X299 Motherboards
When we started testing for this review, the main instructions we were given was that when changing between Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors, be sure to remove AC power and hold the reset BIOS button for 30 seconds. This comes down to an issue with supporting both sets of CPUs at once: Skylake-X features some form of integrated voltage regulator (somewhat like the FIVR on Broadwell), whereas Kaby Lake-X is more motherboard controlled. As a result, some of the voltages going in to the CPU, if configured incorrectly, can cause damage. This is where I say I broke a CPU: our Kaby Lake-X Core i7 died on the test bed. We are told that in the future there should be a way to switch between the two without having this issue, but there are some other issues as well.

After speaking with a number of journalists in my close circle, it was clear that some of the GPU testing was not reflective of where the processors sat in the product stack. Some results were 25-50% worse than we expected for Skylake-X (Kaby Lake-X seemingly unaffected), scoring disastrously low frame rates. This was worrying.

Speaking with the motherboard manufacturers, it's coming down to a few issues: managing the mesh frequency (and if the mesh frequency has a turbo), controlling turbo modes, and controlling features like Speed Shift. 'Controlling' in this case can mean boosting voltages to support it better, overriding the default behavior for 'performance' which works on some tests but not others, or disabling the feature completely.

We were still getting new BIOSes two days before launch, right when I need to fly half-way across the world to cover other events. Even retesting the latest BIOS we had for the boards we had, there still seems to be an underlying issue with either the games or the power management involved. This isn't necessarily a code optimization issue for the games themselves: the base microarchitecture on the CPU is still the same with a slight cache adjustment, so if a Skylake-X starts performing below an old Sandy Bridge Core i3, it's not on the game.

We're still waiting to hear for BIOS updates, or reasons why this is the case. Some games are affected a lot, others not at all. Any game we are testing which ends up being GPU limited is unaffected, showing that this is a CPU issue.

Все просто замечательно, но я и предположить не мог, что Intel Core i7-7700K так сильно сдерживает видеокарту! В каждом режиме тест проходился три раза, дабы определить действительно средние показатели, но после перестановки стенда с AMD Ryzen на Kaby Lake результаты повергли меня в шок.
Подробнее: https://www.overclockers.ru/lab/83470_2 ... ntami.html