The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9 7900X, i7 7820X and i7 7800X Tested
by Ian Cutress on June 19, 2017 9:01 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modelling, and so on and so forth.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to combile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
PCMark8
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
SYSmark 2014 SE
SYSmark is developed by Bapco, a consortium of industry CPU companies. The goal of SYSmark is to take stripped down versions of popular software, such as Photoshop and Onenote, and measure how long it takes to process certain tasks within that software. The end result is a score for each of the three segments (Office, Media, Data) as well as an overall score. Here a reference system (Core i3-6100, 4GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, Integrated HD 530 graphics) is used to provide a baseline score of 1000 in each test.
A note on context for these numbers. AMD left Bapco in the last two years, due to differences of opinion on how the benchmarking suites were chosen and AMD believed the tests are angled towards Intel processors and had optimizations to show bigger differences than what AMD felt was present. The following benchmarks are provided as data, but the conflict of opinion between the two companies on the validity of the benchmark is provided as context for the following numbers.
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jjj - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
The 10 cores die is clearly 320+mm2 not 308mm2. The 308mm figure rounds down the mm based on those GamerNexus pics. From there, you slightly underestimate the size of other 2 die.Sarah Terra - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Fair point but what I take from this review is that you are going to be spending pretty much double the cost or higher of ryzen for a proc that will have a 30% larger power envelope if you want higher performance. Intel is scrambling here, well done AMD.jjj - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
With 8 cores and up, thermal is a big issue when you OC Skylake X.. Power also to some extent.The 6 cores looks interesting vs the 7700k but not so much vs anything else. CPU+mobo gets you north of 600$ and that's a lot. If it had all the PCIe lanes enabled, there would be that but ,while plenty will buy it, it makes no sense to. And ofc there should be a Coffee Lake 6 cores soon , we'll see how it is priced- in consumer 6 cores with 2 mem chans is fine.
More than 6 cores are priced way too high and , if you need many cores, you buy for MT not ST so ST clocks are less relevant.
Intel moving in the same direction as AMD on the cache size front is interesting- larger L2 and smaller L3. Now they have "huge cache and memory latency issues"" just like Ryzen lol.
W/e, Intel's pricing is still far too high and this platform remains of minimal relevance.
ddriver - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Funny thou, when Ryzen under-performed in games that was no reason to not publish gaming benches, in fact being the platform's main weakness there was actually emphasis put on that... but when it comes to intel we gotta have special treatment... Let's hear it for objectivity!Granted the 7800X finally brings something of relatively decent value, but still no good reason to justify the purchase unless one insists on an intel product, for the brand, for thunderbolt or hypetane support.
"To play it safe, invest in the Core i9-7900X today."
Really? With Threadripper incoming in a matter of weeks? For less than 1000$ you will get 16 zen cores. It will definitely beat the 7900X by a decent margin in terms of performance, plus the massive I/O capabilities and also ECC support, which I'd say is vital. That just doesn't sound like a honest recommendation. Not surprising in the least.
ddriver - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Also, on top of that we have launch prices for Ryzen rather than current prices. Looks like a rather open attempt to diminish AMD's platform value.Ian Cutress - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
We've always posted manufacturer MSRPs in our CPU charts. There has been no official price drop from AMD; if you're seeing lower, it's being run from the distributor level.On the TR issue, we basically haven't tested it and don't know the price. Lots of variables in the air, which is why the words are /if you want to play it safe/. Safe being the key word there.
ddriver - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
Dunno Ian, in my book this sounds more like hasty than safe. The safe thing would be to wait out. Even without the incipient TR launch, early adoption is rather unsafe on its own. As it is, it sounds more like an attempt to dupe people into spending their money on intel in the eve of the launch of a superior value and performance product from a direct (and sole) competitor.It is true that nothing is still officially known about TR, but based on the ryzen marketing strategy and performance we can make safe and accurate speculations. I expect to see the top TR chip launched at 999$ offering at the very least 30% of performance advantage over the 7900X in a similar or slightly higher thermal budget, of course in workloads that can scale nicely up with the core count.
Comparing the 7900X to the 1800X, we have ~35% performance advantage for 205% the price and 150% the power usage. Based on that, it is a safe bet that TR is going to shine.
fanofanand - Monday, June 26, 2017 - link
Ian is a scientist, the less guessing the better. Give him an opportunity to review TR before giving suggestions. Doesn't that seem fair?t.s - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
Play it safe? Really?? Please. As if everyone in this world's stupid.Ranger1065 - Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - link
There has never been a better time to give Intel the middle finger.