Intel X299, Kaby Lake-X & Skylake-X MegaThread! FAQ and Resources

[goldstone77]

The Skylake-X Mess Explored: Thermal Paste And Runaway Power
by Igor Wallossek July 10, 2017 at 6:00 AM
"In the wake of Skylake-X's introduction and disappointing results from our overclocking attempts, we put a lot of thought into the power and thermal issues plaguing Intel's highest-end desktop CPUs. These roadblocks boil down to a couple of salient points that we'd like to explore in as much depth as possible:
(1) Skylake-X at its stock settings can barely be cooled during normal operation. This is due to its power consumption being extremely high in some situations, and its thermal paste keeping waste heat from being dissipated effectively.
(2) There’s barely any room for enthusiasts to overclock. Also, many motherboards limit Skylake-X CPUs further due to poor design choices, such as insufficient VRM cooling. Those looking for high overclocks need not apply."

"Manual Overclocking & Conclusion
The Motherboard Manufacturers’ Duty
Ultimately, we’re looking at power consumption numbers similar to some high-end graphics cards when we start messing with Skylake-X. AMD’s FX-9590X doesn’t even come close to these results, if that means anything to you. This means motherboard manufacturers need to start spending money on better components and cooling solutions to take care of those components. Otherwise, long-term reliability will be hard to guarantee. Ultra-durable and military-class components don't have to be exclusive to top-end products; they can bolster mid-range platforms, too."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/-intel-skylake-x-overclocking-thermal-issues,5117.html?utm_source=th-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170714-th

 

[juanrga]

Core i7-7800X vs. 7700K, 6 or 4-Cores for Gaming?
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 12, 2017
"if you are a gamer get the 7700k or alternatively look to AMD's Ryzen Line-up"

We can see that the the current king of gaming is only 8% faster than the 7800X at 1080p. That is amazing considering that the X-series was not designed for gaming. The six-core for gaming is the forthcoming CofeeLake. On professional stuff the gap between the 7800x and the 7700k is enormous

Therefore whereas awaiting for CoffeLake the recommendation seems to be

1) If you are ONLY a gamer get the 7700k.
2) If you play games and do professional stuff then go for the 7800X.
3) If you play games whereas doing background stuff as streaming then go for the 7800X.

The only exception to the rule 1 is if you are only interested in playing well-threaded games that do use of the extra cores.

 

[juanrga]

The Skylake-X Mess Explored: Thermal Paste And Runaway Power
by Igor Wallossek July 10, 2017 at 6:00 AM
"In the wake of Skylake-X's introduction and disappointing results from our overclocking attempts, we put a lot of thought into the power and thermal issues plaguing Intel's highest-end desktop CPUs. These roadblocks boil down to a couple of salient points that we'd like to explore in as much depth as possible:
(1) Skylake-X at its stock settings can barely be cooled during normal operation. This is due to its power consumption being extremely high in some situations, and its thermal paste keeping waste heat from being dissipated effectively.
(2) There’s barely any room for enthusiasts to overclock. Also, many motherboards limit Skylake-X CPUs further due to poor design choices, such as insufficient VRM cooling. Those looking for high overclocks need not apply."

"Manual Overclocking & Conclusion
The Motherboard Manufacturers’ Duty
Ultimately, we’re looking at power consumption numbers similar to some high-end graphics cards when we start messing with Skylake-X. AMD’s FX-9590X doesn’t even come close to these results, if that means anything to you. This means motherboard manufacturers need to start spending money on better components and cooling solutions to take care of those components. Otherwise, long-term reliability will be hard to guarantee. Ultra-durable and military-class components don't have to be exclusive to top-end products; they can bolster mid-range platforms, too."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/-intel-skylake-x-overclocking-thermal-issues,5117.html?utm_source=th-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170714-th

Professional overclockers as der8auer have shown that thermal paste is excellent and that delidding and applying liquid soldier only brings 4% extra overclocking capability.

Yes, a 10-core Skylake-X consumes lots of power when using AVX-512 units.... because AVX512 provides a lot of performance

About 3x faster than 8-core RyZen, which has 8 x 256bit units, whereas the FX-9590 has only 4 x 256bit units.

Similar power consumption for ~6x higher performance is an excellent in my book.

 

[-Fran-]

Therefore whereas awaiting for CoffeLake the recommendation seems to be

1) If you are ONLY a gamer get the 7700k.
2) If you play games and do professional stuff then go for the 7800X.
3) If you play games whereas doing background stuff as streaming then go for the 7800X.

The only exception to the rule 1 is if you are only interested in playing well-threaded games that do use of the extra cores.

