Motherboard Manufacturers Say Intel Core i9 Limited to 4.3GHz on LCS [RUMOR]

cageymaru

Fully [H]
Joined
Apr 10, 2003
Messages
22,086
Guru3D is reporting that the initial Intel processors from the Skylake-X family will be limited at launch to the Core i7-7800K , Core i7-7820X, and Core i9-7900K. These are the 6 core, 8 core, and 10 core models respectively. Motherboard manufacturers have yet to see the 12, 14, 16 or 18 core parts according to the Guru3D article. When asked what a reasonable overclock for the 8 and 10 core processors is on LCS, or liquid cooling systems, motherboard manufacturers replied that they are hitting 4.2 GHz to 4.3 GHz with all cores enabled depending on ASIC quality. Intel's 4.5 GHz Turbo feature limits the processor to running on only two cores.

This is a very reasonable overclock for these new processors on the upcoming X299 motherboards as this matches Haswell-E levels of quality. The article has some images of a Cinebench run at 4.3 GHz on a i9-7900K that resulted in a 2364cb score and an example of a 4.3 GHz overclock so make sure to check it out. Hopefully the higher core count processors are being held back to compete against AMD's launch of their new x399 motherboards and ThreadRipper lineup of processors later this year. Who is excited for these higher core count chips from Intel!

Now I did some rounds with the mobo partners and simply asked them what clock frequencies they can tweak the 8 and 10 core parts at with a more normal cooling method, like LCS or a really proper heatpipe cooler. The magic number seems to be 4.2 to 4.3 GHz depending on the ASIC quality. And if you are wondering about it: the 4.5 GHz Turbo 3.0 you see noted as a spec means that likely only two cores will be able to run that frequency simultaneously (while others are clocked lower). So the tweaking results seems to be roughly at the same level as Haswell-E and the current 8 and 10-core Broadwell-E (6900K/6950X) parts. These are still pretty good numbers and these tweaks are based on an all-core 4.3 GHz tweak of course. Obviously the quad-core Skylake-X processors will clock higher.
 
While it's great they are making these, I'll be excited when there is a use for them. My 7700 will do for now. Don't need more than 4 cores.
 
Rushing out like this, these chips must be the very best cream Intel has to offer the world right now. I'd say these will be truly worth the money. Got no real use for them personally, beside the fun of overclocking.

But Intel's actually scared now?! o_O

There's
a sight to see... :LOL:
 
So these can't overclock any higher than the previous generation and are already maxed out with their turbo boost 2.0 speeds? That's kind of disappointing, I was only hoping for +200Mhz. The cinebench score is 150 points higher (6.8%) for the 10-core 7900X 4.3 Ghz OC compared to the 6950X 4.3 Ghz OC, and equal in score to a 6950X at 4.45 Ghz (typical OC is 4.2-4.3 Ghz).
 
Last edited:
So these can't overclock any higher than the previous generation and are already maxed out with their turbo boost 2.0 speeds? That's kind of disappointing, I was only hoping for +200Mhz. The cinebench score is 150 points higher (6.8%) for the 10-core 7900X 4.3 Ghz OC compared to the 6950X 4.3 Ghz OC, and equal in score to a 5960X at 4.45 Ghz (typical OC is 4.2-4.3 Ghz).
But 5960x is 8 cores, how could it compare?
 
So IF this is true, AMD is on a pretty level field on the clock speed front with Intel.

If this is true, it will be very interesting to see just how Intel will counter the potentially superior AMD platform.
 
  • Like
Reactions: N4CR
like this
Wow those clocks are way worse than I thought they'd get. Sky/Kabylake generally overclock better than Haswell by a fair amount. I wonder if the chip is heat limited due to the mediocre IHS TIM job Intel did on them? If so even with watercooling you'll be heat limited.

Guess we'll have to wait and see how they perform after they've be delidded and re-TIM'd with good paste.
 
Everyone with a giant wad of cash burning a hole in their pockets? The price for these 12-14-16-18 core chips are very hard to justfiy.

If you are just gaming, there pretty much is nothing to justify it, Ryzen and the current i5-i7 line fill that role. These are HEDT chips and platform, if you don't need the CPU power, this is not for you.

I'm not fussed about overclocking. But which games make use of so many cores?

A number of games and engines can use that many cores, now, games that NEED that many cores? I can't think of any. But this is HEDT, not gaming, if your main goal is gaming only, get an i5-i7 or Ryzen chip and put the extra money into a better GPU. These, like TR, people will only get for gaming if they want epeen, everyone else will get them because of workstations etc that need to do serious crunching, not gaming.
 
