Intel was not about to let AMD steal all of the headlines with Threadripper. To counter the attack in the enthusiast sector, Intel lifted the curtain on its new high-end desktop (HEDT) processors, including several new Core i9 Skylake-X processors. In the short time that has passed, an overclocker has already taken the least expensive Core i9 chip and pushed it all the way to 5.7GHz where it was able to set a new Cinebench record.
The chip in question is the Core i9-7900X. While it is the least expensive model in the Core i9 family, it still costs a hefty $999. What users get return in a 10-core processor with Hyper Threading support and 13.75MB of L3 cache.
At stock clocks, the Core i9-7900X has a base clockspeed of 3.3GHz, which can ramp up to 4.3GHz via Turbo Boost 2.0 and 4.5GHz via Turbo Boost Max 3.0.
A well known overclocker who goes by the online handle Elmor managed to push the processor past the 5.7GHz using liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling. This allowed him to set a pair of benchmark records in Cinbebench R11.5 and R15, at difference clockspeeds. Here is a look:
- Core i9-7900X @ 5,755MHz: 3,181 points in Cinebench R15
- Core i9-7900X @ 5,785MHz: 34.79 points in Cinebench R11.5
Those are the highest scores ever achieved for a 10-core processor, and the fastest outside of server setups with 20 or more cores, Game-Debate reports.
The record setting feat was assisted by an Asus Rampage VI Apex X299 Gaming motherboard and 12GB of G.Skill TridentZ memory. There was also a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti riding shotgun.
LN2 cooling is not realistic outside of chasing overclocking and benchmarking records. Nevertheless, it's neat to see the kind of headroom that exists in Intel's new processors when heat is not a factor.
