Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X Review

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Grand Theft Auto 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.

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Core i9-7900X boasts 25% more cores than Core i7-7820X, but due to the vagaries of scaling, it only enjoys a 12% performance advantage at stock clock rates. Still, that's pretty darned good in the world of CPU benchmarking. Both models easily outpace Core i7-6900K and AMD's Ryzen processors. Meanwhile, Core i7-7700K shows why we consider it to be a strong value in gaming PCs.

Hitman (2016)

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Intel's Core i7-7700K beats the stock Core i7-7820X, which is an impressive feat considering their similar Turbo Boost frequencies. A bit of tuning propels the -7820X further up the chart, but the Core i9-7900X reigns supreme at both stock and overclocked settings. Tuning also greatly benefits the Ryzen 7 1800X, but it and the overclocked Core i9-7900X also suffer the most frame time outliers.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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Once again, the Core i7-7820X bests a pricier -7900X. But the nimble Core i7-7700K outpaces both Skylake-X CPUs.

Broadwell-E serves as a baseline to underline Skylake-X's improved performance in applications able to utilize Intel's reworked architecture.


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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

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57 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cknobman
    Just want to say the Ryzen 7 1800x isnt $500 anymore and has not been for weeks now.

    The processor is selling for $420 or less. Heck I bought mine yesterday from Fry's for $393
    Reply
  • artk2219
    19984543 said:
    Just want to say the Ryzen 7 1800x isnt $500 anymore and has not been for weeks now.

    The processor is selling for $420 or less. Heck I bought mine yesterday from Fry's for $393

    Not to mention the fact that you can find the 1700 for even less, and more than likely be able to bump the clocks to atleast match the 1800x. Microcenter was selling them for 269.99 last week.
    Reply
  • Ne0Wolf7
    At least they've done something, but it still too expensive to sway me.
    Perhaps full blown profesionals who need something a bit better than what Ryzen has right now but can go for an i9 would appreciate this, but even hen he/she/it would probably wait to see what threadripper had to offer.
    Reply
  • Scorpionking20
    So many years past, I can't wrap my head around this. Competition in the CPU space? WTH is this?
    Reply
  • Houston_83
    I think the article has some incorrect information on the first page.

    "However, you do have to tolerate a "mere" 28 lanes of PCIe 3.0. Last generation, Core i7-6850K in roughly the same price range gave you 40 lanes, so we consider the drop to 28 a regression. Granted, AMD only exposes 16 lanes with Ryzen 7, so Intel does end the PCIe comparison ahead."

    Doesn't Ryzen have 24 lanes? Still under intel but I'm pretty sure there's more than 16 lanes.
    Reply
  • artk2219
    19984718 said:
    I think the article has some incorrect information on the first page.

    "However, you do have to tolerate a "mere" 28 lanes of PCIe 3.0. Last generation, Core i7-6850K in roughly the same price range gave you 40 lanes, so we consider the drop to 28 a regression. Granted, AMD only exposes 16 lanes with Ryzen 7, so Intel does end the PCIe comparison ahead."

    Doesn't Ryzen have 24 lanes? Still under intel but I'm pretty sure there's more than 16 lanes.

    Ryzen does have 24 lanes, but only 16 are usable, 8 are dedicated to chipset and storage needs.
    Reply
  • JimmiG
    19984740 said:
    19984718 said:
    I think the article has some incorrect information on the first page.

    "However, you do have to tolerate a "mere" 28 lanes of PCIe 3.0. Last generation, Core i7-6850K in roughly the same price range gave you 40 lanes, so we consider the drop to 28 a regression. Granted, AMD only exposes 16 lanes with Ryzen 7, so Intel does end the PCIe comparison ahead."

    Doesn't Ryzen have 24 lanes? Still under intel but I'm pretty sure there's more than 16 lanes.

    It does, but only 16 are usable, 8 are used for chipset and storage needs.

    16X are available for graphics as 1x16 or 2x8.
    4X dedicated for M.2
    4X for the chipset that's split into 8x PCI-E v2 by the X370 and allocated dynamically IIRC
    Reply
  • Zifm0nster
    Would love to give this a chip a spin.... but availability has been zero.... even a month after release.

    I actually do have work application which can utilize the multi-core.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    does look like intel was caught off guard by amd this time around.

    will take em a couple quarters to figure out what to do. but i'm loving the price/performance amd has brought to the table and know intel will have no choice but to cut prices.

    this is always good for the buyers :D
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Why we have overclocked cpus ons bench but dont have power compsumation! this review is biased to intel again !? are tomshardware fake news ?
    Reply