not sure a slower 6 core would be considered bragging rights/ unless you play synthetic benchmarks all day? This thing clearly kicks butt at gaming...

it probably does kick butt at gaming but so would a 7700k with a z270 which most people have and or if upgrading is a cheaper route. I am really trying to understand who the upgrade path these Kaby Lake Xs are aimed at.

Impressive that it hit 5.2 Ghz but I am not to sure about that price tough.

Seems to me that the only reason to buy x299 is to get AVX-512, which the LGA2066 i7s dont have. You need to buy the i9 to get full AVX-512.

Nice review Hilbert, looking forward to getting one of these for XOC when the good motherboards come out 🙂

http://dl.wavetrex.eu/2017/7740x.jpg This thing looks ridiculous... They could easily fit 4 of those on that substrate. *cough*EPYC*cough*

Well yeah, hence the 12, 14, 16 and 18 core variants on the way lol What did you think they was going to do when offering chips in 4 to 18 packages lol

not sure a slower 6 core would be considered bragging rights/ unless you play synthetic benchmarks all day? This thing clearly kicks butt at gaming...

Becouse 10fps extra is the diference betwen life and death when fps is over 100 anyway. I am sorry you have to be really stupid to buy such a CPU on x299 , and how the hell is this a recomended CPU is beyond me , just do the smart thing and get a 7700k and call it a day , or you know do the propper thing and get a Ryzen r7 1700 with a decent mobo with 3000mhz ram and enjoy gaming with a bit "less" FPS. And about the 5.2ghz , i wish you GL ladies , you do get it that intel cherry picked the samples they send out right? same thing hapend with kaby lake "omg it can reach 5ghz oc" and yet not all do in fact most dont.

Nice review Hilbert, looking forward to getting one of these for XOC when the good motherboards come out 🙂 Well yeah, hence the 12, 14, 16 and 18 core variants on the way lol What did you think they was going to do when offering chips in 4 to 18 packages lol

What they will do is sell you Xeon's cpu's , they allready have over 20 cores xeon CPU's , something INTEL does not really like to do , that's why they will start to remove a lot of enterprise related thing's from it , but you can "unlock"(lol) by shilling out money. Enjoy geting milked intel drones

Becouse 10fps extra is the diference betwen life and death when fps is over 100 anyway. I am sorry you have to be really stupid to buy such a CPU on x299 , and how the hell is this a recomended CPU is beyond me , just do the smart thing and get a 7700k and call it a day , or you know do the propper thing and get a Ryzen r7 1700 with a decent mobo with 3000mhz ram and enjoy gaming with a bit "less" FPS. And about the 5.2ghz , i wish you GL ladies , you do get it that intel cherry picked the samples they send out right? same thing hapend with kaby lake "omg it can reach 5ghz oc" and yet not all do in fact most dont.

I dont think they gave him a cherry picked one, if so, then I have been very lucky, mine 7740X is running 5.3 Ghz with 1.35 voltage.

Ha, 91 degC CPU temperature during overclocking on liquid cooling with 95W CPU power draw! Intel really need to improve their thermal paste, use solder or something - I delidded my 6700K with liquid metal and with a heatpipe cooler (NH-D14) and a 98W CPU load during a run of 1024M Prime maxes out at 64 degC on the hottest core (room temperature 27 degC)! Intel's approach to using thermal paste between the chip & IHS is really shoddy in my opinion, and given these K chips are supposed to be overclocked it all just seems poor & lazy!

Ha, 91 degC CPU temperature during overclocking on liquid cooling with 95W CPU power draw! Intel really need to improve their thermal paste, use solder or something - I delidded my 6700K with liquid metal and with a heatpipe cooler (NH-D14) and a 98W CPU load during a run of 1024M Prime maxes out at 64 degC on the hottest core (room temperature 27 degC)! Intel's approach to using thermal paste between the chip & IHS is really shoddy in my opinion, and given these K chips are supposed to be overclocked it all just seems poor & lazy!

honestly I thought that taking more care about package heat propagation would be one of Intel's stopgap measures after Ryzen's launch. it seemed only natural given how easy these chips can be OC ed

honestly I thought that taking more care about package heat propagation would be one of Intel's stopgap measures after Ryzen's launch. it seemed only natural given how easy these chips can be OC ed

Yeah, I don't know why they don't improve that heat transfer from CPU chip to IHS - how much more expensive would it really be for them to end up with heat transfer like I have with liquid metal delid, I can't imagine it costing them that much more per unit, and any increase in production cost would likely be offset by increased sales won away from AMD Ryzen. Such a move would also be good PR for Intel - brand loyalty & feel good factor would increase.

