Gadgetory

why does KB Lake X exist that's the question we asked Intel at their press day it's not compatible with LGA 1151 it works with more expensive motherboards and half of the components on the board will go on use for example four of these dims you can't use with Kb like eggs and then part of the PCIe devices as well if you're planning to populate them so those features aren't free to the consumer you pay for all the stuff on the board but the CPU can't drive them so it ends up in a very weird part of the market we asked Intel about why this product exists and why it's 2066 and not 1151 we'll have an answer for you in a moment but if you look under the dye even the top part of the substrate looks pretty familiar so we're not fully convinced that this product needs to exist in the package it does but we're going to be here reviewing it anyway looking through thermals gaming performance and more before getting to that this video is brought to you by ifixit.com and the pc essentials toolkit which can be had for $20 making it one of their cheapest yet most complete toolkits use code gamers nexus for $5 off to bring that to 15 you can go to ifixit.com slash gamers nexus or click the link below for more information getting into this dana intel's answer to our query which was why does this kb lake axe exist was that it allows it consumers to get into the high-end desktop platforms like $2.99 at a lower price point so that they can upgrade later to the higher-end cpus this we think is a little misguided but that was their answer there are a few things we could speculate from here but first of all the misguided part here's the thing if you're spending 330 dollars anyway on a CPU which is functionally the same as a 70 time 100k except for actually they've stripped out the IGP but otherwise functionally the same once you have $330 on the CPU you're kind of out of territory where you're going to throw it away or even just move it to another build and buy a different one later because if you're spending 300 bucks on this and 300 plus on a board might even end up with a board that's more expensive than the CPU in this series of of chipset and platform once you are there it's time to stop pretending and go properly high-end this chip and I 777 40 X is considered low end when coupled with something like this ever 77 RK which is what this is really isn't a low-end processor it's not but when you pair it with one of these it becomes a lone processor and the pairing doesn't make any sense this is especially true for the i-5 76 40 X which we will probably not be reviewing because it's also it definitely shouldn't exist that one we know for sure should not be a CPU you can buy for this so one or the other either you have high-end CPUs for high-end boards or you fill those audiences which is kind of what the existing i7 line does so that's that's the positioning for these platforms and it's not a mid step it's just weird this isn't like the G 45 60 where it might make sense to buy it with a Z 270 board and upgrade in a year now it's a bit worse than the hex you're spending so much money on the motherboard and half the features are unusable more realistically we think that intel is trying to work toward merging its high-end enthusiast products by eighth generation we wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing things like these 7700 K equivalent chips moved permanently to x-class hardware at least if there's not enough push back but that answers why Intel thinks KB like X exists of course shows that we don't necessarily agree but it's just ultimately more confusing for end-users as for the differences between the 7700 KMA 7 study for TX here's a chart that shows them don't look too hard because there's really not many differences it's the base frequency that's the one at the 740 X climbs to 4.3 gigahertz from 4.2 was boost at 4.5 on both and they're still using dual channel memory controllers despite being on the X rays platform so again only four DIMMs are available and also they're still both limited to 16 PCIe lanes on the CPU itself the last major difference is that the socket type changed its 2066 a few things with this the exterior chipsets are more expensive for the producer of the motherboard which means it's more expensive for you and the sockets more expensive just like a.m. these thread ripper sockets more expense it's more metal so it cost more money so the socket type changes you can't use one of these with the Z series platforms otherwise this might make a little more sense a is just a standard refresh nothing wrong with 100 megahertz bump but it's a little worse than that obviously because we're looking at a new motherboard one more big change though the IGP again is gone so this is where intel's argument gets a little nebulous because they have said the intention of these cpus is to buy it discard it or relocate it and then put a better cpu in the system with the intention being the upgrade later if your intention is to upgrade later why not provide an igt if i'm the type of person who's going to upgrade a cpu later then i probably might want to just sit around and wait to buy a video card to in which case my GP would make this more arguable for intel you can't do that here though there's no means of troubleshooting and look we don't