Gadgetory

intel's $1,000 i 979 hundred X has been released in the wild and so far around the internet it has been receiving pretty negative press and in some ways rightfully so before we get on to this review I will point out and have to get it off my chest what the hell are you doing Intel this is a one thousand dollar flagship CPUs and you're putting thermal paste between the IHS and the day I mean come on it's like buying a Ferrari and then getting the keys to it and realizing the paint jobs all messed up it's not right if you're going to sell a premium product please make it premium and or aspect and not skimp on things like the thermal piece which actually affects performance that without a side let's get on with the review and actually see what's good about this CPU and how it performs in gaming and also productivity welcome back to check yes city this is brain comity you guys today with a review of this CPU right here the flagship 7900 axon before we get on to the results which are kind of conflicting since they do differ from others I will give a big THANK YOU to asrock for sending out the motherboard and CPU to do this review and also another big thank you to steve from hardware and box for sending over an engineering sample to double check and make sure it wasn't all in my head when it comes to some of the problems however you guys are looking for an awesome X 299 board then asrock do have a lot of different flavors available they have the X 299 kilo they also have the X 299 Tai Chi which I use predominantly for these benchmarks we also have the s 299 gaming o 9 which is a really good motherboard so they have all price points covered with exceptional components on the vrm not only that overclocking was a breeze on this motherboard and everything worked out really well even from the get-go I'll put a link in the description below where you can find out more so first things first with skylake X it does have a similar name to skylake but it shouldn't be confused with Scarlett which is also similar to cavi Lake which is also similar to kV Lake X essentially in way skylake X uses a different architecture in the ways that the cause communicate with each other on skylake for example they use a ring bus which is a ring around the outside of the cause that allows the chords to communicate to each other in a bi-directional manner scaling X on the other hand uses what's called the mesh architecture where there are additional points and pieces of communication to allow the course through efficient communicate with each other when there's higher core count because on the ring bus as the core counts grew until found themselves with exponential power increases for the efficiency of the cores themselves so to counteract this we now have what is known as skylake X and AMD on the other hand they use what they call the Infinity fabric to connect up CCX modules so it's a little bit complex but one thing to note with the 7900 X is it does have a reduced level three cache size and it also has an increased level two cache size which how this would pan out in productivity and gaming had everyone second-guessing ever without further ado let's check out what this flagship is capable maybe yeah you so the results are in and you guys are probably wondering why some of my benchmarks are differing to other reviewers and I also had similar results to other reviewers a few days ago it wasn't until I went to finalize this review today that I went to retest things and I was shocked I was getting some games that were getting extra 20% in certain scenarios take for example Far Cry primal when I initially tested this a couple of days ago I was getting around 94 95 FPS on average out of the box then I retested it today and I'm getting over 110 fps incredible and substantial increase in numbers also I had conflicting results before I did today's revisit on the benchmarks I was getting some benchmarks that were beating to 7700 K but then some that we're losing quite substantially even though now the 7900 X does still trade blows of the 7700 K is more as expected with the processor that carries the same I pcs at 7700 K and also clocks to similar levels so delving further into the productivity benchmarks reveals that these 70 900 X is one mammoth of a workhorse if you guys saw those Adobe Premiere Pro final render times this thing beats everything and when you overclock it you actually extract even more performance every other benchmark I did the 7-zip the excel also the pros own it's mixed down all this was beating the competition however that's as expected with a flagship product and then when we contrast that with games you now have a CPU that essentially can do it all I know people are thinking oh I want to get a Productivity more cause more threads or should I have to go as a gaming CPU that can't do productivity as well as other CPUs with the 7900 X there's pretty much no compromise and even in certain games it was actually beating the 7700 K with my 1080 Ti I was really shocked to see this in certain games we take for instance f1 2016 that was actually utilizing all 20 threads I was really shocked to see this result and that resulted in a lot better benchmark numbers in terms of average and minimum fps so the kicker for me was the streaming benchmark this thing performed exceptionally well when it came to using xsplit at a 5 megabits per second output at 1080p 60fps it dropped literally nothing off those FPS numbers when you compare that to the rise and 7 1700 which only dropped a little bit and also when you compare that 7700 K although it does have more cause and more threads to thank for that I also believe the ability to use quad channel memory also helps to 7900 X a great deal so basically if you're a guy that wants to do it all the 7900 X is indeed doing it all however there are some caveats to this product and that is first of all the thermal paste on the die connecting to the IHS I did test this with two different CPUs so the one that I got sent I deleted that straightaway and in hindsight I probably should have tested the temperatures before and after on the exact same CPU so I thought I had two CPUs I thought that performs similar but they actually didn't though we're using different wattages at the same voltage at the same clock speeds and it could dip it by actually quite a lot one CPU was drawing