While eager customers still have to wait a little while to get their hands on Intel’s latest Core i7 chips, a few samples of the desktop i7-7700K have been sent out to overclocking professionals over the past few weeks. Using a sample chip, one professional overclocker managed to push the i7-7700K past the 7GHz threshold, and while the overclock was reportedly bench stable, it’s not exactly for the faint of heart.
According to TechPowerUp, professional overclocker Allen “Splave” Golibersuch pushed the i7-7700K past 7GHz by disabling some key features like hypthreading and two out of the i7’s four cores, cranking the clock multiplier to 69x, and pushing the Vcore voltage to 2.00V. For anyone unfamiliar with overclocking, let’s just say these aren’t exactly the kinds of settings you can hope to use without some serious aftermarket cooling and a motherboard designed for overclocking.
That said, it does appear that the 7022.96 MHz clock was relatively stable. It wasn’t the kind of clock you’d want to use every day, but for the purposes of pushing a chip as far as it can go, the overclocked Intel Core i7-7700K performed admirably.
Using an ASRock Z170 OC Formula motherboard, and liquid nitrogen cooling, the 7GHz Core i7 was able to crunch wPrime’s 32M benchmark in just 2.953 seconds — that’s a benchmark that forces the processor to calculate the square root of 32 million numbers. Standard desktop processors are typically capable of doing so in under 10 seconds, but less than 3 seconds is pretty remarkable.
While other overclocking enthusiasts may have been underwhelmed by the overall performance of the Intel Core i7-7700K, in particular the incremental gains over Intel’s previous sixth-generation chips, it looks like Intel’s latest i7 chips might inspire more customers to try their hand at overclocking.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.