In reality, these chips should all be entry and mid level items with the higher core counts being the halo products coming on later. Due to stagnation from competition, we've been in the 4-8 core swamp for half a decade plus since sandybridge graced us with her underboob. The next refresh from both companies is going to start to bring the line down closer to where we should be at and start to offer real value in upgrading. Right now we are looking at paying the cost of a FULL SYSTEM for just the MOBO AND CPU. I'd rather buy a 700$ graphics card when my system build price is 700$ for everything excluding the gpu, not when I'm paying over 1,000 for just those 2 pieces of kit. Quad Channel memory is going to be quite the sexy ankle this harvest dance.
 
They won't be able to compete with Threadripper's pricing. Rumour is that AMD is going to launch a 12C/24T Threadripper for around $500-$600 which will be almost half the price of an i9.
 
  • Like
Reactions: N4CR
like this
Everyone with a giant wad of cash burning a hole in their pockets? The price for these 12-14-16-18 core chips are very hard to justfiy.

Hard to justify?? Do you have any idea how freaking expensive it is to develop, retool machinery, etc to make these chips?! Just because you can't afford it does not mean that they are outrageously priced. If you want to talk about price gouging, consider the iPhone SE, it costs a mere $160 in parts but Apple charges $450 for it retail.
 
Hard to justify?? Do you have any idea how freaking expensive it is to develop, retool machinery, etc to make these chips?! Just because you can't afford it does not mean that they are outrageously priced. If you want to talk about price gouging, consider the iPhone SE, it costs a mere $160 in parts but Apple charges $450 for it retail.
It is hard to justify if AMD's pricing is 1/2 the cost. From what I read Ryzen 8 core can be OC'd to 3.9-4.0 and is on par with my 5960x. The Ryzen is 1/3 the cost of the 5960x. That is pretty good. Now if we take into account gaming it is close but with Intel ahead there.
 
Hard to justify?? Do you have any idea how freaking expensive it is to develop, retool machinery, etc to make these chips?! Just because you can't afford it does not mean that they are outrageously priced. If you want to talk about price gouging, consider the iPhone SE, it costs a mere $160 in parts but Apple charges $450 for it retail.

Nobody honestly cares about their problems because of decisions a company made long ago. Don't impart the problems of companies onto consumers, they didn't make those choices so they have no reason to have sympathy. He's not wrong, unless you sit and use Handbrake all day, there is no reason to buy these for the money being asked, even less of a reason than none when AMD already does more than you need, for less.
 
It is hard to justify if AMD's pricing is 1/2 the cost. From what I read Ryzen 8 core can be OC'd to 3.9-4.0 and is on par with my 5960x. The Ryzen is 1/3 the cost of the 5960x. That is pretty good. Now if we take into account gaming it is close but with Intel ahead there.

Ryzen being just released can not really be compared in price to something so old. The up coming 7280X is more in line with that, 1800X release price of $500, with the 7280X having a release price of $599 and probably clocking significantly higher, so no where near double the cost.
 
Hard to justify?? Do you have any idea how freaking expensive it is to develop, retool machinery, etc to make these chips?! Just because you can't afford it does not mean that they are outrageously priced. If you want to talk about price gouging, consider the iPhone SE, it costs a mere $160 in parts but Apple charges $450 for it retail.

Let's not even go there. Apple is in a league of their own price gouging their Sheeple. But the Sheeple don't care, so does it matter? FYI, I own iPads, iPhones and a few accessories. Apple did one thing right, their ecosystem.

Hopefully the I9's will bring the I7's even further down in price. I'm really being tempted by AMD though. But I'm not one to jump on a new product. let them work out all of the bugs.
 
Is the naming right in the news post? I think Guru3D messed up and said 7900K instead of 7900X and then that has been perpetuated even into the tagging on this discussion post. Isn't it 7800X, 7820X, and 7900X? Not a huge deal but it caused me to go, "what, 7900K, never heard of that part"...
 
Ryzen being just released can not really be compared in price to something so old. The up coming 7280X is more in line with that, 1800X release price of $500, with the 7280X having a release price of $599 and probably clocking significantly higher, so no where near double the cost.
From what I read the lowest Ryzen can be OC to the same level as the highest that is OC'd? I was going by that.
 
From what I read the lowest Ryzen can be OC to the same level as the highest that is OC'd? I was going by that.

What you can push out of a chip has nothing to do with where a MFG values it at, which is why the 1800X is more than the 1700. There have always been cases where a lower chip can be cocked close to a higher chip, that is why people OC.
 
We live in a world where a brand new 8 core at 4GHz costs less than $400. things do not look good for Intel:

-Optane is an overpriced PoS.
-AMD is about to put 64 cores in a 2 sockets MOBO, and the best counter Intel has is a meager 4.3GHz overclock?
my ancient SR-2 has been doing 12 cores 4.3Ghz for almost a decade...
 