Really? In your mind there's nothing but Intel now?

Cheers!

 

[juanrga]

This is an Intel thread and I am replying to a review of 7000k vs 7800X...

 

[goldstone77]

Even a tomshardware.com review doesn't have a chance here... wow...

 

[8350rocks]

Core i7-7800X vs. 7700K, 6 or 4-Cores for Gaming?
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 12, 2017
"if you are a gamer get the 7700k or alternatively look to AMD's Ryzen Line-up"

We can see that the the current king of gaming is only 8% faster than the 7800X at 1080p. That is amazing considering that the X-series was not designed for gaming. The six-core for gaming is the forthcoming CofeeLake. On professional stuff the gap between the 7800x and the 7700k is enormous

Therefore whereas awaiting for CoffeLake the recommendation seems to be

1) If you are ONLY a gamer get the 7700k.
2) If you play games and do professional stuff then go for the 7800X.
3) If you play games whereas doing background stuff as streaming then go for the 7800X.

The only exception to the rule 1 is if you are only interested in playing well-threaded games that do use of the extra cores.

Are you seriously comparing 10-12 cores to 8 cores?

Really?

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

Core i7-7800X vs. 7700K, 6 or 4-Cores for Gaming?
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 12, 2017
"if you are a gamer get the 7700k or alternatively look to AMD's Ryzen Line-up"

We can see that the the current king of gaming is only 8% faster than the 7800X at 1080p. That is amazing considering that the X-series was not designed for gaming. The six-core for gaming is the forthcoming CofeeLake. On professional stuff the gap between the 7800x and the 7700k is enormous

Therefore whereas awaiting for CoffeLake the recommendation seems to be

1) If you are ONLY a gamer get the 7700k.
2) If you play games and do professional stuff then go for the 7800X.
3) If you play games whereas doing background stuff as streaming then go for the 7800X.

The only exception to the rule 1 is if you are only interested in playing well-threaded games that do use of the extra cores.

Are you seriously comparing 10-12 cores to 8 cores?

Really?

It is evident I am comparing the performance of i7-7800X vs. i7-7700K. One has 6 cores and the other has 4 cores.

 

[goldstone77]

PC Perspective Podcast #458 - 07/13/17
pcper
0:47:10 GIGABYTE X299 AORUS Gaming 3 Motherboard Preview
Published on Jul 13, 2017
They also discuss the problem with VRM's across the board with all X299 manufactures.

 

[Gon Freecss]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRthrOIlS4"][/video]

So Skylake-X is the best architecture for gaming after all (except in some games).

 

[goldstone77]

Looks like the only reason they are lacking in some games is just optimizations.

 

[goldstone77]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw"][/video]
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Intel Core i7-7800X: 30 Game Battle!
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 21, 2017

Ryzen 1600 is tough to beat when it comes to price, performance, and power consumption.
Price has increase on this model to around $210, but B350 motherboards are still under $100.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/mV98TW/amd-ryzen-5-1600-32ghz-6-core-processor-yd1600bbaebox

The 7800X is a tough sell when vs the 1600 when it comes to price, performance, and power consumption.
Price on the 7800X will cost north of $400, and a motherboard in the neighborhood of $250.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/ymtWGX/intel-core-i7-7800x-35ghz-6-core-processor-bx80673i77800x

 

[juanrga]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw"][/video]
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Intel Core i7-7800X: 30 Game Battle!
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 21, 2017

Ryzen 1600 is tough to beat when it comes to price, performance, and power consumption.
Price has increase on this model to around $210, but B350 motherboards are still under $100.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/mV98TW/amd-ryzen-5-1600-32ghz-6-core-processor-yd1600bbaebox

The 7800X is a tough sell when vs the 1600 when it comes to price, performance, and power consumption.
Price on the 7800X will cost north of $400, and a motherboard in the neighborhood of $250.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/ymtWGX/intel-core-i7-7800x-35ghz-6-core-processor-bx80673i77800x

Considering that they tested several GPU-bound games and some few games that were frame-capped, it is not surprising that overclocking the 7800X by 34% only brings 3% extra performance compared to stock 7800X: the CPU is not demonstrating its real performance, because it is being bottlenecked by the rest.

