well the day is finally here Intel is officially launching the core i9 7980
extreme edition and decor i9 7960X both of these are the new Halo products
for Intel in their high-end desktop lineup which means they are supposed to
compete with AMD's rising threadRipper CPUs now both these CPUs cost around
$3,700 actually come to think of it shouldn't be holding them like this so
let me place them safely and let's get to the b roll these skylake processors
haven't really been a mystery at all since we've known about their pricing
and core counts since this year's Computex back then Intel launched the i9 7900X
the i9 7820x and the i9 7800K along with the Kaby Lake X processors
which seemed ridiculous we're not gonna get into that anyways and of course
their new x299 and platform but at the same time they new AMD had threadripperr
waiting in the wings and those twelve or sixteen core processors would actually
beat the higher-end skylake X processors on the market so what did
Intel - well they announced the core counts and pricing for the i9 7980XE
and the i9 7960X in an attempt to take some of the wind out of threadripper
sales but did that strategy really work I mean it's debatable since AMD just
quickly launched $1,000 1950X and the $800 1920X both of which costs less
than what Intel's offering and should offer competitive performance if you're
interested in review for those two new CPUs you can check them out right here
now Intel's officially hit back with this launch and you know looking at the
specs of these two new CPUs I'm thoroughly impressed let's actually
start with this guy the 18 core 36 threaded in monster the i9 7980 Extreme
Edition but first a quick message from our sponsor the NZXT hue plus lighting
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that pricing of two grand but since we've already known that for months now
I'm guessing the sticker shock will be a bit less not done just less because this
one processor costs as much as a high-end gaming PC however its core
clock speeds are actually pretty decent of course due to the massive amount of
heat being generated with that hundred and sixty-five watt TDP and the input
power it requires intel had to keep the 7980XE base clock to a pretty low
2.6 gigahertz but in testing I never saw the chip run under 3.5 gigahertz
however as less coarse are utilized Intel's turbo boost technology really
takes over and runs up speeds even higher it maxes out between 4.2
gigahertz and 4 point 4 gigahertz which will be very important for games which
typically don't load a processor all that much the $1,700 i9 7960X has very
similar clock speeds and specs as its bigger brother but it has 16 cores and
32 threads along with the price that's a bit less expensive it will still put a
very big hole in your pocket though now while the i9 7980 Extreme Edition
doesn't really have a direct competitor from AMD just yet the 7960X
has the exact same number of cores and threads as the 1950X and yet it costs
$700 more really Intel actually let me put some of this pricing into
perspective for you guys you can effectively by a threadRipper 1950x
and asus prime x399 eight motherboard and a GTX 1080 for the price of a single
i9 7980 Extreme Edition or grab a 1950x and a GTX 1080 without going over the 7960X's
price point Intel's also launching the i9 7940X and the i9 7920X today
as well but since this video will focus on higher-end CPUs I'll just let you
pause the screen on this chart to check out the specs
something else you should take into account is the amount of heat these
processors generate the power they consume I'll get into the
specifics a bit later in this review but if you're about to buy one of these new
processors a high-end air cooler or a very good single bar all in one liquid
cooler is absolutely necessary another thing that will always come up
in a threaderipper versus skylake x debate will be the number of PCI lanes offered
by the processors basically allowing the processor to communicate directly with
an attached device should in theory lower latencies and boost overall
performance so the more the CPU has the better the record processors have a
total of 48 3.0 lanes available for graphics and another doesn't set for
high-speed nvme storage solutions meanwhile Intel has 44 lanes available
which are typically split with 40 being dedicated towards graphic solutions
while another 4 can be towards nvme or other types of high bandwidth storage
the balance of PCI ports are housed on the X299 PCH I'll be testing to see
if there's any difference between the two solutions but on paper
AMD setup is superior since it cuts out the chipset and allows for a more
direct communication with the key components before again to the
benchmarks there's something I have to remind you as well it is important to
approach this review from the perspective of a technology lover rather
than an outright critic like the red ripper the high-end skylake X processors
are technological marvels which will command respect while also attracting
endless flame wars but neither Intel nor AMD are targeting their $1,000 plus
processors at gamers who can buy a complete mid to high-end gaming system
for the cost of a single 16 or 18 core CPU you need to have a very specific set
of needs to benefit from the gobs of horse power these things bring to the
table even then without properly setting native core Finity for programs a lot of
that potential will go to waste just make sure you remember that before
criticizing or praising down in the comments down below
so with that in mind let's get into the benchmarks okay first up here is a quick
glance at the testing setup that we used for each system we try to keep
everything as identical as possible from one another starting off with Cinebench
is multi-threaded results it is obvious that the extreme edition processor is
the processor to be right now the 7960EX isn't that far behind
and both easily beat the threat river processors the same can be said about W
Prime results next up is PC mark and it's obvious that the home and creative
benchmarks likely reflect what to expect from these processors in the real world
since this test combines multiple different workloads the massive number
of course doesn't benefit in every scenario I wanted to test out some
single core benchmarks too and here they are with turbo boost 3.0 working in the
background the 7980XE and the 7960X remained very far ahead of AMD's
threadripper but there are still some Kaby Lake and Kaby Lake X processors ahead of
them alright so I guess that's it for synthetic benchmarks since I won most of
those review to focus on real-world performance and for that let's start off
with Adobe Premiere so this is an interesting result and one that I have
to explain since neither the skylake X or thread of our processors do as well
as you might expect while the 18 and 16 core intel parts are
still leading threadRipper Adobe Premiere requires a balance of higher
clock speeds and threads to perform optimally anything over 12 threads
results in diminishing returns unless you overclock
in some zip the extreme edition processor and the 7960X really fly
head since this is a program that makes use of Intel's recent optimizations and
