Intel i9 7900X Skylake-X Review

Introduction and Technical Specifications

| Source: Intel Price: $999 Author: Tom Logan

Introduction

With the release of the X299 chipset we recently took at the excellent eight core Intel Core i7-7820X and found it to be a great performer, easily capable of matching up to the ten core i7-6950X that came before it.

Whilst any major Intel CPU tends to be a pipe-dream for the majority of us, the release of these new processors has come with the additional benefit - beyond the increased performance we mentioned above - of a price reduction. So whereas the i7-6950X was around £1500, the i7-7820X is a mere £570, yet has around the same performance. Hopefully then this new i7-7900X, a ten core behemoth, should be the equivalent of a theoretical 12 core, whilst still being significantly more affordable at a snip-like £950.

Obviously £950 is still a beefy investment, but it's so much cheaper than the i7-6950X that you could afford the motherboard and RAM, or Mobo and cooler, along with the processor and still have enough for a pint.

As always with hardware, everything is relative. But given what has come before the pricing of this latest Intel monster actually ends up as good value for money. Has it the performance too?

Technical Specifications

Compared to the i7-7820X we've just reviewed the i9-7900X has a couple of extra cores giving four extra threads. This has the natural power/thermal affect of reducing the base clock from 3.6 GHz to 3.3 GHz, so at stock we might see the i7-7820X overcome its minor core deficit. At the sharp end of performance though the extra cores, aided by an increase in level 3 Cache and a whopping 16 extra PCI Express lanes should mean that the i9-7900X has enough architecture to sit happily at the top of all our graphs. Does it?

1 - Introduction and Technical Specifications 2 - Test Setup, Undervolting, Overclocking and Temps 3 - AIDA64 4 - SiSoft Sandra 5 - x265 Benchmark 6 - CineBench R15 7 - Geekbench 8 - Realbench 9 - Userbench 10 - PC Mark 7 11 - PC Mark 8 12 - PC Mark 10 13 - Passmark 9 14 - 3D Mark 15 - Gaming 16 - Power Draw 17 - Conclusion & Video «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next»

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