Intel Core i9-7900X X-Series Skylake-X CPU Review

Introduction

Competition between vendors doesn't happen in real-time these days. Instead, it happens in a series of strategic product launches. While Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X (I will refer to them as Sky-X and Kaby-X from here on out) were both on the books since before Ryzen launch, it does seem that Intel has strategically priced these new processors based on their performance in response to the competition.

Skylake-X brings about more than just multiple Skylake-S cores put together; it also offers cache changes, a shift to an integrated VRM, the additional of AVX-512, and the use of a 2D mesh interconnect instead of a ring bus.

Let's see how the current top dog i9-7900X does.

Specifications

As many people know, since we already wrote about the specifications of the CPU, the i9-7900X features 10 cores and 20 threads, a 140W TDP, and 13.75MB of restacked L2 cache. Intel cut L3 cache density in half while quadrupling the L2 cache. You can read about that here.

Intel is also introducing Turbo Boost 3.0 again, but this time, support for it should be native to Windows 10, so you won't need a driver. Turbo Boost 2.0 allows for two cores to go to 4.3GHz, two to go to 4.1GHz, and the rest to hit 4.0GHz. Turbo Boost Max 3.0 is additional to Turbo Boost 2.0. The CPU also offers support for 128GB of memory, and a higher memory speed of 2666MHz.

Pricing

The Core i9-7900X should be priced around $1000.