normally like the iGPS we don't even talk about them in the reviews of the case cube part but the reason it's being talked about now is because it was removed and i'm not sure there was a functional reason to do so so it does just kind of seem weird and it's not like the price went down for the consumer if this cpu we're $30 cheaper than the 7700 k that kind of makes sense and then you can at least mentally tell yourself ok it i'm saving $30 on the cpu so i can invest there anymore on the motherboard or something like that but that's not how it works here that should largely outline our stance on the cpu let's look at the benchmark numbers starting with thermals and as always you can find our full testing methodology link in the description below the thermals here we're using a crack in X 50 to completely max out on the fans and the pump we've used this for our thermals for some time now and we're also logging liquid temperature which allows us to look at the Delta between the liquid temperature the CPU package and the CPU cores so we can figure out how well the CPU die is transferring its heat to the IHS and then into the cooler starting with just the 77 40 X and its stock configuration with a navy X workload we found that the CPU tended to operate around 1.7 7v core when Auto V core was used on our ACS prime board and it does change per board and that was with a CPU temperature peaking at around 75 to 76 Celsius on the package for about 74 to 75 C for a peak averaged core temperature in this time our liquid temperature only increases from about 29 or 30 C to about 35 C for a delta of about 6 C start to end of the test the last time we showed this data was for the 77 100 K review when we noted that the 7700 K was running pretty hot even compared to its 6700 K predecessor part of this seems to be that there's poor transfer from the CDs diets of IH s on the cooler as the liquid temperature doesn't really move all that much even when testing it for an hour and again this is with a crack in X 62 maxed out and we're still around 74 to 75 C so let's CPU runs hot if we were to drop the fan speeds around 1050 rpm which is pretty bearable and you can see in our CPU cooler testing the temperatures would rise substantially to the point where it really wouldn't be worth dropping the fan speed and less powerful coolers wouldn't be as effective comparing now to the overclocked version of the CPU at 5.1 gigahertz with a V core of one point three seven we're looking at a temperature that's bumping into the 100 Celsius TJ Max limiter causing severe clock jobs that bring down our OC the chip can clearly handle it but we need a lot more than even a 280 millimeter cooler with maxed out fan and pomp RPMs in a room with an ambient of about 22 to 23 C so it's again pretty hot we just weren't stable below one point three seven volts and at least with the five point one gigahertz clock for AVX instructions but we were stable at one point three five for non AVX instructions the next interesting comparison will be between the 7700 K and the 77 40 X this is the last one we're publishing for now but we do have a lot more data to dig into for some future content for this comparison both CPUs are clocked to 4.5 gigahertz with a 1.2 volts v core and we're running non AVX thermal test to compare these non AVX thermals between the CPUs they're roughly the same when at the same voltage 1.2 0 volts with about a 68 to 70 Celsius range most differences in thermals between the two CPUs can be attributed to motherboard changes primarily motherboard Auto V core that might run a higher voltage on one socket than the other more thermal discussion in the link in the description below as always but now we're going to move on to a few test before getting to these this CPU again is basically at 7700 KS so we're going to be comparing that primarily to a 7700 K to show when and if there are differences because of that there won't be a lot of discussion comparing it to other parts and that's not because we hate the other parts it's because they were compared against already in our Aizen 5 reviews so if you would like to see discussion on the non 77 X X parts then check the r5 1600 X review and check the I 970 900 X review for the most up-to-date data and comparison on all of those today it's a focus on the 277 blank chips 100k and 40 X so that we can see how these scaling looks and if it's worth putting it this 7700 K on a three hundred plus dollar motherboard let's look at blender next the i7 7740 x stock cpu completes our scene render in 42 minutes which is basically the same as the I 777 hard case forty two point four minute result basically the same overclocking that 77 40 X gets us to 37 about 1 minutes for an improvement in performance of about 13 percent over baseline then again you shouldn't buy either of these CPS or blender rendering anyway it's just a good tool to look at the difference between them if rendering is the primary goal the r7 1700 would do significantly better at 33 minutes and would cost the same and then you can overclock it granted the i7 series CPUs do time to hold an advantage in gaming but we'll get there looking at fire strike next the 77 40 X runs a physics frame rate of 40 6.49 FPS with the 77 higher KS stock CPU at 45.96 fps this is within test to test variants