Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed now not that long ago I compared the horizon 5 1400 1600 and r7 1700 in half a dozen CPU intensive games and found the six core 1600 offered a nice 40 percent performance increase over the quad core 1400 that said though the eight core 1700 was just three percent faster than 1600 so it seemed quite clear for those building a new high-end desktop gaming rig the r5 1600 was the sweet spot with its six cores and twelve threads those findings had many viewers that were more interested in building an Intel system asking if they should buy the core i7 7700 K which is a quad core processor or the new six-course 7800 X I'd say the reason why so many were asking this question is down to the fact that the 700 cost us $1 us more and we fed as I said you get two extra cores but you also gain access to Intel's latest and greatest high-end desktop platform of course there are other cost considerations here but I'll discuss them more towards the end of the video so before we jump to the benchmark results here is a quick look at how the two Intel CPUs compare on paper as you can see the 7700 K has a clear clock speed advantage out of the box that's what I will be overclocking both CPUs perhaps the biggest difference seen here is the cache design the 7 100x features six times more level two cache only about the same amount of level 3 cache of course thus every 100x also packs 50% more cores and with that the TDP has been increased by a little over 50% so to test these two processes out in terms of gaming performance we have 30 games in total all of which were tested using the geforce gtx 980ti on both the core i7 300 X and 7700 K the 7x was configured with 32 gigabytes of ddr4 3,200 memory in quad-channel while the 7700 K was armed with 16 gigabytes of dual channel memory for comparison we tested both processors stock so as to say in their out-of-the-box configuration as well as overclocked configuration the 7700 K has no trouble hitting 4.9 gigahertz so that's where we've tested it and the semi 100 X was fairly comfortable at 4.7 gigahertz ok that's pretty much everything so let's jump into the results first up we have world of tanks not a particularly demanding game but I'm pretty much throwing everything we normally test at these CPUs here we see that out of the box is 77 okay is 9% fast and the 700x not a huge margin though and it was surprising to find that what overclocked the six course if you still couldn't match the 77 okay anyway this isn't a CPU intensive game as I said and since we are pushing over 100 FPS at all times the margins are somewhat irrelevant Grand Theft Auto 5 is often used for testing CPU performance and here we find some unexpected results comparing the minimum result we see the 77 okay is a massive 30% faster than the 700 X overclocking reduced that margin to 18% but still given that there is just a 4% difference in clock speed once overclocked this is a huge win for the quad-core CPU again when overclocked the 700 X is still slower than the stock 7700 K 10% slower in fact when comparing the minimum frame rate since player unknowns battlegrounds is such a popular title right now I thought why throw it into the mix so that's exactly what I've done if you're playing with a dual-core or lower end quad-core processor for example and things aren't going that well don't bother spending big by investing in the 7800 X according to my testing you will see almost 30% more performance when using the 7700 K but Witcher 3 is often talked about for being a very CPU intensive game and to a degree it is that said the 77 ok is more than capable of getting the most over 1080 Ti in this title and here we see much the same performance across the board the section I use such as rise of the Tomb Raider features varied environments out in the open frame rates are quite low while indoors we see them rise much higher anyway what is important to note here is that overclocking made little difference the performance of the 700 X while I suspected 7700 K was probably able to get the most out of the 1080i again the 7700 K was the superior processor in this title offering just shy of 20% more performance regrettably I decided to test ashes of the singularity at using the max quality settings or the crazy preset as they call it and that was a bit of a mistake as the GTX 10 AGI became the primary bottleneck here that said with well over 60 FPS at all times that's certainly more than you need to play this intensive realtime strategy game now these results are very very interesting for a few reasons first of all the six core sea if you get absolutely blasted by the slightly higher clocked quad-core now you might be thinking these are results don't look right and I have to say I'm with you on that one I did triple check the numbers though and they are indeed accurate interestingly this is very reminiscent of what we saw when comparing the eight core rise in seven 1800 X to the core i7 serving seven heard K the horizon processor in that scenario was much much lower than the 77 okay that said though given what I'm seeing here the 1800 X might actually be faster than the overclocked 7800 X in this title so that's