Intel Core i7-7740X Skylake-X Processor Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Intel Core i7-7740X LGA 2066 Skylake-X CPU is available now from most major retailers. It’s currently on Amazon for £341.33. That price is about £10 more the 8-core Ryzen 1700X. However, when it comes to gaming, this fast quad-core does stay in the lead, giving you food for thought over what’s best for your own needs, 8-core for multi-tasking (such as game streaming perhaps), or just straight forward gaming performance with the Intel chip.

Overview

I’m still a little confused as to why the whole X299 platform even exists in its current from. Sure, the new X299 motherboards opened up the support for the incredibly fast, and incredibly expensive i9-7900X. Of course, the X299 platform does merge the low-end, mid-range, and high-end CPUs onto a single socket, which is interesting, but I’m not sure that merge was something anyone needed.

What the hell is going on?

The main things I can see about this launch so far is that yes, the i9-7900X is very impressive, although few will be able to afford it. Then the i7-7740X we reviewed today is basically the i7-7700K with a few problems fixed. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but seeing pretty much the same performance as the old processor doesn’t exactly light my fire. Seeing a freaking huge drop in thermals and power usage, however, is something I am happy to see.

Time to upgrade?

I wouldn’t bother upgrading from a 7700K to a 7740X anytime soon. However, if you’re smart and only upgrade every few generations, and are maybe leaping from a Devil’s Canyon i7-4790K, then this 7740X is a good processor to upgrade to overall. When it comes to all out quad-core performance, it’s anything but slow, and with a 5GHz overclock, it’s a real beast when it comes to gaming. Does Ryzen have an edge when it comes to rendering, multitasking, etc? Yes, it does, but it’s down to you (the consumer) to pick which one fits your requirements. If you’re a gamer, don’t stream much, don’t do anything like Cinebench/Handbrake, then the i7 is going to do a rock solid job. It’s not as fast as the i9, but it is almost £700 cheaper.

One last thing!

I sound like I am torn on this chip, and honestly, I think it’s pretty fantastic. It’s fast, runs cool, doesn’t eat up too much power, and gave solid gaming performance. That’s more than enough to ask from a CPU in this price range and it’s exciting to see so many uniquely competitive CPUs in this price range from both Intel and AMD.

Pros

• Competitive single and quad-core performance
• Fantastic for gaming
• Faster than Ryzen in tasks that only use 4-cores
• Easy to overclock
• Significantly cooler than the previous generation
• Significantly less power-hungry than the previous generation
• Competitively priced in terms of gaming performance

Cons

• Ryzen offers fastest rendering/multitasking for around the same price in certain applications
• No major performance improvements over the last generation

“With blazing fast quad-core performance, easy overclocking and low temperatures, the i7-7740X is the i7-7700K we deserved.”