actually and isn't release exam can't difference overclocking gets us to 50 2.44 and 50 2.16 FPS on the X and case Keys respectively both at 5.1 gigahertz so again the same sorting by physics scores instead shows us the same thing the 77 40 X with its 14,000 645 score is about 1.2 percent ahead of the 7700 K with time spy it's more of the same 77 40 Xbox CPU runs the CPU frame rate of 20 FPS with the 7700 K SR CPU at nineteen point six six FPS for the same test let's say 1.7 percent difference overclocking gets us to 1.88 FPS versus 21.4 FPS ami 7700 KOC cpu ashes of the singularity is our next synthetic test with dx12 and puts the 7740 x stock CPF 42.4 FPS for our 1080p high test with lows at 33 9 and 31 FPS 0.1% the 77 100k runs its average at 41 point 5 FPS lows 32.7 and 39 1 and 0.1% that puts the 77 40 X at 2% I have this 7 700 K CPU a little bit boring there so we'll move on to ashes escalation which we haven't fully updated with all our CPUs yes but it does have the 1700 K stock CPU at 40 4.3 FPS average 36.4 1% low and 33 2 is your boundary so close the 77 40 X is measurably but imperceptibly better at 40 4.8 m/s average or 1.1 percent faster this change like all the others could largely be chalked up to the fact that even just the motherboards are different so there might be differences in things like DBC latency and other aspects of the board Grand Theft Auto 5 isn't much different the stock 77 40 X measured at 149 FPS average with 108 fps 1% blows with these 7700 K stock CPU at 149 the to overclocked skis are different by less than 1 FPS and are within tests of test variants they are effectively identical there are more gaming results in the article normally we would go through at least one or two more of them here consider Nash's is basically synthetic but to save you the time they're all the same the difference between these CPUs is barely there at all sometimes the 70 time one hard K is in the lead in some of the games sometimes this one's in the lead and when I say in the lead I mean the bar is bigger but that doesn't mean that it's outside of test variants and there's plenty of differences just in the motherboards for example the maturity of this chipset X 299 is not quite as far along as the 270 so there are instances where we saw improved performance on the 77 hard K V 270 platform then on this one even though they're technically the same clock and solve that is the chipsets being different solve it is the maturity of the drivers but at the end of the day we'll come out to be about the same fps so no point in going through more of it as for the conclusion on this CPU the i7 7740 X it's very plain and simple this isn't worth buying do not buy it if you want to buy a CPU that is really gaming focus from Intel the 7700 K with a Z 270 it makes a lot more sense the CPUs themselves are the same price let's say that this CPU were somehow attainable or obtainable on the z 270 platform if you could get one of these on z2 70 would it be worth buying well probably not it depends but ultimately even if they were on the same platform they cost the same price and they were both being sold alongside one another what you end up with is a 100 mega Hertz faster base totally irrelevant for most of us because if you're gaming it's probably going to be pinned at 4.5 anyway and that's the same on both of them and you lose the IGP and technically the TDP rating on this is higher on this one than the other I don't know why maybe the base clock pushes it the extra 20 or so watts or maybe they're just accounting for the high temperature scenarios that the 7700 K exhibited but either way the only real difference is that IGP and a hundred megahertz on the base so it's not worth buying this waste of money to get it for the X 299 platform if you want to buy the X 299 platform there are some really good motherboards out there putting this on it would just really be an insult to the board's so if you go X 299 get a good board for it and then get a decent cpu for it doesn't have to be a 10 core but something better than these so that you can actually use everything on the board and then then you have a platform that might be worth using there are still some reasons that X 299 isn't perfect we talked about those in the 7900 X review and he gives them quite a run for their money in the consumer department where you might be rendering in blender or whatever as a freelancer or a semi professional or someone who doesn't work for a large studio where you'll have workstations with Intel products but for most of our audience things like rendering Rison is quite good at it for things like gaming the 7700 K is as good as this on a cheaper platform and it's way more streamlined and less confusing with more mature drivers a more mature chipset and the driver support from the motherboard vendors and they've gone through all their revisions to fix all the problems with the first round of boards so that's the best way to go if you don't want to screw around with things and you just want to play games with a high frame rate and that's it so that's all for this one as always links in the description below for more information go to patreon.com/scishow and axis to help out directly and then store that gamers next to slot net to 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