Intel Core i9-7900X “Skylake-X” Reviews

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FrgMstr

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Intel Core i9-7900X Skylake-X processor reviews are starting to leak out before the embargo that is next week. Enjoy!

Bit-Tech - "The fact that you can get a 10-core CPU to 4.6GHz with relative ease at less than 1.25V with a decent cooler is remarkable, and we have no doubt that it's the lack of solder between the heatspreader and core that's holding things back. Thankfully, the Core i9-7900X still represents a big leap in performance in many real-world tests, especially video transcoding and rendering both at stock speed and when overclocked despite thermals limiting overclocking."

Hexus - "Our chip seems to be a good one and had no qualms about running at 4.7GHz across all 10 cores. Heck, it needed only 1.25V to make it happen."

DCd6rmPXUAAF1p-.jpg
 
Let the games begin.

As the hexus review points out . . .

I9 - 999$
Ryzen 1800x - 499$

And that doesn't take the ryzen 1700 into account.

So yeah, let the games begin. And fired the first shot, Intels first counter shot seems a bit hit and miss.
 
azuza001 said:
Let the games begin.

As the hexus review points out . . .

I9 - 999$
Ryzen 1800x - 499$

And that doesn't take the ryzen 1700 into account.

So yeah, let the games begin. And fired the first shot, Intels first counter shot seems a bit hit and miss.
Click to expand...

The i9 and 1800X are in different performance classes, of course the i9 is going to cost more for that top tier performance.
 
azuza001 said:
Let the games begin.

As the hexus review points out . . .

I9 - 999$
Ryzen 1800x - 499$

And that doesn't take the ryzen 1700 into account.

So yeah, let the games begin. And fired the first shot, Intels first counter shot seems a bit hit and miss.
Click to expand...

yep 8c/16t that top at 3.9ghz - 4.0ghz versus 10c/20t that top out at 4.6ghz - 4.7ghz with also more IPC advantage.
 
Still a software and system balance issue for desktop users.

The more cores approach solves a few problems, but only a few workloads can take advantage. Efficiency and single thread performance are still most important.
 
lolfail9001 said:
Between what and what?

I hate every time people use that phrase because ultimately, none of KBL-S, Ryzen nor SKL-X compete with each other besides pricing or core counts.
Click to expand...

It's technically competition if they are in the ball park. If you can do the same thing for 50% cheaper but it's 20% slower that's still competition. They are still competing for system sales. They don't need to dead on par with each other. I will agree I wish they'd stop comparing them like they have the same performance...

On a different note I wish they'd make the power consumption charts watts/units of work. It looks like the i9 is pulling tons of power but in some tests it also is doing way more work.
 
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Not enough of a performance or feature gain to get me to jump from my 6950.
I'll definitely though be getting a 16c Threadripper and Vega for my first AMD build in a LONG time.
Will have to see specs on the 18c i9 to decide if its worth the upgrade (probably not).
Intel seems to be caught off guard and rushing out a half baked X299 chipset.
 
jkw said:
Not enough of a performance or feature gain to get me to jump from my 6950.
I'll definitely though be getting a 16c Threadripper and Vega for my first AMD build in a LONG time.
Will have to see specs on the 18c i9 to decide if its worth the upgrade (probably not).
Intel seems to be caught off guard and rushing out a half baked X299 chipset.
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I hear you. That clock speed seems impressive. It's going to take some time for the dust to settle and see where we are with this generation of CPUs. I'd like to see AMD do at least one iteration and see how Intel responds. Interesting times ahead in CPUs at the top end it seems.
 
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Would buy the 8 core if it had the 44 pcie. Not paying $600 for that nor $1k for the 10c one but i might pay $1200 for the 12 core one as its only 200 more and i think it might clock better or at lower vcore as its on a biger die correct?
To me this whole product stack is odd as hell. No one is going to buy the 4c chips and the only one with 28 lanes should be the 6 core chip as on x79 and x99 on some mb if you used the lower pcie chips some stuff on the mb would not work or slots would only go to 4x and stuff like. You should not have to deal with that at the $600 price point
 
Araxie said:
yep 8c/16t that top at 3.9ghz - 4.0ghz versus 10c/20t that top out at 4.6ghz - 4.7ghz with also more IPC advantage.
Click to expand...

