Ability Consumption & The Verdict

Since memory frequency has little to no impact on overall system power consumption, I only included the 2666 RAM figures here along with the 7820X's 4.5GHz overclock.

Clock-for-clock, the Cadre i7-6900K was very efficient pushing total system consumption to just 206 watts in Cinebench R15's multi-threaded test. The Ryzen 7 1700 also performed well at 248 watts while the 7820X was a scrap hungrier, hitting 268 watts.

Once overclocked to 4.5GHz, the 7820X increased total system consumption by 26% and pulled 36% more ability than the R7 1700.

Closing Thoughts

We have some interesting results to hash out. Let'southward start with the Cadre i7-6900K and 7820X.

It was shocking to find that when comparing clock-for-clock performance using the same retentiveness speed on both setups, the older 6900K was faster in every single game we tested and significantly and so in titles such as Civilization IV. Even if we requite the 7820X the advantage of having faster DDR4-3200 RAM, which the 6900K doesn't support, it was rare for the Skylake-10 CPU to take the lead.

When overclocked to iv.5GHz with a 3GHz mesh frequency, the 7820X was nonetheless simply able to lucifer the 6900K in most of the titles tested and realistically we could have squeezed a few hundred MHz more out of the Broadwell-East CPU. Adding insult to injury, the 7820X consumes significantly more power to deliver similar performance of the previous generation part, not to mention that you can look to require a high-end liquid cooling setup to reach the 7820X'southward 4.5GHz overclock without heavy throttling.

When information technology came to awarding performance, the 7820X did expect much better, though fifty-fifty then information technology wasn't always superior to the 6900K. For case, we saw like performance in 7-Nil, while Cinebench R15'south numbers weren't drastically different. The 7820X was marginally ameliorate in our Blender and Corona tests but not to the degree where y'all would discover yourself getting excited almost the results.

The merely advantage the 7820X has over the 6900K is the fact that information technology'south effectually 35% cheaper ($600 versus $1,050). That's obviously a big deal, but if y'all made me choose between these two CPUs at the aforementioned toll, I'd probably take the 6900K.

At $290, it'southward pretty clear that the Ryzen seven CPU is in a different league when information technology comes to value and I don't think the most loyal Intel fanboy could contend otherwise. Factoring in the cost of a motherboard ($220+ versus ~$100), the 7820X is around 130% more expensive than the R7 1700, and of form it was never anywhere near that much faster.

When comparing the R7 1700 against the 7820X in terms of maximum overclocked gaming performance, the results were much the same overall. The 7820X enjoyed a win in Hitman while the R7 1700 was noticeably better in Culture Four and the residuum of the games were largely a wash. However, the 7820X was 23% faster in Blender and 16% faster in Corona, so information technology was hands down faster for these workloads, just not 130% faster, and to attain that extra functioning information technology consumed 36% more than power.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Ryzen 7 1700 on Amazon, Newegg
  • Intel Core i7-7820X on Amazon, Newegg
  • Intel Cadre i7-6900K on Amazon, Newegg

In the end, the Skylake-X architecture is at best a side-stride from Broadwell-E and this has afforded Ryzen a great deal of breathing room. If Intel were even the slightest flake ambitious with its pricing then Ryzen would have a serious fight on its hands, but it currently seems crazy to spend $600 on the 7820X when yous can get comparable performance for less than half the cost.