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Benchmarks Find Intel Core i7-7700K Better Than i7-7800X for Gaming

Raevenlord

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Over at Techspot, Steven Walton managed to get a hold of Intel's new six-core, 12-thread Core i7-7800X CPU, and chose to take it for a spin over a levy of gaming benchmarks. The results don't bode particularly well for Intel's new top i7 offering, though: it is soundly beat by its smaller, svelter brother in virtually all gaming tasks.

Out-of-the-box results are somewhat in line with what we would expect: the Core i7-7700K does bring about a base clock increased by 700 MHz compared to the i7-7800X (4.2 GHz vs 3.5 GHz), and has a higher boost clock to boot (4.5 GHz vs 4 GHz.) And as we've seen over and over again, including with Intel rival AMD's Ryzen offerings, frequency usually trumps core count when it comes to performance when applications are exposed more than four cores. And this leads to Walton's results: the Core i7 7700K is still king in pure FPS terms, coming in with a much more attractive proposition than the 7800X in both minimum and maximum FPS, as well as power consumption.





Now, to be fair, most of us were probably expecting that: consumer application optimization for high core-count processors (if we can actually call a six-core a high core-count processor in a soon to be Threadripper-infused world, but I digress) is sorely lacking. However, what really paints Intel's i7-7800X in a bad light is that its performance continues to be lacking even when it has a frequency advantage over the 7700K. As you can see in the performance metrics, a Core 17-7800X overclocked to 4.7 GHz (with a 500 MHz advantage over stock clocks of the 7700K and 200 MHz over its Boost clock) still performs slower than it. The stock 7700K has 5% higher minimum and maximum framerates than the 7800X, despite being clocked lower, having a ridiculously lower amount of L2 cache, and having about the same total L3 cache (which actually results in an about 30% lower available L3 cache per core.) And these lower frame rates are delivered with a 41% higher idle power consumption, and 23% higher gaming power consumption. Check the source link for some detailed benchmarks. As for all this, it seems that while Intel likes to take digs on AMD for their "glued-together" desktop dies repurposed for servers, Intel's 7800X, which has its cache hierarchy and core interconnect re-architected for servers, may be little more than a repurposed server CPU for the desktop crowds...

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
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why wouldn't it be? Aside from the difference in clocks, it is to be expected Kabylake>Skylake-X
 
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At this point, I don't even think Intel even knows what they are doing...
 
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We already knew that they'll perform less when they decided to lower the L3 cache amount to price the CPUs lower. (to line up with Ryzen)

It's really pathetic from Intel. I am waiting for the 6 cores on consumer lga!!!
 
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yes they lowered the L3 cache... but it has 4 times the L2 cache pr. core soooo witch is more "expensive" to produce. so I guess you’re wrong there.

But what is the news in this for gaming it is GHz over cores as usual... that is what AMD is NOT getting....
 
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yes they lowered the L3 cache... but it has 4 times the L2 cache pr. core soooo witch is more "expensive" to produce. so I guess you’re wrong there.

But what is the news in this for gaming it is GHz over cores as usual... that is what AMD is NOT getting....

Huh, yeah, i didn't see that, well idk wtf Intel did for it to be less powerful than the 7700k.
 
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But.. but... the 6 core is more "future proof".... oh wait, that doesnt apply here because is an Intel chip, only on Ryzen :D
 

Raevenlord

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A 4.5Ghz kaby-lake quad core faster than a 4Ghz skylake six-core in gaming.

In other news, half life 3 doesn't seem to come out soon.

Actually, that should read "a 4.7 GHz Skylake slower than a 4.2-4.5 GHz Kaby Lake while consuming more power." I think that's the news here.
 
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Intel X CPUs have some quirks in regard to memory access and that might explain the gaming results. Some websites talked about that in detail.
 

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Actually, that should read "a 4.7 GHz Skylake slower than a 4.2-4.5 GHz Kaby Lake while consuming more power." I think that's the news here.

That's surprising, tbh: i knew Skylake would lose some of the benches because of the changes to the L2 / L3 but i didn't expect it to lose almost all of them. In some games it loses quite badly, even!

