800X and the top 8th gen Coffee lake 8700K processor.