Intel Core i7-7740X Kaby Lake-X Review

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GTA V, Hitman & Shadow of Mordor

Grand Theft Auto V

We measure performance during Grand Theft Auto V's F-16 flight sequence with the built-in benchmark.

A now-familiar pattern emerges during the Grand Theft Auto V test sequence. There's a slight difference between the two Core i7s at stock settings, which widens as we dial in the -7740X's higher overclock. We're looking at a 2% advantage favoring Kaby Lake-X; the 2 FPS gain certainly doesn't warrant a step up to the much more expensive X299 platform, though.

The Core i9-7900X is brutally competitive in this test, which runs counter to our expectations of Intel's massively-parallel HEDT CPUs that historically prioritize core count over clock rate. If the -7900X could consistently deliver this level of performance in all titles, it would be even more impressive.

Hitman (2016)

A stock Core i7-7740X trails the -7700K, though tuning changes that dynamic. Both Core i7s stand out from the pack at higher frequencies.

AMD's Ryzen processors lag notably behind their Intel competitors. Still, they average more than 110 FPS.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

The graphics bottleneck is apparent in Shadow of Mordor. A 1.7 FPS delta between the fastest and slowest processors doesn't give us much to comment on. It's most notable, then, that even an affordable Ryzen 5 1600X can push EVGA's beefy GeForce GTX 1080 FE to its fullest in some games.


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Paul Alcorn
Editor-in-Chief

Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.