something I'm keen to check out soon the divisions again that we found to be very GPU bound in the past and as I said this is a 30-game comparison so it's just thrown in to see if there's anything unusual going on here like what we saw in Far Cry primal as you can see though there isn't so let's move on hit man's again that's proven to be quite demanding and can take advantage of six core CPUs that said the seventy-seven decay is by far the more superior CPU in this title offering 50% more performance than the seven 100x interestingly once again overclocked in the 1700 X doesn't really help close up the gap we weren't seeing any kind of throttling issues I was on the lookout for those using Hardware monitor oh yeah it was running at the advertised 4.7 gigahertz the whole time moving on quantum break is another primarily GPU bound title that said though is Far Cry primal and we saw some odd results there anyway here the 7700 K and 7800 X provides similar performance okay so you've got 12 threads no worries over watch we'll put them to good use even so the city 100x isn't able to pull the head of the 77 okay in this title the margins were similar but once again the quad core was consistently faster I never actually include do many my CPU benchmarks and I always get attacked by AMD fanboys for excluding it apparently is a Vulcan based game it should be included I'm not sure why that is but as you can see the 200 FPS frame cap kicks in pretty early here with the 1080 Ti making this a rather pointless test that said though at least this time we do see some decent performance gains from the overclocked 7800 X oddly here is another game where the 700 X is much slower than the 77 okay and yet overclocking doesn't help close the merge and can't really explain why that is maybe someone watching has a theory the 7700 K doesn't gain any from performance either but I would have just assumed at this point we were running into a GPU bottleneck Mirror's Edge catalyst is another game that's primarily GPU bound at least using the ultra quality settings at 1080p with the GTX 980 TI so not much else to say other than the fact that both CPUs enabled exceptional performance f1 2016 is often found giving low to mid-range CPUs a really hard time and while it can take advantage of a six core CPU the 7700 K is just so fast as it is the seven 100x isn't able to capitalize I would have expected Deus Ex mankind device to throw up some results look very GPU limited though surprisingly the 7700 is noticeably faster especially when looking at the minimums overclocked still offered 7% more performance than the 7800 ex Battlefield one was tested on the outskirts of an active 64 player map it's a little easier to replicate the results here anyway the 7700 K was again clearly fast other margins weren't huge but the quad core always served up the best results once upon a time mafia 3 murdered all quad cores like a ruthless gangster these days though it's a lot more mellow and it's happy to get along with all types of CPUs in fact it's now more favorable when it comes to quad cores and like most games prefers those megahertz gears before fore throws up some unexpected results here the 77 RK was 20% faster when comparing the minimum frame rate and 16% faster once both CPUs are overclocked another clear win here for the aging quad core titanfall 2 is never really giving us anything other than GPU bound results and here nothing changes both CPUs push the gtx 1080i to in excess of 130 FPS at all times testing civilization 6 using DirectX 12 you might expect it to favor the six core CPU at least I know I did anyway yet we find quite the opposite here again I went back and reconfirm these results on both systems as they just didn't seem right turns out the other and we find another game where the 7700 K offers almost 30% more performance than the 1700 X dishonored 2 favorites the quad-core CPU by a 12 percent margin when comparing the minimum frame rate and we see much the same when comparing the average frame rate as well the 7700 K is clearly the faster CPU for this title watchdogs to is a heavy CPU user and here the 700x is able to roughly match to 7700 K not something we've seen in all the CPU intensive games tested so far testing with Resident Evil 7 we see the 7 100x does trailer 77 ok by 7% margin when stock but once overclocked both processors deliver similar performance and presumably we are getting the most of the gtx 1080i here veronica's a heavily GPU bound title and we see that again here all configurations provide roughly the same average framerate that said the minimum frame rate does differ a little bit and the overclocked 7700 K does provide the best results wild land is another heavily GPU bound game so the margins are quite close but the 70 Center ok was able to deliver a few extra frames Mass Effect Andromeda is another game that isn't that heavy on the CPU despite the fact that it will spread the load quite evenly across a large number of threads anyway not much to see here is a 77 here ok and 78 her decks provide very similar numbers yet another head-scratcher this time it's dawn of war 3 that provides the puzzling results the 77 ok was 45% faster a litter box and the