Ryzen owners have hit 4.2 at the top as for saying the 10c I9 can hit 4.7, it did but at 100c. I think delidding will be needed to try for a reasonable temp. I think 4.6 to 4.5 is more likely on the Intel unless your running some kind of custom water loop. Will be curious to see how the even bigger core counts do with temps and power consumption.
 
tunatime said:
might pay $1200 for the 12 core one as its only 200 more and i think it might clock better or at lower vcore as its on a biger die correct?
Click to expand...

err
no?

the more cores you add, the more heat you produce
that's why the more cores you add the less frequency you have
at stock
threadripper should be well beneath Ryzen
clockwise

a 7700k with 5Ghz at 1.35v (I think Der8auer used 1.35v for the 5Ghz i9 overclock with an AiO) draws 150w

8 cores 300w
10 cores 375w
12 core 450w

you're thinking heat might transfer better, because the DIE area is bigger?
maybe if you deactivate 2 cores that could hold true
or you clock them way way lower

in theory what one could do is 4 cores at 5Ghz or more, 4 at 4.8 and 2 or 4 at 4Ghz
leaving more headroom temp wise

also there are naturally stronger and weaker cores in a CPU (Intel's favourite core for boosting is a good example)


all said and done

those CPU's are something that one might want to buy pre binned and pre delidded

how Intel thinks those monsters of CPU's can do without solder to save a buck on each one is beyond me

hell I'll put 10 bucks on top if they solder the damn thing
at those prices no one would notice anymore
but everyone sure does temp wise
 
KazeoHin said:
Well, I for one think these reviews should focus on dollar against dollar. $500 CPU versus $500 CPU.
Click to expand...

Well damn man. We can't do that because Intel loses.

I expect that very few reviews will put emphasis on price performance ratio
 
Araxie said:
yep 8c/16t that top at 3.9ghz - 4.0ghz versus 10c/20t that top out at 4.6ghz - 4.7ghz with also more IPC advantage.
Click to expand...

To be fair I understand that Intel can hit a much higher clock, and yes those i9s reviewed showed in some tasks the i9 was superior by a decent margin.

But the ryzens were just as fast at gaming, even the ryzen 7 was at most 10fps away from that 1000$ cpu.

Not an amd fanboy (don't own any amd processors atm) but when the cost is so high plus all the different issues with the different chips and the x299 platform being so messed up it really seems like Intel is rushing to get something out to keep them top dog. And the review said a few times that they needed a bios update to fix a few serious issues.

I think that thread ripper will really put more pressure on Intel than they will care to admit. Amd woke the giant, but it's still groggy.
 
OK, I'll address this little detail...

The i9 got up to 4.7GHz at 1.25v, bravo, all is good so far...

Now, they said it got up to 100C at that speed running Cinebench...

If you stick Prime 95 on that system, or any other decent stress and stability testing software, that i9 is going to thermal throttle very damn fast.

I put money on the same system only being able to run at 4.3 to 4.5GHz when properly configured so that it does not thermally throttle itself.

So now we only need ThreadRipper to clock up to 4GHz with 12 cores for less money... I wonder if AMD can do this?
 
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azuza001 said:
To be fair I understand that Intel can hit a much higher clock, and yes those i9s reviewed showed in some tasks the i9 was superior by a decent margin.

But the ryzens were just as fast at gaming, even the ryzen 7 was at most 10fps away from that 1000$ cpu.

Not an amd fanboy (don't own any amd processors atm) but when the cost is so high plus all the different issues with the different chips and the x299 platform being so messed up it really seems like Intel is rushing to get something out to keep them top dog. And the review said a few times that they needed a bios update to fix a few serious issues.

I think that thread ripper will really put more pressure on Intel than they will care to admit. Amd woke the giant, but it's still groggy.
Click to expand...

Negative ghostrider.

There's a ton of reviews showing Ryzen is not nearly as fast OC vs OC. If you're gaming at 60 FPS Ryzen is probably fine, but VR or high refresh you're gimping yourself.
 
KazeoHin said:
Well, I for one think these reviews should focus on dollar against dollar. $500 CPU versus $500 CPU.
Click to expand...
Might not be that simple.

$500 AMD CPU and $500 Intel CPU sits on completely different platforms, so the cost (and benefits) of the platforms would also need to be taken into account.
 
Stimpy88 said:
OK, I'll address this little detail...

The i9 got up to 4.7GHz at 1.25v, bravo, all is good so far...

Now, they said it got up to 100C at that speed running Cinebench...

If you stick Prime 95 on that system, or any other decent stress and stability testing software, that i9 is going to throttle very damn fast.

I put money on the same system only being able to run at 4.3 to 4.5GHz when properly configured so that it does not thermally throttle itself.
Click to expand...

Hexus got 4.7 on air, and it was first with the increase to 1.3V everything went wrong heat wise.

We'll start with the usual proviso: your overclocking mileage may vary and discussions with various partners lead us to believe that frequency headroom fluctuates significantly from one sample to the next. Our chip seems to be a good one and had no qualms about running at 4.7GHz across all 10 cores. Heck, it needed only 1.25V to make it happen.

