Core i7-2600K Overclocked: Speed Meets Efficiency

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Most of Intel's Core i5 and i7 CPUs lock out overclocking enthusiasts, which we hate. But the K-series chips win us back over with insane scalability. Would you believe that cranking the dial on performance doesn't necessarily tank overall efficiency?

Test Setup And Benchmark Settings

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Socket LGA 1155 Platform
Socket LGA1155 Platform Gigabyte P67A-UD5 (Rev 1.0), Chipset: Intel P67, BIOS: F6a (2011-01-11)
LGA1156 Processors Intel Core i7-2600K (32 nm, Sandy Bridge, D2 stepping), 4C/8T, 3.4 GHz, 4 x 256 KB L2 Cache, 8 MB L3 Cache, w/ HD Graphics 3000, 95 W TDP, 3.8 GHz max. Turbo Boost
Common Platform Components
Dual DDR3 Memory 2 x 4 GB DDR3-2133 @ 1333 MT/s, G.Skill F3-17066CL9D-8GBXLD
Discrete Graphics Sapphire Radeon HD 5850, GPU: Cypress (725 MHz), Graphics RAM: 1024 MB GDDR5 (2000 MHz),  Stream Processors: 1440
Hard Drive Western Digital VelociRaptor (WD3000HLFS), 300 GB, 10 000 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 16 MB Cache
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling, Silencer 750EPS12V 750 W
System Software & Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate x64, fully updated on 2010-07-29
Drivers and Settings
AMD Radeon Drivers AMD Catalyst 10.12 Suite for Windows 7
Intel Graphics Drivers Driver Release 8.15.10.2246
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility Ver. 9.2.0.1016
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