But there were some nuances
Top manager of the Chinese office of Asus Tony Yu tested the latest Chinese processor Zhaoxin KX-7000 and shared his observations on the Bilibili platform. It should be said that Zhaoxin KX-7000 — This is one of the latest and most advanced Chinese processors for consumer PCs: it was released at the end of last year, and the first computers based on it appeared in the first quarter of this year.
Zhaoxin KX-7000 — This is a 7nm 8-core 8-thread CPU built on the x86 Century Avenue architecture. The layout is chiplet, which is clearly visible in the photo: the area of the CPU crystal — 78.6 mm2, crystal I/O — 151.8 mm2. Level 2 cache size — 512 KB per core, third level — 32 MB each. The base frequency is 3.2 GHz, the maximum — 3.6 GHz.
The processor supports DDR4-3200 and DDR5-4800 memory, maximum capacity — 128 GB. There is also a built-in graphics core — C1190, which supports DX12, OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL 4.6 and H.265, and video can be output via DP, HDMI and/or VGA ports. There is also support for four SATA ports, 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes, 4 USB 3.2 Gen2 ports and one USB4.
Externally, the Zhaoxin KX-7000 looks like a typical Intel processor in the LGA 1700 version, this applies to both contacts and the heat distribution plate. Such a processor can even be inserted into a motherboard based on an Intel chipset, but the system is unlikely to boot.
But the system will definitely boot with the motherboard that Asus made specifically for the Zhaoxin KX-7000 (fortunately, there is no need to reinvent the processor socket). The motherboard has an mATX size, is equipped with two DIMM slots, a debug LED, an M.2 slot, two SATA ports, two PCIe x16 4.0 slots and one PCIe x1 4.0. The power subsystem is very simple, implemented according to a 6 + 2 phase scheme, and the VRM has no cooling.
If we talk about synthetic tests, then everything is relatively good, taking into account the fact that we are talking about a Chinese processor. The Zhaoxin KX-7000 turned out to be noticeably faster than its predecessor, the KX-6780, and in some tests (especially with overclocking) it outperforms the Core i5-7500. Overclocking to 3.6 GHz on all cores increased performance by 21% in multi-threaded tests and by 10% — in single-threaded. Without overclocking in benchmarks, the CPU consumes 85 W.
But in games everything is quite sad: the Zhaoxin KX-7000 was tested in conjunction with the GeForce RTX 4070, and the processor is clearly the bottleneck of this system, as evidenced by 46 FPS at 4K resolution in Cyberpunk 2077 and only 30 FPS in Counter Strike 2.
And although the Zhaoxin KX-7000 does not blow the minds with its performance, it clearly demonstrates how quickly Chinese CPU manufacturers are progressing.