margin remained much the same once overclocked a very disappointing performance here from Intel's latest 6 core high-end desktop CPU like a lot of the games tested prey isn't very demanding on the CPU this one will play perfectly smooth on a pentium g 4560 for example so no surprises that the 706 pace with the 7700 k here it's quite surprising i would thought by this stage of the video it'd be the other way around but anyway finally we have do it for and this isn't a title I expected the 700 K to fall behind in but once again it has here the 7200 K was 15% faster out of the box we again see another example where overclocked in the 78 her ex doesn't really improve performance prior to when you're overclocking the 700 consumes just 6% more power than the 77 ok and these figures are based on the average consumption recorded in 6 of the games tested so the 700 X certainly isn't being fully utilized here I would expect to see slightly higher power consumption we've both CPU is overclocked with 700 X now consumes 13% more power again not a huge difference it is interesting to note though that while the 700 often didn't see much in the way of added performance from the overclock it did still increase power consumption by 16 percent alright so some very mixed results seen in the games tested and without even telling them up it's quite clear the core i7 see 100x was rather underwhelming the 77 ok clearly seems to be the best option for gamers and while perhaps this is why we have the 77 40 X yeah now that CPU still makes no sense ok so out of the box before we do any tinkering the 77 okay what's on average 11% faster than the seve 800 X across the 30 games tested for the minimum frame rate then overclocked that margin was reduced to 9% and summing up all 30 games this way the semi our X doesn't actually look that bad despite being slower overall here is a look at all the games side by side the average figure is a little different here and this is down to the way that the figures are rounded anyway the 77 ok was 13% faster at the stop clock speeds when comparing the minimum performance in all the games tested as you can see Far Cry primal and Dawn of War 3 were a problem for the 700 X while it also struggle the Hitman Grand Theft Auto 5 Civilization 6 player unknowns battlegrounds and doom roughly half of the games tested did see very little difference between the CPUs and surprisingly of those games quite a few of them were very CPU demanding tunnel such as overwatch ashes of the singularity battlefield 1 and to an extent f1 2016 for those of you that are going to drop a comment below saying that games such as city skylines ARMA 3 and planet coaster for example should have been included as they are very CPU demanding I'm just going to quickly note that no they're not yes it is true that all three games run horribly on quad cores when the action gets going but I can tell you they still run just as horribly on 6 8 and 10 core processors their limitations come from the game engines they're built on or it's just the coding in general you will find much the same for game such as Starcraft 2 for example this is why games such as ashes of the singularity are so impressive moving on identities high-end desktop models aren't really meant to be gaming CPUs but it's not unrealistic to expect that gamers with a bit of cash to splash would be looking at Intel score X lineup particularly the 6 core 7100 x given how well it over clocks the extreme memory ballot and the fact that this is Intel's premium desktop platform you'd be forgiven for thinking that 700x would actually be superior to the 77 or ek at least in the latest and greatest titles this sadly just isn't the case in fact far from it and given what we saw in comparing the risin 5 1400 1600 we know that some of these games can make good use of 6 core CPUs you could argue the 7700 superior IPC performance and higher frequencies makes up for what it lacks in cause and this is why the 1700 X wasn't able to show the kind of advantage you might have expected but in my opinion it goes beyond that for me that just doesn't really explain why the 1700 X was just flat-out slow in this comparison for quite a few of the games tested at a guess I'd say the reason for this is down to the restructuring of the cache hierarchy when compared to the 7700 K the 7800 acts has quadrupled the level 2 cache per core while the shared level 3 has been reduced by 30% per core it is believed it was restructuring combined with the way this new cache works make Scarlett X more suited for server related tasks and less efficient when it comes to things such as gaming and well we're certainly seeing that here had the core i7 simmer her ex actually beat in the 77 okay then we would have to weigh up things like platform costs and the the additional cost of the processor and work out if it's actually worth spending more on the semi 100x but of course given the results none of that is necessary if you're a gamer get the 7700 K or alternatively look to AMD's rise and line up speaking of which I'm keen add the horizon 7 1700 to these results and I'll aim to do that next week so stay tuned for that I'm your host Steve see you again next time guys