Posted on Monday, June 19 2017 @ 21:02 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Just a quick note that the first chips of Intel's new Core-X series are available today. This includes the four to ten core models, the version with 12 cores follows in August and the 14 to 18 core models arrive in October.
The 4- to 10-core Intel® Core™ X-series processers are available for pre-orders at a variety of retailers starting today and will begin shipping to consumers on June 26. This is the first set – five of the nine total SKUs – to roll out in this new family of processors.
Announced at Computex 2017, the Intel® Core™ X-series processor family is Intel's most powerful, scalable and accessible desktop platform, offering a range of processors from 4 to 18 cores with price points to match. The new platform delivers the extreme performance to meet the processing demands for today's enthusiasts in gaming, content creation, VR and overclocking. For example, with the 10-core processor, gain up to 14 percent faster multithread performance1 and up to 15 percent single-thread performance2 over the previous generation.
The SKUs available for pre-order are: Intel® Core™ i5-7640X X-series processor (MSRP: $242), Intel® Core™ i7-7740X X-series processor (MSRP: $339), Intel® Core™ i7-7800X X-series processor (MSRP: $389), Intel® Core™ i7-7820X X-series processor (MSRP: $599) and Intel® Core™ i9-7900X X-series processor (MSRP: $999). The 12-core processor is expected to start shipping in August and 14- to 18-core processors are expected to start shipping in October.
Reviews conclude the Core i9-7900X is hands-down the single-fastest processor ever released. The chip is ideal for many-threaded workloads but also delivers very respectable single-threaded performance. Here's what Tech Report
has to say about the 7900X:
We've always been loath to recommend the top-end CPU in Intel's high-end desktop family (and yes, that is this chip for the moment). Despite the Ryzen-inspired price reshuffling that's coming with Core X, the i9-7900X still isn't a great value. The star of the Core X lineup may actually be the Core i7-7820X, whose eight cores and 16 threads have clocks similar to those of the i9-7900X. You may lose a couple of cores in the bargain, but even so, the i7-7820X should perform better than a Ryzen 7 1800X for not that much more money. We hope to play with one of these more attainable Skylake-X CPUs soon.
Then again, there are still some issues with the X299 platform. You can read AnandTech's review
over here, I'll copy & paste a snippet about some of the platform issues that still need resolving:
The gaming story is unfortunately not quite as rosy. We had last minute BIOS updates to a number of our boards because some of the gaming tests were super underperforming on the new Skylake-X parts. We are told that these early BIOSes are having power issues to do with turboing, as well as Intel’s Speed Shift technology when the GPU is active.
While these newer BIOSes have improved things, there are still some remaining performance issues to be resolved. Our GTX1080 seems to be hit the hardest out of our four GPUs, as well as Civilization 6, the second Rise of the Tomb Raider test, and Rocket League on all GPUs. As a result, we only posted a minor selection of results, most of which show good parity at 4K. The good news is that most of the issues seem to happen at 1080p, when the CPU is more at fault. The bad news is that when the CPU is pushed into a corner, the current BIOS situation is handicapping Skylake-SP in gaming.