Also we know that SKL-X was run with stock clocks on the mesh interconnect, whereas the RyZen chip was tested with IF interconnect overclocked by using 3200MHz RAM. Overclocking the mesh on SKL-X can improve gaming performance by double digit percents compared to stock settings

Finally, I doubt people will be purchasing the X-series chip only for gaming. The main target is people that does professional stuff and occasionally play games. On professional tasks the six-core 7800X is able to beat the top 8-core RyZen

 

[goldstone77]

Intel Core i9-7960X 16 Core / 32 Threads ‘Skylake-X’ Processor (Eng Sample) Geekbench 4.0 Score Leaked
Author Photo
By Usman Pirzada
8 hours ago
"Geekbench performance of Intel’s $1699 Core i9-7960X CPU leaked – Appears to be an under-clocked engineering sample
The processor scores 5238 points in single core results and 33672 points in the multi core results. While these would be very impressive numbers for any other chip, these are much lower than expected for the 16 core part. In fact, if you take a look at the scores earned by the Core i9-7900X (which is a 10 Core / 20 Thread part) you will see similar performance in almost all categories except the Floating Point and Memory category. The reason for this is obvious – the chip appears to be clocked at 2.5 GHz, which is a very low clock even considering this is a 16 core part."

"The benchmark was conducted on the 21st of July, 2017, 2 days ago. The test system has the following specifications:

OS: Windows 10 64 bit
Motherboard: ASUS PRIME X299-Deluxe
RAM: 32 GB
CPU: Core i9-7960X (16 Cores / 32 Threads)
CPU Clock: 2.51 GHz (All-Core)
L1 Cache: 1 MB
L2 Cache: 16 MB
L3 Cache: 22.5 MB
We also learn something new about the Core i9-7960X from these specifications. Intel has previously not revealed the L3 Cache size of the processor but we can see now that it will be 22.5 MB. This is in accordance to the leaks that we have seen previously and basically acts as a confirmation for the same. As far as competition from AMD goes (and even a comparison to the older Skylake-X parts), I took the liberty of adding AMD’s Threadripper 1950X score in the following chart as well (which is also a 16 Core / 32 Thread part):"

"As you can see Core i9-7900X currently leads the charts in terms of performance per $ (as far as Geekbench v4.0 result goes). Keep in mind however, that these results are very different from compute benchmarks such as the Cinebench R15 where the Threadripper parts vastly outperform Intel’s. In those scenarios, AMD parts are roughly 40% better performance per dollar based on Cinebench numbers for the AMD Threadripper parts. Since a very large market exists for rendering applications for these chips, they are going to sell like hot cakes. AMD has indeed brought the world of high core count CPUs into the hands of the average consumer.

The Core i9-7960X however, has an absolutely abysmal price/performance ratio at these numbers. The only explanation for this score is that this is an engineering sample and judging from the 2.5 GHz clock rate – that seems very probable. A clock rate increase (all-core) of 500 MHz is expected at the very least if the final retail versions are to have any hope of a meaningful value proposition. You can check out the complete Geekbench score over here."

http://wccftech.com/intel-core-i9-7960x-skylake-x-processor-geekbench-4-0-score-leaked/

 

[goldstone77]

Intel Mesh, Does Overclocking it Fix Skylake-X?
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 19, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTQ6ymQIY64
3GHz Mesh overclock

 

[juanrga]

Intel Mesh, Does Overclocking it Fix Skylake-X?
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Jul 19, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTQ6ymQIY64
3GHz Mesh overclock

As demonstrated above they tested in GPU-bound and frame-limited situations. This is the reason why overclocking the 7800X by 34% only brings 3% extra performance compared to stock. On such situations it doesn't matter if we push the core to 5GHz, the uncore to 3.2GHz or if we replace the CPU by one was 10x faster. The FPS will remain similar because the CPU is being bottlenecked by the rest of the system/configuration. When the CPU is not bottlenecked, overclocking the mesh brings up to double digit percent gains compared to stick settings

 

[-Fran-]

Anandtech's review for the weird family members of the HEDT platform:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11549/the-intel-kaby-lake-x-i7-7740x-and-i5-7640x-review-the-new-single-thread-champion-oc-to-5ghz

Cheers!

EDIT: My i7 2700K is still king of the hill for games! lol

 

[-Fran-]

Toms' take on the i7 7820X: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-7820x-skylake-x,5127.html

Interesting information there as well.

Boiling lake indeed.

Cheers!

 

[juanrga]

Leak on the higher core models

 

[juanrga]

The hardware unboxed 30 game Battle is clearly wrong because overclocking the i7-7800X by 34% did only bring 3% higher framerates.

The author now acknowledges there was some problem with his review

However, the problem is not in the SKL-X chip because the KBL chips was also bottlenecked. He overclocked the kabylake chip by 16% and performance only increased by 2%. The problem is in another part. He tested in frame-limiting and GPU-bound situations and that is why overclocking the Intel chips didn't bring any sensible performance gain.

 

[goldstone77]

The hardware unboxed 30 game Battle is clearly wrong because overclocking the i7-7800X by 34% did only bring 3% higher framerates.