AverageSlide.png

Too bad they didn't include the comparison of the 7800X overclocked VS the 7700K stock.
 

bug

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Just throwing these in here:
- cores are useless when unused;
- two threads can run just fine on one core if combined they don't push it over 100% and don't need more than the available cache;
- it's nice to know the boost speed, but guess at which speed the CPU runs when several cores are used for prolonged periods of time?
 
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When Intel is doing AMD GPU-style rebranding, you know they're officially out of ideas.
 

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When Intel is doing AMD GPU-style rebranding, you know they're officially out of ideas.
What's rebranding about adding more cores to existing products?

Intel's strategy is not even surprising, I'm pretty sure they could have added more cores for years, they just weren't motivated to do it. Now with Zen out they're finally adding those (low hanging fruits) while probably scrambling for a new architecture in the background - to be released in a year or, more likely, two.
 
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What's rebranding about adding more cores to existing products?

Intel's strategy is not even surprising, I'm pretty sure they could have added more cores for years, they just weren't motivated to do it. Now with Zen out they're finally adding those (low hanging fruits) while probably scrambling for a new architecture in the background - to be released in a year or, more likely, two.

The additional cores are the only change, since Skylake what's really new? They put a new name tag on the same stuff, bump the clocks a bit, increase the TDP to match.
 

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Why am I not surprised.

In almost every comparison I've seen the HEDT CPUs weren't any better than the consumer CPUs for gaming. Total waste of money if trying to improve framerate. They're better for heavily multitasking scenarios. I'm surprised that here it fails even with a clock advantage. @Raevenlord are they the same architecture?
 

bug

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The additional cores are the only change, since Skylake what's really new? They put a new name tag on the same stuff, bump the clocks a bit, increase the TDP to match.

Improved SpeedShift, more PCIe lanes, support for 10bit/channel in the IGP... Not groundbreaking, but enough to make it not a rebrand.
Oh and Intel claims an improved manufacturing process, but since we can't measure that...
 
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People point benchmark too much
Benchmark just for comparison but the real life maybe they would be the same since just few can utilize it to the max
 
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"I triple checked the numbers though and they are indeed accurate. Interestingly this is reminiscent of what we saw when comparing the, the 8-core Ryzen 7 1800X for example was much much slower than the 7700K. In fact, given what I'm seeing here, the 1800X might actually be faster than the overclocked 7800X in this title so that's something I'm keen to check out soon."

Wow, that really says it all.
 
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Improved SpeedShift, more PCIe lanes, support for 10bit/channel in the IGP... Not groundbreaking, but enough to make it not a rebrand.
Oh and Intel claims an improved manufacturing process, but since we can't measure that...

Yeah, nothing on the architecture level, and moving the L2/L3 cache sizes around so far seems to be counter productive in this segment. Its a clear sign that the Core arch is optimized and that's that. Improved process? That is exactly the marketing of AMD's RX580 which has higher TDP for a clock bump. That's not an improved process, it's giving it more juice and a higher TDP cap.

I agree, technically its not a straight rebrand, but this is like a new VW Golf release - you get your car lights in a different shape, they updated the styling a bit, and add a fancy letter on the back so it seems to go faster. If you pick a Diesel, you get the cheating engine for free. (Couldn't resist)
 
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With the 8700k coming out, the 7800x joins the 7740x and 7640x as completely useless Skylake-x products.

Perhaps they will show a SLI benchmarks where the extra pci-e lanes of skylake-x will offset the dismal gaming performance, but I won't hold my breath.
 
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"I triple checked the numbers though and they are indeed accurate. Interestingly this is reminiscent of what we saw when comparing the, the 8-core Ryzen 7 1800X for example was much much slower than the 7700K. In fact, given what I'm seeing here, the 1800X might actually be faster than the overclocked 7800X in this title so that's something I'm keen to check out soon."

Wow, that really says it all.
I'm sure you are talking about gaming only. Kinda bummer since not all is measured by games though.
 
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The 7800x might still beat the 1800x in other benches buy those are not in the same price bracket. Especially when comparing the 1700/1700x cpus.

AMD is also guilty of taking a 'step back' with there insane Vega power consumption.
 
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It's the new Mesh inter-core architecture on the 7800X compared to the older Ring Bus on 7700K.

The Mesh network is running at 2.4 GHz compared to the Ring Bus at 4 GHz. A few people in the Tech Spot comments section suggested overclocking the Mesh from 2.4 GHz to 3.0 GHz.
 
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