Power Consumption & The Verdict

Prior to whatsoever overclocking the 7800X consumed simply 6% more power than the 7700K and these figures are based on the average consumption recorded in vi games, so the 7800X certainly isn't being fully utilized here. With both CPUs overclocked the 7800X consumes 13% more power, again not a huge difference. It's interesting to annotation that while the 7800X often didn't see much in the way of added operation from the overclock, information technology did still increase consumption by xvi%.

We saw some mixed results in the games tested and without even tallying them up it'south clear that the Core i7-7800X was underwhelming. The 7700K clearly seems like the all-time option for gamers.

Before nosotros did any tinkering, the 7700K was on average eleven% faster than the 7800X beyond the 30 games tested for the minimum frame rate. In one case overclocked that margin was reduced to 9% and summing upwards all 30 games this manner, 7800X doesn't look too bad, despite being slower.

Note: The boilerplate operation figures are a little different hither as the rounding works a footling differently

Here's a expect at the performance results from all games. The 7700K was 13% faster at the stock speeds when comparing the minimum performance in all the games tested. Equally you can encounter, Far Weep Central and Dawn of War Three were a trouble for the 7800X while it as well struggled in Hitman, Grand Theft Motorcar V, Civilization Iv, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds and Doom.

Roughly half of the games tested saw little difference betwixt the CPUs and surprisingly of those games we find quite a few that are CPU demanding. Titles such every bit Overwatch, Ashes of the Singularity, Battlefield 1 and to an extend F1 2016.

I suspect that some of you will be tempted to comment well-nigh how Cities: Skylines, Arma iii and Planet Coaster should have been included because they are particularly CPU enervating, merely that's not really true. All three games run horribly on quad-core fries when the activeness gets going and they nonetheless run horribly on a 6, 8 and 10 cores. Their limitations come from the game engine they are built on or just the coding in general. Yous will find much the aforementioned with games such as StarCraft 2 for instance, which is why Ashes of the Singularity is so impressive from an engine standpoint.

Moving on, I go that these high-end desktop models aren't really meant to be 'gaming' CPUs simply it'south non unrealistic to expect that gamers with cash will be looking at Intel'south Core-X lineup, specially the 6-core 7800X. Given how well it clocks, the extreme retentiveness bandwidth and the fact that this is Intel'due south premium desktop platform, you lot would be forgiven for thinking the 7800X would be superior to the 7700K, at least in the latest and greatest titles. Sadly, this merely isn't the case -- far from it, in fact.

Given what nosotros saw when comparing the Ryzen five 1400 and 1600, we know that some of the games tin brand good utilise of 6-core CPUs. You could fence that the 7700K'due south superior IPC performance and college frequency makes upward for what it lacks in cores and this is why the 7800X wasn't able to show the kind of advantage you might accept expected, but it goes beyond that.

That doesn't really explain why the 7800X was just apartment out slow by comparing for quite a few of the games tested. The likely reason for this is down to Intel restructuring the enshroud bureaucracy. Compared to the 7700K, the 7800X has quadrupled the L2 enshroud per core while the shared L3 has been reduced by only over 30% per core. It's believed these changes combined with the mode this new cache works makes Skylake-10 more suited for server-related tasks and less efficient when it comes to things such as gaming, and that'due south certainly what we're seeing hither.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Intel Core i7-7700K on Amazon
  • Intel Core i7-7700K on Newegg
  • Intel Core i7-7800X on Amazon
  • Intel Core i7-7800X on Newegg

Had the Core i7-7800X browbeaten the 7700K, so nosotros would accept to counterbalance up costs and meet if it would exist worth investing in the more than expensive platform. However, considering the results we recorded, that hardly seems necessary. If y'all're a gamer, yous should get the 7700K or look to AMD'south Ryzen lineup. Speaking of which, I'm keen to add together the Ryzen vii 1700 to these results so I'll aim to do that past next week. Stay tuned.