Yeah, I don't know why they don't improve that heat transfer from CPU chip to IHS - how much more expensive would it really be for them to end up with heat transfer like I have with liquid metal delid, I can't imagine it costing them that much more per unit, and any increase in production cost would likely be offset by increased sales won away from AMD Ryzen. Such a move would also be good PR for Intel - brand loyalty & feel good factor would increase.

Probably because they want do it for next or next-next refresh, increase stock clocks, say it's an "ipc gain" and call it a day :P

Probably because they want do it for next or next-next refresh, increase stock clocks, say it's an "ipc gain" and call it a day :P

Ha, Intel gotta milk!

Meh, im keeping my trusty i5, wake me up when i can get 8 cores for cheap.

Ha, Intel gotta milk!

Yes, indead, intel has been a good milking cow. Im afraid those days over fortunately.

Meh, im keeping my trusty i5, wake me up when i can get 8 cores for cheap.

Apparently you have been asleep for awhile. Ryzen.

Damned with faint praise. Those temps are a worry. Wouldnt touch them 🙂. 16 lanes on all bar2 under $1000usd? woulnt touch them. There is something iffy about intels lanes. I suspect they are shared in some way, not dedicated lanes like amdS. Their architecture diagrams show a switch & A bus bar intervening between sockets and the cpu. I.E. - A BIT LIKE THE PCIE2 lanes from a chipset - if all were used concurrently, total bandwidth would be insufficient. 28 lanes is nice, but as u say, it wont even get u to 2 full gpuS. Its a gpu & 3 x nvme and thats it. so the intel 16 lane models are beneath contempt (seriously folks, dont buy them - they preclude installing both a gpu card and nvme ssd - mandatory on a modern computer). Its almost a sore point with ryzen/AM4 also - 20 pcie3 lanes (GPU + 4 spare). There is a powerful well hidden combo on some mobos like msi & asrock x370 chipset, which have 2 x m.2 ports on the mobo. One nvme m.2 format ssd, can be ~3.5GBps max full 4 pcie3 lane, and the other, can use 4 of the ~plentiful chipset pcie2 lanes to yield, a triple sata ssd speed of 1.6GBps. Its not raid, but its 2 x very fast single drives. The basis of a powerful rig. The 28 lane intels are no competition for 64 lane TR, If lane wiggle room is needed (and it is w/ the nvme revolution alone - 4 lanes per modern storage device, and we are accustomed to many devices historically). Even if u spend the $1k for a 44 lane cpu, intel want 1-200$ for an unlocking key to use nvme as it should be (unbelievably, but especially in the current context). Its a joke. Intel are 5-10% at gaming benchmarks for ~non existant cpu throttled games, installed on a new, clean windows install, and 50% worse at all else in real world situations, bar a few loudly touted, mostly legacy, niche areas.

Performance/price-wise, supplemented by its high power consumption and temps, the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X models are nowhere compared to Ryzens.

That i9-7900X looks great/ money aside its a Dam Beast! anyone here got one?

Even if Ryzen wasn't available I'd steer clear of this one; too few cores for the platform in 2017 and those temps are awful (overclocked). I'm not sure who the market really is for this one. I think that those buying this enthusiast level platform would want/need more cores and for someone looking for a more "normal" high end gaming machine, why not get a 7700k (or even 6700k)? I'm just going to drool over here in the corner while waiting for Threadripper benchmarks. 😉

Performance/price-wise, supplemented by its high power consumption and temps, the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X models are nowhere compared to Ryzens.

Never mind the power and the temps, if you factor in the mobo it has to run on costing €300+ a Ryzen is so far ahead it's silly. The whole Kaby Lake X concept is just stupid to begin with, expensive motherboard of which you can only use less than half the PCI-Ex lanes and half the memory capacity. Makes no sense.

I wish I had money for the cookies.