We all wondered exactly how Intel would react to AMD and the Zen architecture. Would we see a professional company, or would things get ugly? Read on as I delve into what on earth is going on at Intel right now.
In June, Intel released its new Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X CPU architectures based on the X299 platform. We talked about the current flagship 10-core, 20-thread i9-7900X, comparing it to the previous Broadwell-E flagship, the i7-6950X, and the AMD Ryzen 7 CPUs. Alongside the flagship 10-core, Intel released an 8-core, 16-thread i7-7820X, which costs “only” $599, compared to the previous $1000+ of last generation’s i7-6900K. Alongside these processors there are also the AMD Ryzen 7 8-core 16-thread CPUs, costing from ~$320 to ~$499, depending on the model.
Intel’s new Skylake-X CPUs have taken over our top two tiers, Extremist and Monstrous. They have effortlessly dethroned Intel’s previous line of high-end CPUs, Broadwell-E.
The new additions to our highest-end CPU recommendations are the i9-7900X (10 cores; $1,000) and i7-7820X (8 cores; $600). They replace last generation’s i7-6950X (10-cores; $1,700), i7-6900K (8 cores; $1,100), and i7-6850K (6 cores; $600).
