Socket 2066 (Core i9-7960X) Processor with 16 cores surfaces in GeekBench
In the GeekBench ranking list a new 16-core processor with 32-threads has surfaced. The unit is tagged as Socket 2066 and thus is the recently announced (yet not available) Core i9-7960X. The results reveal a few interesting things.
The $1699 Core i9-7960X Skylake-E processor is identified as having 16 cores and 32 threads. The base clock frequency is 2.51 GHz, indicative for an engineering sample and perhaps with this many cores, it might even be the final base-clock. The chip has 1MB L2-cache per core and 22 MB of shared L3 cache in-between the cores as you can see in the screenshot.
The twp scores are as follows:
- Single score results: 5238 points
- Multi-threaded score: 33672 points
So when you compare a little back and forth with the ranking lists then that single threaded score brings the processor at the level of a i5-7600 perf wise, and the multi-threaded score actually brings it close to the 10-core Core i9 7900X. That processor obviously has a base clock of 3.3 GHz. With a little Turbo tweaking we do expect the final performance to be better though.
Clock | Turbo 2.0/3.0 | Cores / threads | L3-cache | PCIe 3.0 | Mem Channels | TDP | Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Core i9 7980XE | TBA | TBA | 18/36 | TBA | TBA | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | TBA | $1999 |
Core i9 7960X | 2.5 GHz | TBA | 16/32 | 22MB | TBA | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | TBA | $1699 |
Core i9 7940X | TBA | TBA | 14/28 | TBA | TBA | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | TBA | $1399 |
Core i9 7920X | TBA. | TBA | 12/24 | TBA | TBA | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | TBA | $1199 |
Core i9 7900X | 3.3 GHz | 4.3/4.5 GHz | 10/20 | 13,75 MB | 44 | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | 140 W | $999 |
Core i7 7820X | 3.6 GHz | 4.3/4.5 GHz | 8/16 | 11 MB | 28 | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | 140 W | $599 |
Core i7 7800X | 3.5 GHz | 4.0 GHz | 6/12 | 8,25 MB | 28 | Quad-channel DDR4-2666 | 140 W | $389 |
Core i7 7740X | 4.3 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 4/8 | 8 MB | 16 | Dual-channel DDR4-2666 | 112 W | $339 |
Core i5 7640X | 4.0 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4/4 | 6 MB | 16 | Dual-channel DDR4-2666 | 112 W | $242 |
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Why so slow? Very low clocks? 7700K is a tiny little minnow but I'm seriously sticking with it unless they allow Coffee Lake 4-6 cores to be plopped into higher end z270 boards.
Edit: 2.51ghz only - It could well still clock to 4.2ghz for all we know on 240mm AIOs. Will reserve judgement. It would be nice to have a 16 core for a lot of tasks but then able to run a few cores ultra high like gaming on my 7700k but it's just not possible.
The 2.5 GHz clock speed makes sense, considering that the 12-core 7920X is rumored to have a 2.9 GHz base clock (14 core should be around 2.7 GHz, and the 18 core should be 2.3). It might boost up to 3 GHz or so with a powerful cooling solution though.
Note that Geekbench isn't the most reliable benchmark. After all, they rank the A9X chip used in the iPad Pro to be just as powerful as a Core i5 (aggregate tests ranks it behind the last-gen Core m3). It also showed low scores for the 1950X so it could be that it just doesn't scale that well beyond a certain number of cores.
As with all rumors of this sort, take it with a hefty grain of salt.
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Funny - my i7-4930K ( 6/12 core ) / LGA2011 / X79 system running at a moderate 4.2Ghz overclock and built in 2014 produces a geekbench score of 4271 / 22463 ( single / multi )
cpu did cost me €500 back then...
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Because its supposed to be reliable and safe to run at stock speeds. The CPU is overclockable so the stock speeds are kind of irrelevant anyway.
Honestly, I think the only reason Intel uses such high stock speeds for products like the 7700K is to make reviews look better. Many reviewers do a lot of their testing via stock speeds (where OC results may only have a page or 2 of content) so the only way for Intel to make each generation look better is to maintain a high base clock.
What I personally don't understand is why Intel doesn't just ditch base clocks entirely and have the turbo speed reach some obscenely high value (in terms of from-factory specs) like 5GHz. Turbo Boost at this point is designed to adjust for your power delivery, cooling, and workload. So why have a base clock anymore? Why not just have the CPUs run as fast as reliably possible? If power consumption is your concern, just use a weaker heatsink - problem solved. Or instead, maybe the motherboard can detect if you're using a 4-pin or 8-pin CPU power connector, where it will limit the clocks based on which one you're using. Against AMD, this could be a serious win for Intel since there's no way to directly compare the CPUs (without handicapping the Intel), and AMD doesn't have a CPU that can clock so high. I guess the main downside to this idea is Intel has been doing such a crappy job at improving IPC lately, so if they decided to go this route every generation, people would be even less convinced to upgrade.
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Posts: 1786
Joined: 2012-10-07
Because its supposed to be reliable and safe to run at stock speeds. The CPU is overclockable so the stock speeds are kind of irrelevant anyway.
Honestly, I think the only reason Intel uses such high stock speeds for products like the 7700K is to make reviews look better. Many reviewers do a lot of their testing via stock speeds (where OC results may only have a page or 2 of content) so the only way for Intel to make each generation look better is to maintain a high base clock.
What I personally don't understand is why Intel doesn't just ditch base clocks entirely and have the turbo speed reach some obscenely high value (in terms of from-factory specs) like 5GHz. Turbo Boost at this point is designed to adjust for your power delivery, cooling, and workload. So why have a base clock anymore? Why not just have the CPUs run as fast as reliably possible? If power consumption is your concern, just use a weaker heatsink - problem solved. Or instead, maybe the motherboard can detect if you're using a 4-pin or 8-pin CPU power connector, where it will limit the clocks based on which one you're using. Against AMD, this could be a serious win for Intel since there's no way to directly compare the CPUs (without handicapping the Intel), and AMD doesn't have a CPU that can clock so high. I guess the main downside to this idea is Intel has been doing such a crappy job at improving IPC lately, so if they decided to go this route every generation, people would be even less convinced to upgrade.
Base clocks show guaranteed minimum performance in all scenarios. If there weren't any base clocks then there would be no guaranteed performance level. Intel think of Turbo Boost as a "nice to have" if your system & conditions can handle it, but not a necessary. Although myself & many others wouldn't accept an Intel CPU that couldn't reliably hold max Turbo Boost!
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Why so slow? Very low clocks? 7700K is a tiny little minnow but I'm seriously sticking with it unless they allow Coffee Lake 4-6 cores to be plopped into higher end z270 boards.
Edit: 2.51ghz only - It could well still clock to 4.2ghz for all we know on 240mm AIOs. Will reserve judgement. It would be nice to have a 16 core for a lot of tasks but then able to run a few cores ultra high like gaming on my 7700k but it's just not possible.