The flagship Core i7-7700K SKU is a quad-core CPU with support for Intel Hyper-Threading and works at 3.2GHz base and 4.5GHz maximum Turbo clock. It has 8MB of L3 cache, 95W TDP and comes with Intel HD Graphics 630 IGP.
There have been quite a few leaks coming from the usual Chinese sources, which had a chance to test it out on a currently available MSI Z170 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard with the latest BIOS update. The test shows that the Core i7-7700K is indeed faster than the Skylake Core i7-6700K flagship, which can be attributed to a higher clock. The CPU was tested in Cinebench R15 CPU test, Fritz Chess and 3DMark 11 Extreme, scoring 913, 17049 and 10838 points, respectively.
This shows that while it might not be interesting to those coming from Skylake architecture, it is still a decent and expected performance upgrade for those coming from older Intel CPU architectures.
In addition to those, Zolkorn.com had a chance to check out some overclocking details, showing that it is possible to hit 5.0GHz at just 1.29V. Although this is a decent overclock, the CPU was hitting 100C, which means that you will need some serious cooling power in order to keep the new Kaby Lake flagship under control.
Tomshardware.com also managed to get its hands on a Core i7-7700K sample and while it was not marked as an engineering sample, it is not confirmed as a retail sample either. In any case, they did manage to provide some detailed benchmark results, again ran on the Z170 motherboard.
The performance results obtained in some of the tests at Tomshardware.com, shows that there aren't any noticeable IPC improvements as its performance is the same as an overclocked Core i7-6700K CPU, with most improvements coming from a higher clock.
Tomshardware.com put its sample through a decent amount of benchmarks and games, as well as checked out the power consumption, temperature and overclocking potential, again proving that it is just a minor update from earlier Skylake architecture, with somewhat better overclocking potential but just as long as you can keep it cool.
The big update with Kaby Lake will be the new Intel 200-series motherboards that will bring certain improvements but as it is the case with CPUs, these should be coming in January 2017.
