Intel Core i9-7900X (14nm Skylake-X)

[HEXUS]

Out the way, Core i7, there's a new king in town.

Read more.

[scaryjim]

Huh, how long has it been since we've been able to say "Intel cack their pants and rush to launch a product that isn't really ready"?

Impressive work to get such a large processor to clock like the consumer equivalents, mind you - it gives them back the big advantage they had over AMD before Ryzen. OTOH that power draw 50W more than 1800X and 100W more than 1700. It's going to lose that multithreading performance advantage to a moderately clocked Threadripper 16-core that'll probably draw less power too....!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Huh, how long has it been since we've been able to say "Intel cack their pants and rush to launch a product that isn't really ready"?

Impressive work to get such a large processor to clock like the consumer equivalents, mind you - it gives them back the big advantage they had over AMD before Ryzen. OTOH that power draw 50W more than 1800X and 100W more than 1700. It's going to lose that multithreading performance advantage to a moderately clocked Threadripper 16-core that'll probably draw less power too....!

This looks like an Emergency Edition processor - look at the performance/watt its gone backwards from the Core i7 6950X in HandBrake.

[Phage]

<Dr Evil>One Thoouuusaaaand dollars</Dr Evil>

I'm still looking at a Ryzen build

[Moogly]

<Dr Evil>One Thoouuusaaaand dollars</Dr Evil>

I'm still looking at a Ryzen build

Preach

[Valsined]

Looking at Ryzens near perfect scaling a 10 core Ryzen CPU should score around 2020 point in Cinebench 15

[Xlucine]

This looks like an Emergency Edition processor - look at the performance/watt its gone backwards from the Core i7 6950X in HandBrake.

~10% less performance per watt in handbrake* isn't too bad with a 4GHz all core boost, especially with cinebench efficiency going up by almost 30%

*using the power draw figures on page 7 and the CPU figures on page 3 I get 0.527 fps/w for the 7900X, 0.595 for the 6950X and 0.675 for the 1700

[Bagpuss]

4.7Ghz.

..Threadripper won't even get close to that, and whilst that maybe a moot point on a £1k top end model, it won't be when talking about the lower priced parts.

[LSG501]

As others have said this is basically a 'oh **** AMD's got a good chip' release.

But at the same time it's a good time for people like me that want more cores at faster clock speeds but honestly I'm still waiting on threadripper because I value my money and well intel's prices are a little on the steep side...

Hopefully AMD puts out a close cpu with a decent price

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

~10% less performance per watt in handbrake* isn't too bad with a 4GHz all core boost, especially with cinebench efficiency going up by almost 30%

*using the power draw figures on page 7 and the CPU figures on page 3 I get 0.527 fps/w for the 7900X, 0.595 for the 6950X and 0.675 for the 1700

Skylake is actually more efficient than Broadwell,and this is why Skylake based laptops improved performance/watt.

It has 13% less performance/watt than the Core i7 6950X made on a 14NM 2nd generation Finfet process which Intel has been using for CPUs since 2014 and remember SKL/KL are meant to be produced on a newer tweaked 14NM process too. Consider that GF licensed their 14NM process(which is more like 20nm with Finfets),and there were issues even getting Polaris made on it ,and this is the first performance CPU on it too,it really smacks of an Emergency Edition CPU,ie,massively overvolted and overclocked to try and pre-empt the Threadripper launch. AMD has more potential to gain improvements on the process side than Intel I suspect.

The main issue is that in servers CPUs tend to be much lower clocked,so AMD really does seem to have a competitive design here and this is ignoring any improvements in clockspeeds.

Edit!!

It looks like the Core i7 7900X does seem to have a much bigger die than the Core i7 6950X:
https://scr3.golem.de/screenshots/16...0X-Test-19.jpg
http://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/2...-size-cpu-size

The Core i7 6950X die was close to 250MM2,and this looks closer to 310MM2.

I wonder if there are more cores but these are deactivated??

[Intrepid3D]

You wrote "Is that your wallet opening I hear?"

Erm... no, actually.

There was so much hype pre-launch about this CPU and, well it has not materialised at all, with all the hype i was expecting it to be a lot faster per thread than AMD mainstream CPU and it isn't, the difference in the per-thread performance to the 1800X is marginally better to a little better at best.

Why would i pay a thousand $ for this?

Look at Handbreak, the 7900X is 28% faster than the 1800X with 20% more threads, take out the thread difference an Intel are ahead by 8%... a thousand dollars?

I'll wait for AMD's X399.

[Iota]

responding to the new threat by going into all-out attack

If that were really true, I'd expect Intel to suck it up and really reduce the costs of the entire X299 platform when compared to the upcoming X399 platform from AMD. If there is parity there, then the price is justified, but I'm really not seeing where the premium is coming from here. Yes, it's faster than the Ryzen 1800X, but considering it's using Skylake as the base platform and that is mature in comparison, then it's really looking more like a knee jerk reaction from Intel (those power draw figures are awful).

Sure it's faster, but I'm certainly not prepared to pay what is going to be an expensive whole platform price premium over what AMD are currently offering (and we haven't even got to Threadripper yet....).

I can wait.

[3dcandy]

It's a great chip... for 2015

[Burnt_Custard]

It's a great chip... for 2015

Burn!!!!!!

[tomthum]

I'm still looking at a Ryzen build

[kompukare]

That Italian Bits&Chips site has a rumour that Intel plans to eventually solder the IHS after all:
http://www.bitsandchips.it/52-englis...he-near-future
In a way it would be Devil's Canyon Mk2 I guess.