Motherboard manufacturers have yet to see the 12, 14, 16 or 18 core parts according to the Guru3D article.

Which may mean they may not truly exist yet and Intel is strictly paper launching them as a response to AMD's Threadripper. Honestly, the more I see, it looks like Intel was expecting the Zen architecture to be another Bulldozer fiasco (i.e. looked great on paper but couldn't even get close in the real world). When Ryzen showed up and trounced them in terms of pricing with competitive performance, I think they started to get nervous -- and then I suspect the announcement of ThreadRipper this close on Ryzen's heels totally blindsided them (and seeing Ryzen prices already dropping to make room for ThreadRipper hurts Intel's price/performance ratio even more).

AMD has a history of often being their own worst enemy and being a day late and a dollar short, which tends to make for an (understandable) tendency for their competition to get complacent. That said, when AMD actually does execute and get things right, they tend to be one of the biggest game changers in the market. If it hadn't been for AMD, x64 probably never would have existed and Intel would have tried force feeding everyone the Itanium chips.
 

Come on Guys, I've tried Android stuff and had a real time with weirdness, services, and even worried about viruses. I really don't worry about anything with the iCrap devices I have. They mostly work, but are pretty safe. I do not like the direction IOS is going though. Too many features that aren't used, and so many bugs!
 
I have been wondering how an 18 core CPU would overclock on all cores and just how much power that would draw.
 
What you can push out of a chip has nothing to do with where a MFG values it at, which is why the 1800X is more than the 1700. There have always been cases where a lower chip can be cocked close to a higher chip, that is why people OC.
I am not worried about what the company thinks it's worth since if price to performance is very good.
 
Would Intel benefit from increasing the die size to spread the heat out a bit? I think maybe trying to cram so much into such a small package is starting to become a problem.
 
Would Intel benefit from increasing the die size to spread the heat out a bit? I think maybe trying to cram so much into such a small package is starting to become a problem.
I always wondered that too. Maybe for itx it might take up a bit more and have less features.
 
I am not worried about what the company thinks it's worth since if price to performance is very good.

But you are, as you are talking about stock performance of Intel and price vs OCed performance of the AMD, and call the Intel to much, yet AMD also has a CPU in the same price range thats slower.

If you want to compare the two, you have to compare OC to OC, of which we have not seen where the Intel will OC to yet.

It's much like the higher OCing AMD chips, or core unlockable AMD, or the likes of the Q6600 etc etc. Often times these lower or mid range hold the best value, the top of the line in many of those cases had a bit more OCing room or features, and if you wanted those you had to pay a premium. The person who you quoted and who they quoted were talking about how Intel can justify the prices, if that is the question the same can be said for the $500 1800X price.
 
And the mobo makers thought AMD rushing them on Ryzen was bad...

Great to see the monopoly cracking. I don't care who wins as long as there's a legitimate fight for best value to the consumer, which we haven't had in the CPU arena since the 939 days.
 
Hard to justify?? Do you have any idea how freaking expensive it is to develop, retool machinery, etc to make these chips?! Just because you can't afford it does not mean that they are outrageously priced. If you want to talk about price gouging, consider the iPhone SE, it costs a mere $160 in parts but Apple charges $450 for it retail.

I don't care how much it costs to manufacture those chips, that's Intel's problem, not mine. Also, there is a difference between what I can afford and what I want to spend money on. Between Threadripper and a dual E5 2670 w/ motherboard selling for 345 bucks I can't readily see the value in a single eight core CPU for $600 much less these ridiculous $2000 chips. I would rather invest that money in four Intel 750s in a RAID 0 so my CPUs are speedily fed. What's good a CPU no matter how speedy if it just sits there waiting for data? And I can because the S2600CP2J might be ancient but it still has 48 lanes (3.0, of course) across six slots...

Yes, it's unfair to compare used to new but whose fault is that the Sandy Bridge E5 2670 is readily comparable with the Kaby Lake chips? https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/13/kaby_lake_7700k_vs_sandy_bridge_2600k_ipc_review/4
 
Last edited:
4.3 is pretty low considering the Ryzen can hit 4.0 sometimes 4.1. I figured the Intel chips would hit 4.5 but man the few that were expecting even higher are going to be severely disappointed.
 
I would have thought these were going to hit 4.5 at the least but going to more of the 4.8ghz speed. If there only hitting 4.3ghz on water , I'll stick with my [email protected] for a bit longer lol. Really want one of the 12 or 16 core amd's just because though lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: N4CR
like this
There is an Indonesian video by Lucky_n00b of an open bench i9 7900X hitting 4.5Ghz at 1.15v, with a SE-204K single-fan cooler, presumably after replacing the thermal paste with liquid metal. It scored 2442 in cinebench. (No temperature data).
 
Back
Top