it loves additional course blender is the same thing as well with Intel taking
a massive lead over AMD it is important to highlight that the $300 premium for
the extreme edition processor isn't really beneficial here since the 7960X
is able to hit higher clock speeds more frequently the results repeat themselves
in Corona it's interesting to see that whilst Skylake X was ahead in these
synthetic benchmarks the lead or a thread Ripper is actually increasing in
real-world testing and that's interesting since GIMP is a very lightly
threaded program you are better off going with a much less expensive but
faster clock processor if you can use it on a regular basis moving back to a more
multi-threaded program shows these new Intel chips in the lead again but not by
all that much over thread Ripper it seems like something else might be
causing a bottleneck in the systems other than the processor pov-ray
actually raises a good question are the 7980XE
and the 7960x really worth all that much money over threadrippers 1950X sure
they have a lead but it isn't a lead that's worth $900 and $600 more rounding
up the real world benchmarks in WinRAR and interestingly the i9 7900k has a
huge lead over everything this is because winrar doesn't stress all course
and that one processor was able to achieve a much higher average clock
speed during the test okay guys I know that I said these processors aren't
meant for gaming since there are much better values in this market if you just
want to have a good time but none of our reviews would be complete without a
little gameplay obviously the 5-star benchmarks are loves a number of threads
offered by the extreme edition processor and these 7960x their lead is
absolutely massive but times pi is a little bit different
since the graphics card dictates more of the score so all CPU score very close to
one another moving through all the other games you can actually see that there's
really no need for such expensive processors if gaming is your system's
primary use in some cases even our ultra powerful Titan X became the bottleneck
while in others the game developers themselves have capped frame rates to
try and improve the overall experience sure there are titles that do benefit
from the extra course and Intel's Skylake X is always ahead of thread upper in the
results but not by all that much honestly guys you'd be much better off
spending money on a better graphics card than jumping from a Ryzen or Kaby Lake
processor to thread repair or skylake X so now with performance out of the way I
think it's time to talk about temperatures and power consumption since
they are two areas that will play a key factor in the skylake X story when
loading up the system's both the i9 7980 Extreme Edition and the i9 7960X
became the most power hungry processors I've ever tested in the last two years
by a long shot - they both requires significantly more input power than
AMD's threadripper and sucked down in excess of 50 watts more than the i9 7900X
it looks like Intel tried to push skylake excess frequencies as high as
possible in order to be threaded / and the end results is excess power
consumption with that amount of power consumption as you would imagine
of heat being generated is on the next level you absolutely need a high-end air
cooler or a very good common looking cooler at least as a minimum even with a
Noctua nagu 14s the i9 9780 extreme edition processor topped out at 77
degrees Celsius which is the highest I've ever seen a stock processor hit on
this cooler it isn't anywhere close to throttling
but still this is something you will want to take into account when buying
one of these new CPUs with those results taken into account I think this is a
great time to talk about overclocking as well and for that you will need to spend
some pretty special equipment a dual or triple fan although an electric cooler
will be must or if you're going with an air cooling solution something like the
Noctua in hu 14s with two fans installed would be a minimum on the power supply
side you will need at least a unit that has dual eight pin CPU connectors
according to our motherboard partners these new processors can draw well over
400 watts from the 12 volt rail when overclocked over 4 gigahertz on all
course this also means that motherboard Wenders will have a challenge with VRMs
on some other boards as a matter of fact gigabyte recommended buying their new
Oris x2 an 89 Pro Series if you plan on overclocking any 16 or 18 cores skylake X
processors those motherboards have a different power layout and feature
active cooling over their MOSFETs I didn't have much time to overclock these
processors so I focused on the i9 9760X with good cooling I was able to hit a
constant 3.9 gigahertz on all 16 cores and I'm sure I could have gone a bit
further with more time but even then I saw scores that easily
matched or exceeded the extreme edition processor unfortunately hitting the
speed also meant my system needed almost 100 watts more power from the wall
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wrap-up for skylake x guys and let me tell you this one's going to be a hard
one to wrap up first up I have to give mad props to Intel for you know pushing
the boundaries in the high-end test market the i9 7960 X in the i9 7980
extreme edition CPUs are the fastest processors you can buy right now period
their fasts are dynamic they're adaptable and most importantly they can
blaze through any applications imaginable as you can tell I'm pretty
excited to have these two new CPUs here in the studio but I also have to
remember that Intel sent over $3,700 worth of CPUs to us well you guys have
to be spending the real money on them and let's be honest here skylake x
demands a ton of money in most uses cases spending that extra money wouldn't
be worth a wild / threader persons an average of 15 percent better performance
over a 100 percent price premium just doesn't make any sense but a 10 to 20
percent reduction in rendering times over throw a dripper could mean real
money savings for professionals and for them spending an extra $600 or thousand
dollars for the 7960X or the 7980 Extreme Edition could be money well
spent but gamers don't think about spending
that extra money on these two new CPS because you're much better off with a
CPU that costs one third of the price so the 7960X or the 7980 Extreme Edition
are crazy expensive and in most situations others less cost alternatives
will be the better choice but if you're someone who absolutely needs the best
multi-threaded performance that money can buy on the desktop platform then
maybe just maybe sky lake X will be a good fit so what do you guys think of
these two new CPUs from Intel professionals do you see yourself you
know spending that extra cash to save and rendering times and of course gamers
do you see yourself benefiting from the CPU while you can do gaming and of
course streaming in parallel or are you much
better off with flutter per like you know in the comments down below I'm Eber
with Hardware Canucks thank you so much for watching make sure to subscribe for more
similar content and we'll see you in the next one
you