Everything you need to know about kaby lake

The arrival of the new Intel LGA 2066 platform is somewhat confusing since we have two different processor families, on the one hand the Skylake-X and on the other the Kaby Lake-X. We dealt with the former a few days ago, so now we have to focus our attention on the latter.

Main differences between Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X

Kaby Lake-X are the input processors to Intel's new HEDT platform, the LGA 2066. Specifically there are two Kaby Lake-X processors, the Core i5 7640X and the Core i7 7740X, these processors are very different from the Skylake-X and belong to a lower range, it has been a somewhat strange move by Intel when launching processors of mid-range for your enthusiastic platform. The idea of ​​it, especially with the Core i5 7640X is to provide a "cheap" entry way to the LGA 2066 platform and then make the jump to a more powerful and expensive processor, little sense really since it is more profitable to wait and go directly to what you want.

Everything you need to know about the new Intel Core i9 (Skylake-X)

Fewer PCIe lanes and more limited memory

Core i5 7640X and Core i7 7740X are still modified versions of the Intel Core i5 7600K and Core i7 7700K that have been adapted to work on the LGA 2066 socket. As such, they include very important limitations such as a Dual Chanel memory controller and Only 16 PCI Express lanes, the Skylake-X have Quad Chanel memory and up to 44 PCI express lanes. The latter means that on some boards the user finds a PCI Express or M.2 slot disabled when mounting a Kaby Lake-X chip. For example, in the case of Gigabyte X299 boards, these include five PCI Express slots, of these three come from the CPU and the other two come from the motherboard chipset. If we put a processor with only 16 PCI Express lanes we will not be able to enjoy all the available slots and those that do work will be more limited.

Less optimized caches without Turbo Boost Max 3.0

In the cache there are also big differences, Skylake-X has increased the L2 cache to 1 MB per core since the way it works has been changed by reducing the L3 and increasing the L2, this theoretically benefits the programs that do calculations very intensive and are cache dependent. In Kaby Lake-X this modification has not been made and the L2 cache is still 256 KB.

Kaby Lake-X also does not have the exclusive Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology of the Skylake-X, it allows to detect the two highest quality cores so that they are used in applications that do not take advantage of all the processor cores, thanks to it they can be achieve higher maximum operating frequencies and therefore better performance. Games are applications that can benefit from the use of very fast cores, so Skylake-X has an important advantage over Kaby Lake-X.

A little more overclocking than Z270 at too high a price

Finally we note that the Core i5 7640X and Core i7 7740X have a slightly higher overclocking potential than the Core i5 7600K and Core i7 7700K, this is partly due to the fact that they are manufactured with a somewhat more polished and optimized 14nm process and, on the other hand, in the absence of integrated graphics, this achieves a better use of the voltage. With these Kaby Lake-X 5 GHz are almost guaranteed and if you are lucky you can reach 5.2 GHz. They are frequencies about 200 MHz higher than what can be achieved with Core i5 7600K and Core i7 7700K, not It is a huge difference but it is an improvement after all.

Surely you are interested in reading our guide to the best processors on the market

The biggest drawback of Core i5 7640X and Core i7 7740X over Core i5 7600K and Core i7 7700K is that the motherboards of the former are quite more expensive, while for around 120 euros we can have a pretty good Z270 board, in the case of X299 the cheapest can go to 250-300 euros.

Source: pcgamer