Nearly six years ago in November of 2011, Intel divided its lineup by releasing its first HEDT (High-End Desk-Top) in the form of the X79 platform and a trio of Sandy Bridge-E CPU’s with the flagship 6-core Extreme Edition Core i7-3960X. The platform eventually received an update to Ivy Bridge-E with three new CPUs. Three years later, the updated X99 platform was launched with another trio of Haswell-E CPU’s with the 8 core i7-5960X, later to be trumped with Broadwell-E’s 10-core i7-6950X. Fast-forward just under 3 years and Intel brings us X299. This time however, Intel changed the game and announced NINE different CPU’s over a stagger launch. Spanning 2 architectures at the same time, Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X, X299 hits the ground with a starting lineup from quad core to 18 cores, up to quad channel ddr4 memory and up to a hefty 44 PCIe lanes.
While we wait for the remaining Sky Lake-X CPU’s to arrive, we’ll take a look at one offering near the middle of the shotgun pattern launch with the 8 core, 16 thread Intel Core i7-7820X. Does it compare to the retiring 8 core champion of X99? We certainly aim to find out!
