Intel’s core i9-7900X, from the Skylake-X series, is Intel’s latest 10-core, 20-thread flagship processor. It's the first to bear the i9 moniker and utilize the new X299 (Basin Falls) chipset/motherboard. The 7900X is the fastest CPU on the market today, however, imminent competition from AMD’s 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and the forthcoming release of more Intel Core X series mean that its reign will be a short one. The i9-7900X supersedes the 10-core Broadwell-E core i7-6950X that held the crown for little over a year. Both are extremely powerful and pricey high end desktop processors (HEDTs) which excel in multi-threaded tasks such as media encoding. However, despite the same power draw (TDP 140W), the newer i9-7900X betters the i7-6950X in terms of peak overclocked performance by 10% mostly thanks to increased clock speeds from 3.0GHz/4.0GHz to 3.3GHz/4.3GHz for base/turbo. It also betters the i7-6950X on price by around 28%. This all translates to the i9-7900X offering around 20% more value for money, even despite its eye-watering $999 price tag. The more accessible pricing (albeit not accessible for the majority) and hurried release of the i9-7900k to market is widely perceived as a reaction to AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, rumoured for release towards the end of July 2017. So if you want to own the fastest consumer CPU in the world, it would be wise to wait for the dust to settle. [Jul '17CPUPro]
The 3300X is a 4-core Ryzen CPU. Priced at just $120 USD, it offers far better value to gamers than all the previous Ryzen CPUs. This is great news for potential buyers, but bad luck for gamers that recently spent nearly three times more on the 8-core 3700X. The reduction from eight to four cores results in more efficient caching and higher boost clocks. AMD’s marketing has abruptly broken from the firmly established “moar cores” mantra to a conveniently realistic: four cores are actually okay. Shifting goalposts this quickly reveals an unhealthy focus on first time buyers and a brazen disregard for existing customers. Sales tactics aside, unfortunately the 3300X remains constrained by architectural latency and the associated gaming bottleneck (frame drops). Comparing an overclocked 3300X pegged at 4425 MHz to a stock Intel Core i3-10100 running at 4100 MHz shows that the i3-10100 delivers better gaming performance in four out of five games. The 10100 also includes an iGPU with QuickSync hardware encoding. Since additional cores make little difference to gamers, there are no significant upgrades beyond the 3300X in the Ryzen product stack. In order to achieve better gaming performance, it is necessary to upgrade to a higher tier Intel CPU. Despite the barrage of anonymous hearsay pushed on social media, users will be hard pressed to find actual use cases that favor the 3300X over the i3-10100, especially when the 10100 is not handicapped by 2666 MHz RAM. Gamers are bottlenecked by the Ryzen architecture and desktop users need integrated graphics. [Jun '20CPUPro]
We calculate effective speed which measures real world performance for typical users. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield a value for money rating. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top CPUs. [CPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.