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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.
Intel's stock Core i9-7900X beats the Core i7-7700K by a large margin, and a bit of tuning pushes it past the overclocked Broadwell-E model.
An overclocked Ryzen 7 1800X surpasses Core i7-6900K. The Ryzen 7 1800X won't face a significant pricing challenge from the new eight-core Skylake-X chip, but it will be interesting to see them head to head when we get our hands on one.
All of these processors provide a smooth gaming experience. However, the stock Core i9-7900X experiences some frame time variability in the early stages of this benchmark. The -7700K also encounters a familiar spike near the end of the flight sequence.
Hitman (2016)
The Core i9-7900X leads in both its stock and overclocked configurations. Oddly, as we go through our results, it's evident that this processor tends to provide solid performance in lightly threaded games, but struggles in some heavily-threaded titles. Of course, we would have expected the opposite to be true.
The overclocked -7900X suffers a frame time variance spike in the opening stages of this test that's rivaled only by the overclocked Ryzen 7 1800X.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
We expect the Core i7-7700K to lead in lightly threaded games, and for once, it does.
Core i9-7900X scales well with some tuning to take second place. The overclocked Ryzen processors also fare well in this benchmark, though their stock configurations contribute the only notable frame time outliers. All the CPUs provide solid performance, but it's notable that the lowest-cost processors only trail the leaders by a few FPS.
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