The author now acknowledges there was some problem with his review

However, the problem is not in the SKL-X chip because the KBL chips was also bottlenecked. He overclocked the kabylake chip by 16% and performance only increased by 2%. The problem is in another part. He tested in frame-limiting and GPU-bound situations and that is why overclocking the Intel chips didn't bring any sensible performance gain.

Juan you forgot to mention that Hardware Unboxed also included this picture of his overclocked 7800X!

https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/888225519141093376

Referenced from the pinned comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw&feature=youtu.be

 

[juanrga]

The hardware unboxed 30 game Battle is clearly wrong because overclocking the i7-7800X by 34% did only bring 3% higher framerates.

The author now acknowledges there was some problem with his review

However, the problem is not in the SKL-X chip because the KBL chips was also bottlenecked. He overclocked the kabylake chip by 16% and performance only increased by 2%. The problem is in another part. He tested in frame-limiting and GPU-bound situations and that is why overclocking the Intel chips didn't bring any sensible performance gain.

Juan you forgot to mention that Hardware Unboxed also included this picture of his overclocked 7800X!

https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/888225519141093376

Referenced from the pinned comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw&feature=youtu.be

I knew that image and I didn't mention it because I think it is irrelevant to my point about how in his review both Intel chips were seriously bottlenecked, and not showing real performance. There are, however, people that thinks differently

If motherboard does that to CPU i am not trusting that CPU performing properly in the first place.

Thanks for the twitter link. Hardware Unboxed finally admitted that didn't test a retail 7800X chip:

It's an ES sample 😀 Well QS sample but still warranty isn't the issue here 😉

 

[8350rocks]

The hardware unboxed 30 game Battle is clearly wrong because overclocking the i7-7800X by 34% did only bring 3% higher framerates.

The author now acknowledges there was some problem with his review

However, the problem is not in the SKL-X chip because the KBL chips was also bottlenecked. He overclocked the kabylake chip by 16% and performance only increased by 2%. The problem is in another part. He tested in frame-limiting and GPU-bound situations and that is why overclocking the Intel chips didn't bring any sensible performance gain.

Juan you forgot to mention that Hardware Unboxed also included this picture of his overclocked 7800X!

https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/888225519141093376

Referenced from the pinned comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw&feature=youtu.be

I knew that image and I didn't mention it because I think it is irrelevant to my point about how in his review both Intel chips were seriously bottlenecked, and not showing real performance. There are, however, people that thinks differently

If motherboard does that to CPU i am not trusting that CPU performing properly in the first place.

Thanks for the twitter link. Hardware Unboxed finally admitted that didn't test a retail 7800X chip:

It's an ES sample 😀 Well QS sample but still warranty isn't the issue here 😉

QS is different from ES. A QS is a product ready for retail, but unreleased...ES is an early sample, not ready for retail.

If you are inferring that the final retail product will not have such deficiencies as a QS, you are mistaken.

 

[juanrga]

The hardware unboxed 30 game Battle is clearly wrong because overclocking the i7-7800X by 34% did only bring 3% higher framerates.

The author now acknowledges there was some problem with his review

However, the problem is not in the SKL-X chip because the KBL chips was also bottlenecked. He overclocked the kabylake chip by 16% and performance only increased by 2%. The problem is in another part. He tested in frame-limiting and GPU-bound situations and that is why overclocking the Intel chips didn't bring any sensible performance gain.

Juan you forgot to mention that Hardware Unboxed also included this picture of his overclocked 7800X!

https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/888225519141093376

Referenced from the pinned comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfNMn7RWgLw&feature=youtu.be

I knew that image and I didn't mention it because I think it is irrelevant to my point about how in his review both Intel chips were seriously bottlenecked, and not showing real performance. There are, however, people that thinks differently

If motherboard does that to CPU i am not trusting that CPU performing properly in the first place.

Thanks for the twitter link. Hardware Unboxed finally admitted that didn't test a retail 7800X chip:

It's an ES sample 😀 Well QS sample but still warranty isn't the issue here 😉

QS is different from ES. A QS is a product ready for retail, but unreleased...ES is an early sample, not ready for retail.

If you are inferring that the final retail product will not have such deficiencies as a QS, you are mistaken.

ES = Engineering Sample

QS = Qualification Sample.

QS are usually identical to retail chips, but not always. In any case, the only deficiency here was on the review itself.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I wonder how well that 7920XE is going to overclock. If that super low base clock speed is any indicator, I doubt you'll get higher than 4.5ghz on all 18 cores before thermal throttling on even the highest of coolants.