around 160 something watts then the other CPU was going closer to 200 watts so I actually had to counteract this and down the voltage a little bit on one to match off the Watts and when I did this the temperature difference wasn't so big I was getting around a three degree difference between a deleted CPU and a lidded C for you however there was one thing and that was the delay the CPU was using more watts so it should be putting out more heat essentially and this was a problem it means that the littered CPU with the cheap thermal piece is performing worser than a deal in CPU with liquid metal on it and this really isn't a good thing for the consumer who's spending a thousand dollars and wants the best performance not only in the numbers that are putting out on the screen but also in the product itself I believe it until soldered this thing to the heatsink to the die don't have a lot less complaints at least from me anyway there now it's time to talk about the power consumption which around the internet everyone's saying this thing is a heater it'll serve you well in winter and it certainly can if you overclock it high enough I found for a 10 quart 20 threaded processor at 4.6 gigahertz this thing was burning over 200 watts however you have to keep in mind that it's the only 10 core 20 threaded processor that goes to 4.6 gigahertz when we look at even the 8.16 threaded processors out there any of those can't go as high as this which has two more cores and for more threads and furthermore if we look at the out-of-the-box settings which is 4 gigahertz which is really high per tank or 20 threads that performs at around 140 watts power usage in i-264 so as actually not too surprised with the power consumption figures they weren't abysmal world-ending in actually a ways I've got respect for skylake X because until have essentially pulled off the safety breaks and allow the CPU architecture to go sky-high at the result of being very hot on both of the RM and the CPU and that essentially is the option for enthusiasts who want to overclock this thing as high as they can get it and if they have extra money for custom water cooling or not both the CPU but also the vrm then this will allow them to get really high figures so most people out there I'd recommend getting the CPU getting an all-in-one getting a $230 X $2.99 motherboard and then just calling it a day at around four point four gigahertz or even four point three or four point two however above 4.4 gigahertz this thing does get extremely hot in both cases of the lidded and the deleted CPU I was getting around a hundred degrees Celsius and it was actually starting to throttle after a little while in I 264 after a good 20 minutes however with that said I was still able to get the benchmarks done a 4.6 gigahertz so even in the real world the gaming figures in the benchmarks I don't believe you'll ever get to 100 degrees but it's still good to know that this CPU does get really hot and you will need really good cooling to keep it under control so the next improbably the last thing to talk about with x2 9 9 is the raid keys which I don't agree with I think Intel if someone's paying a lot of money for a motherboard next to an unknown chipset you should just give them all the options for free however it's not as bad as people think and with the raid keys if you have thought a three for example it doesn't even pertain to that so for instance if I want to use my raid 0 raid 1 raid 5 over my side of 3 which is what I use it for I'd have to pay and tell anything I just have to buy next $2.99 motherboard but what it does relate to is the adding cards for nvme drives if you have some of these and you want to essentially network them and raid one or raid 5 array 10 then you do have to pay Intel for a license key however raid 0 should still work with the adding card I believe MDOT 2's that are added into the motherboard itself still are able to be rated at perfectly fine without paying any additional money so now it's conclusion time and who is the 7900 x4 what well I think it's actually for everybody but providing you can afford it it's a $1,000 CPU and firstly the biggest thing that I hate about it is the fact that it's got thermal paste on it it should have been soldered from the IHS to the die I think if they had done that they would have copped anywhere near the negativity that they're getting now also those raid keys that that is an extra feature that is being introduced on x2 99 itself I think z2 70 motherboards and also even previous x2 99 or I mean x99 motherboard don't support that feature however for $1,000 it's nowhere near as efficient in terms of price performance as the i7 7700 K for gaming and also the horizon 7700 for pretty much everything but what it is is the best in slot in terms of the CPU it is a flagship and it does perform like so and also you will need keep in mind expensive gear you will need an X $2.99 motherboard which does run higher than a z2 70 or an x3 70 motherboard and you will generally need more expensive cooling 240mm radiator would be a minimum in my opinion for one of these if you wish to overclock if you don't wish to overclock you will get away with an air cooler and out of the box it actually does run really well and there actually is no need to deal it and on the note of deleting I wouldn't recommend it with such an expensive CPU even though I did it myself hey guys hope you enjoyed today's review and if you did then be sure to hit that like button this one took me a long time I just spend days rechecking things just like the Rison review and then making sure it wasn't all in my head and then double-checking things and then triple checking things and what we have here is the 7900 ex review but one thing as well with the two different samples I was really surprised the 7900 ex retail sample is actually different to the 7900 ex engineering sample for the microcode and that actually caused issues in the BIOS for instance on the motherboard I had this problem where the idle temperatures were just spiking the BRM so hot and this was in idle one was only using 50 watt however when I changed over the engineer example it didn't have this problem at the same setting then I changed settings around and there was a little different happening but anyway guys I'll catch you in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye