BenchPair

Core i7-10700KF bottleneck & gaming FPS

Ranked 128 of 201 desktop processors for gaming in our database (36th percentile). It can sustain roughly 109 fps in a typical AAA title regardless of resolution — that ceiling is what decides whether a graphics card is worth pairing with it.

SpecificationsComet Lake · 2020
ArchitectureComet Lake
Cores8
Threads16
Boost clock5,100 MHz
L3 cache16 MB
TDP125 W
Released2020
Processor ceiling by game1080p, high

The frame rate this chip could sustain with an infinitely fast graphics card. It is almost the same at every resolution, because rendering more pixels gives the processor no extra work.

GameCPU ceilingWith GeForce RTX 4070 GDDR6
Cyberpunk 2077 111 fps 75 fps
Fortnite 140 fps 138 fps
Counter-Strike 2 158 fps 156 fps
Baldur's Gate 3 95 fps 94 fps
Red Dead Redemption 2 124 fps 83 fps
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 62 fps 62 fps
Best matched graphics cards1080p, high

Ranked by how little performance the pairing wastes. Anything much faster than the top entry will sit partly idle at this resolution — though it may still be worth it if you plan to move to 1440p or 4K.

Graphics cardEst. FPSUnused
GeForce RTX 4070 GDDR6 108 0.6%
GeForce RTX 4070 108 0.6%
GeForce RTX 3080 108 0.8%
Radeon RX 6800 XT 108 1.1%
Radeon RX 7800 XT 108 2.3%
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB 108 3.6%

What a Core i7-10700KF is good for

This chip is capable at 1080p with a mid-range card, but it will become the limit if you pair it with something substantially faster. If you are considering a large graphics upgrade, check the pairing first — you may find most of the new card sitting idle.

Moving to a higher resolution is the cheapest way to get more out of it, because it shifts work onto the card and away from the chip.

A small cache holds this chip back

16 MB of L3 is modest by current standards, and it costs this chip more in games than its clock speed suggests. Game engines walk large, scattered data structures, so a small cache means more trips to main memory and more stalls on the render thread. Memory speed and timings matter unusually much on a part like this.

Where it sits

Ranked 128 of 201 desktop processors for gaming. Nearest faster: Core i9-10910, Core i7-10700K. Just below: Ryzen 7 3800X, Core i5-11600K. Full method on the methodology page.