THE AWKWARD CASE OF KABY LAKE-X
“This creates quite an awkward situation – in terms of function and performance, there’s little to differentiate the Core i77700K from the Core i77740X paired with X299. What’s more, to get the full 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes, you’ll have to pay at least US$999 for the Core i97900X.”
We’ve gotten used to Intel having the last word in the CPU wars, but with Threadripper, AMD is going all out to win hearts and minds.
Intel’s strategy of segmenting features often leaves a sour taste in the mouth of loyal customers. Its ultra-enthusiast X299 chipset now supports quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 processors that are priced very similarly to their mainstream Kaby Lake counterparts.
At rst glance, that’s great news. Intel’s HEDT platform is now a lot more accessible, and you don’t have to sell a kidney to get a thousand dollar chip. You’ll also be able to easily upgrade to a Core i9 chip in the future.
Unfortunately, these Kaby Lake-X processors only provide 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU, which means many of the features and I/O expansion options on X299 will simply be unavailable. Got plenty of PCIe and M.2 slots on board? Some of them may just end up being dummy connectors with a Kaby Lake-X chip.
They also only support dual-channel memory, so half of the DIMM slots on X299 boards won’t work.
This creates quite an awkward situation – in terms of function and performance, there’s little to di erentiate the Core i7-7700K from the Core i7-7740X paired with X299. What’s more, to get the full 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes, you’ll have to pay at least US$999 for the Core i9-7900X.
There are even two 28-lane chips, the Core i7-7800X and Core i7-7820X, which serve as prime examples of Intel’s attempts to nudge enthusiasts further up the price ladder. The Core i7-7800X doesn’t o er Turbo Boost Max 3.0 and only o cially supports up to DDR4-2400 memory. In comparison, the Core i77820X can boost up to 4.5GHz with the former technology, and is rated for up to DDR4-2666 RAM.