Intel's X-Series Lineup - What you NEED to Know
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
957 words · ~4 min read
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i think on some level Intel must know that their product
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naming scheme could be less confusing where that level is well your guess is
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as good as mine because they have certainly never admitted it to us
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and yet here we are with an Intel sponsored
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deeper dive into the core x series their
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high-end desktop processors where we'll cover the key options available and what
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they might be most useful for
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okay so first a little context Intel's
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x299 platform is divided up into two
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major architectures kb lake x and sky
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lake x kb lake x is essentially their consumer
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7000 series chips with more heavy duty traces slightly higher clock speeds and
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the higher power consumption that goes with it as a result it differs significantly
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from other cpus that fit into the lga 2066 socket
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Intel intends them as entry-level chips for folks who want to get into an hedt
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or high-end desktop motherboard and then upgrade later but so far they've been
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most successful in competitive overclocking especially in light of the
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six core options that are available on the z370 consumer side of things now
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skylake x on the other hand is where the meat's at here we've got two classes of
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processors core i7 and core i9
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all of them have unlocked multipliers for overclocking
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Intel hyper threading technology quad-channel ddr4 memory support for
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avx-2 and avx-512 x86 extensions and
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they share skylakex's new cache setup of one meg of level two cache per core
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matched with a shared level 3 cache that's much smaller than previous
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generations but in practice proves more efficient in most scenarios
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where they differ is in the core count which increments by 2 for each step up
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the product stack the number of pci express lanes which is lower on core i7
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models and the implementation of turbo boost max 3.0 so cpus with 8 cores or
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more get 2 max boost cores while the 7800x gets zero turbo boost max cores
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now we won't be doing a deep dive on every sku
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just the top-tier core i9 7980xe to show
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what the platform is capable of in multi-threaded and virtualized workloads
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the core i9 7900x the jack of all trades
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and the core i7 7820x which we believe
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should be the entry-level CPU for most buyers on this platform let's start with
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that last one it has 28 pci express lanes so that's enough for a full speed
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graphics card a couple of NVMe ssds and
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some high-speed networking so it's about right for an entry-level workstation
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which is great because that's where this chip's performance shines
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it actually has the highest bass frequency in the entire skylake x lineup
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it shares the highest boost frequency with the 7900x and it also shares the
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highest 2 core turbo boost max 3.0 frequency at 4.5 gigahertz making it a
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great fit for a workstation that isn't always used for work
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moving into core i9 territory we leave behind the 28 PCIe lanes and step up to
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44 where we get perhaps the most interesting CPU in the x299 lineup the
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10 core core i9 7900x
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when this guy launched we reviewed it quite favorably thanks to its major
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performance improvements over its predecessor the core i7
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6900k and even the 6950x
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now to be clear not everyone is going to see a performance improvement versus the
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7820x but if you want to have full
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unbottlenecked access to many connected pci express devices be they networking
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storage video capture or expensive accelerator cards this is where you want
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to be and you get another two cores for workloads that can take advantage of
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them as well the rest of the core i9 lineup is what i would describe as
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tweeners that is they are in between the 7900x two cores per step and the highest
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end CPU Intel has ever released on a desktop platform the 2 000
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18 core core i9 7980
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this thing is an absolute beast and it shows in both its performance numbers
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and its power draw it blitzed through our testing suite pulling off similar
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per thread performance numbers to its fewer core brethren and even beating out
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our 22 core xeon e5 2699 v4
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and it managed to pull 500 to 600 watts on
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its own when overclocked it doesn't win
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any bang for the buck gaming awards but for those that need this kind of
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performance be they video editors 3d animators using fluid simulation or
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anyone who's doing high-end computational work that can't be
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offloaded onto a GPU well it could be that for you
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raw performance is all that matters because time is money and a CPU that
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outputs faster can pay for itself pretty quickly skylake x represents a healthy
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improvement upon the previous generation and it's a solid choice when it comes to
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both per thread and multi-threaded performance now we just hope that
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Intel's plan for a more dynamic and risky future brings us even more
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performance next year and the year after that
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because we're insatiable like that so thanks for watching guys if you
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