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The market for people buying an almost £1000 CPU and using it for gaming at 1080p is likely to be very slim. What 1080p does is give a good indication of the CPU's raw gaming performance as GPU power is sufficient to push frame rates to a level where the CPU and memory limitations can be observed.
We supplement the 1080p gaming results with a pair of games tested at 1440P and 4K. We chose Ghost Recon Wildlands and GTA V as they are computationally-heavy, open-world games with good built-in benchmarks.
Ghost Recon Wildlands
We run the built-in benchmark using a 1440P and 4K resolution and the same settings as the 1080p test (Very High preset).
Grand Theft Auto V
We run the built-in benchmark using a 1440P and 4K resolution and the same settings as the 1080p test (generally Maximum quality settings including Advanced Graphics).
1440P and 4K Gaming Performance Overview:
Ghost Recon Wildlands continues to scale primarily with CPU frequency when tasked with a 1440P gaming resolution. As such, Skylake-X puts in a decent showing but the differences are slim between all CPUs. Crank the GPU workload up to a 4K rendering resolution and all CPUs, bar the 6800K which shows odd behaviour, perform practically the same.
Even a 1440P resolution is not quite demanding enough to mask the CPU-induced bottlenecks in GTA V. If you want a high-refresh rate gaming experience in GTA V and have the GPU horsepower to push that, Skylake-X does a decent job when overclocked but is still outpaced by Broadwell-E's 6950X and the speedy 7700K. Switch up to 4K and the Intel CPUs show similar performance across the board. Even a GTX 1080 Ti can't take this ageing title to 90+ FPS where CPU-induced bottlenecks, even at 4K, would start to rear their ugly heads.
Good review . Honestly even if Intel gets all the goodness of being a fast processor its highly priced. Also poor thermal performance is a big deal because processor eventually runs hot and performance will take a toll.
I am personally waiting for Threadripper AMD’s line up to compete with Intel’s half cooked CPU.If AMD TH has good price and good thermal efficiency then even if it is a bit slower then Intel’s offering people will go for it. Ryzen 7 and especially Ryzen 5 1600 cpu proved this already
What about VRM temperatures? 🙂
This is a review of the CPU. The VRM temps are going to vary depending on the board and its overly extravagant but largely useless cooling shroud.
Brilliant and thorough review, thank you very much.
I’d be happy with quad memory-channel i7-7740X with 44 PCI-e lanes. Fast enough for _everything_ I need, and would have enough memory and PCI-express bandwidth for the workloads I run (don’t need 10c/20t).
Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. Either I have to buy the crippled i7-7740x with 28 PCIe and dual channel memory OR I have to buy the over-priced space heater that is the 7900X with a motherboard that fries eggs with the VRMs and sucks so much electricity out of the socket that I can hear the kill-o-watt whirr like crazy in the background while notes keep flying out of my wallet.
No thanks Intel. You really outdid yourself this time around.
I will wait for the ThreadRipper from AMD.
I like your test, but let me make a small correction, 7900X is faster then Ryzen only because of more cores and higher clock, not due to “modern architecture” (which while newer? then Ryzen is by no means better). But to count my chickens 🙂 Ryzen_OC is 4.05Ghz, 7900X_OC is 4.6Ghz
1776*1.25(because Intel has 25% more cores then AMD)=2220
now to equalize core speeds: 2220*4.6/4.05=2521 (the Ryzen score as it would be at 4.6Ghz) – IPC wise Intel (scored 2449) is still a bit worse then AMD in Cinebench.
I’m not saying that AMD is better since it can’t at the moment reach 4.6Ghz nor does it have 10 core CPU to fight with.
Similar thing happens with x265 encoding benchmark: 30,6*1,25*4,6/4,05=43,4444444 – a bit faster then Intel. And it is all in tasks that put use to AVX2 and there is still Intel advantage in 4 channel memory.
Well, at least you can wait a bit and see if Threadripper is actually better then Intel – there is no guarantee it is. Especially for lightly threaded tasks that you speak of (that per chance require high core clock that will most likely not be reachable on TR).
AMDs single core IPC is slightly worse than Intels, but AMDs implementation of SMT vs Intels HT brings it out on top by a slight margin at the same core/clocks in multi threaded benchmarks while losing in the single core benches. And then AMD doesn’t really OC well, neither does memory clock up well, its improving of course but not at any great pace.
Bottom line w/ Ryzen is mem clocks pf 2933 are a no brainer, and known to work 3200 components are common.
Thats the consensus on the street.
A pact with the devil will always bite u in the ass.
How can u trust intel?
Buy a $999 cpu w/ scads of lanes, & discover there is an charge to use nvmeS as they should be. Slimy.
The new keying system shows they use their research dollars to effect better ways of screwing customers. A good look guys.
I would buy amd gear if same money and 10% worse. My time, upgradeability, conscience and dignity are worth something too, thanks intel.
AMD probably are 10% worse in the criteria intel like to use, but AMDs modular/fabric architecture, is miles better than intel has or will have achitecture, for future cost effective ~equivalent outcomes.
BTW the prices u list for amd dont reflect reality. Both are much cheaper on amazon etc. Further, the widely regarded sweet spot is the 12 thread r5 1600, at ~$220
Lanes are just sufficient on ryzen, for a 16 lane gpu, a 4 lane nvme ssd onboard and a 4 lane pcie2 nvme ssd (~1.6GBps, or triple a sata ssd).. Beyond that, u have stacks of sata and .5GBps pcie2 expandability, but no 1GBps pcie3 lanes
note also, amd pcie3 lanes are direct to the cpu, not via switches and bridges like most intels.
Newsflash, the i7-7740X only has 16 PCIe Lanes, not 28!
Test w/ agesa 1006 please…..
Not sure why you would complain about a crippled quad core and decide to wait for a 10 core minimum threadripper lol. Amd has some amazing stuff coming out, but it will not have the IPC of intel.
The 8 core intel is actually a pretty sweet chip. It can overclock 2 of its best cores to 4.5 ghz for single or two thread tasks and 4.3 turbo on all cores. The thermal is only an issue when overclocking and when you get this many cores it will always be a problem when overclocking. Amd hasnt been able to go over 4.1 ghz yet.
Intel PCIE lanes are direct to the cpu as well. And if intel says a cpu has 16 lanes (like the 7700k) then those are dedicated to the GPU. The rest, in that case, come from the chipset via dmi 3. This is unlike AMD who is currently *overstating* PCIE lanes available for video. Sorry to burst your fanboy delusion bubble
I strongly suspect nothing you do requires 44 PCIE lanes or quad channel RAM. People complaining
about 7900x, and somehow not satisfied with *either* Kaby Lake *or* Ryzen 5/7, and obsessing instead over “Thread Ripper” sound generally clueless.
AMDs marketing is really working for TR. Somehow every hump on comment threads is now convinced they’re doing all sorts of things that somehow justify *32 threads*, even at lower IPC, and *dozens* of PCIE lanes and *mountains* of memory bandwidth. Enormously unlikely.
You can’t run a 32GB kit @3200Mhz on Threadripper cpu, it just fails to boot. Worst memory controller ever on a cpu i guess. It maxes out @ around 2800Mhz if you install 32gb of ram. If you go higher like 64gb, then you end up with 2133Mhz ddr4 speeds or 2400 if you are lucky.
Whereas I am running 64GB 3800Mhz CL15 kit with my 4.8Ghz 7900X. Unleashes my 2x overclocked Titan Xps in SLI. AMD doesn’t clock well, has the worst memory support and has lower IPC and thus lower gaming performance. It’s just good for rendering & encoding farms.