Could frequencies go higher with more voltage? Probably, but putting 1.3V through the Core i9-7900X veins resulted in temperature soaring beyond 100ºC and automatic throttling. We swapped out our favoured Noctua NH-D15S in favour of an EVGA CLC 280 liquid cooler but even that couldn't cope with the increase in voltage. The good news for users who have invested in a high-quality cooler for LGA2011v3 is that compatibility with LGA2066 has been retained with identical mounting-hole positions.
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Prime95 with AVX512 support will go crazy if you dont use the AVX512 clock offset that it does at stock. The performance would also be utterly insane. Faster than 45 SB/IB/Zen cores at 4Ghz.
 
Shintai said:
Hexus got 4.7 on air, and it was first with the increase to 1.3V everything went wrong heat wise.



Prime95 with AVX512 support will go crazy if you dont use the AVX512 clock offset that it does at stock. The performance would also be utterly insane.
Click to expand...

But would it not thermal throttle immediately, especially if using any kind of AVX instructions? At least that's my experience with Intel CPUs.

Until I see it proved otherwise, I cannot see this CPU doing 4.7GHz when fully utilizing all cores in a true stress test, closed case environment, unless its with exotic cooling methods.
 
for 999$ it would be competing with threadripper 16 cores most likely, personally i think AMD will own EDt this time around on almost every aspect, assuming intel releases their cpus as rumored.
 
alamox said:
for 999$ it would be competing with threadripper 16 cores most likely, personally i think AMD will own EDt this time around on almost every aspect, assuming intel releases their cpus as rumored.
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1950X, meet 7900X.
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/3108993
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/3117213

1950X: 4216 ST, 24723 MT
7900X: 5462 ST, 32686 MT

EPYC, meet Xeon Platinum.
http://ranker.sisoftware.net/top_ru...c3fecbed85b88dabd3eedff99cf9c4f4d2a19ca4&l=en
http://ranker.sisoftware.net/show_r...d4ecddeedce5d7f183be8ea8cda895a583f0cdfd&l=en

Processor Arithmetic:
2x AMD EPYC 7601 32-Core Processor (4N 32C 64T 3.2GHz, 1.33GHz IMC, 32x 512kB L2, 8x 8MB L3) = 706.18GOPS
2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8180 CPU @ 2.50GHz (28C 56T 3.8GHz, 2.4GHz IMC, 28x 1MB L2, 38.5MB L3) = 1425.82GOPS

Processor Multi-Media:
2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8180 CPU @ 2.50GHz (28C 56T 3.8GHz, 2.4GHz IMC, 28x 1MB L2, 38.5MB L3) 5989.90Mpix/s
2x AMD EPYC 7601 32-Core Processor (4N 32C 64T 2.7GHz, 1.33GHz IMC, 32x 512kB L2, 8x 8MB L3) 974.33Mpix/s
 
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Cha0s said:
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/2915025

7900X meet 1800X

1800X: 5178ST, 30832MT, less than half the price.
Click to expand...

That was run on Linux. Gotta do apples to apples. Can't compare that to Shintai's posts.

Shintai said:
1950X, meet 7900X.
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/3108993
https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/3117213

1950X: 4216 ST, 24723 MT
7900X: 5462 ST, 32686 MT

EPYC, meet Xeon Platinum.
http://ranker.sisoftware.net/top_ru...c3fecbed85b88dabd3eedff99cf9c4f4d2a19ca4&l=en
http://ranker.sisoftware.net/show_r...d4ecddeedce5d7f183be8ea8cda895a583f0cdfd&l=en

Processor Arithmetic:
2x AMD EPYC 7601 32-Core Processor (4N 32C 64T 3.2GHz, 1.33GHz IMC, 32x 512kB L2, 8x 8MB L3) = 706.18GOPS
2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8180 CPU @ 2.50GHz (28C 56T 3.8GHz, 2.4GHz IMC, 28x 1MB L2, 38.5MB L3) = 1425.82GOPS

Processor Multi-Media:
2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8180 CPU @ 2.50GHz (28C 56T 3.8GHz, 2.4GHz IMC, 28x 1MB L2, 38.5MB L3) 5989.90Mpix/s
2x AMD EPYC 7601 32-Core Processor (4N 32C 64T 2.7GHz, 1.33GHz IMC, 32x 512kB L2, 8x 8MB L3) 974.33Mpix/s
Click to expand...

Raampppaaaaaaggeeee. We know AMD won't be the top performer. We just need them to not be 10-20% too high in price for their price/perf like they always seem to do...
 
Well here I am sitting with my i7-4770, looking to upgrade to the i9-7900x....been waiting for this x299 chips regardless. I'm tired of waiting an will probably just get the 7900x, money isn't the issue.
 
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