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.

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)

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

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
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.