Chinese Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU can't beat old Intel and AMD chips — Core i3-8100 and Ryzen 5 5600G come out on top
Western CPUs reign supreme still.
The Zhaoxin KX-7000, one of China’s latest desktop CPUs, has finally received its first comprehensive review from PC Watch. The review shows that old budget chips from Intel and AMD are still firmly in the lead.
Made by Shanghai Zhaoxin, the KX-7000 originally debuted in December. It boasts eight cores, a boost clock of up to 3.7 GHz, support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, PCIe 4.0, and the company’s latest C-1190 integrated GPU. The older KX-U6880A, the fastest member of the KX-6000 desktop family, also had eight cores but only a maximum clock speed of 3 GHz and lacked support for PCIe 4.0 and DDR5 memory.
Like AMD’s Ryzen CPUs since the 3000 series, the KX-7000 uses a chiplet design: one chip for CPU cores and another for I/O functions. Zhaoxin hasn’t disclosed what company fabs the KX-7000 chiplets, nor what node they’re fabbed on.
Although the KX-7000 slots into Intel’s LGA1700 socket, it’s almost sure that the Chinese CPU won’t work in 600- or 700-series motherboards since Zhaoxin has likely wired its chips differently than Intel. Instead, using the LGA1700 socket seems to be a move to ensure broader cooler compatibility, an important consideration for a socketed processor.
Header Cell - Column 0 | KX-7000 | KX-U6880A | Core i3-8100 | Ryzen 5 5600G |
---|---|---|---|---|
Cores | 8 | 8 | 4 | 6 |
Threads | 8 | 8 | 4 | 12 |
Base Frequency | 3.2GHz | 3GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.9GHz |
Boost Frequency | 3.7GHz | N/A | N/A | 4.4GHz |
Cache | 4MB L2 + 32MB | 8MB L2 | 1MB L2 + 6MB L3 | 3MB L2 + 16MB L3 |
Memory Support | DDR5-4800/DDR4-3200 | DDR4-2666 | DDR4-2400 | DDR4-3200 |
PCIe Support | 4.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 |
PCIe Lanes | 24 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
Perhaps the most notable characteristic of the KX-7000 and other Zhaoxin chips is that they’re based on the x86 architecture, just like CPUs made by Intel and AMD. Zhaoxin inherited its x86 license from VIA Technologies when it partnered with the local Shanghai government to form the KX-7000 CPU designer.
PC Watch tested its KX-7000 on a generic, unlabeled motherboard that supports DDR4 instead of the newer DDR5 made by ASUS. Strangely enough, only DDR4 clocked strictly at 3,200 MHz by default could get the CPU to boot for the first time. According to PC Watch, this limitation can be changed in the BIOS. The publication raised concerns over the firmware and software support, particularly access to drivers, which the reviewer only got access to thanks to “determination.”
As for performance, the KX-7000 made gains over its predecessor but couldn’t quite catch up to old, low-end CPUs like the Core i3-8100 and Ryzen 5 5600G. In Cinebench R23, the KX-7000 could only tie the 8100 in the multi-threaded test and was only 60% as fast as the Intel chip in the single-threaded test. The 5600G, meanwhile, was about three times faster in both single- and multi-threaded performance.
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The C-1190 iGPU, which PC Watch claims, is based on the Arise GT10C0 graphics card made by Chinese graphics company Glenfly. Given that Glenfly’s latest Arise 1020 didn’t impress, it’s unsurprising that the review found the KX-7000’s iGPU to be pretty slow, scoring a paltry 42 points in 3D Mark Time Spy to the 8100’s 469 and 5600 G’s 1440. The C-1190 was similarly behind in other 3DMark tests.
When equipped with an RX 6400, AMD’s cheapest and slowest graphics card, the KX-7000 could finally match the 8100 in 3DMark and Final Fantasy XIV. However, it wasn’t nearly as good in Dragon Quest X, an older game that relies more heavily on single-threaded performance.
The KX-7000 cannot battle modern Intel and AMD CPUs, and it’s unlikely Zhaoxin chips will be able to go head-to-head with Western x86 CPUs soon. However, performance is beside the point for China’s semiconductor industry, and self-sufficiency is the more important goal as the US government gradually places more trade restrictions on China. Earlier this year, the US government blocked Intel from selling Meteor Lake CPUs to Huawei, making domestically produced chips more appealing concerning supply chain stability.
Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.
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Albert.Thomas Welcome back, Matt.Reply
It's really sad to see the lack of improvement of the KX-7000 series compared to Centaur's unreleased CNS CPUs.
Those Zhaoxin chips were built upon Centaur's tech, and in eight (?) years they've only managed to increase the memory speed support and the CPU's clockspeeds - it looks like there is a complete lack of IPC improvement.
I'm tempted to import one to bench it against the unreleased Centaur chip -
erazog Those CPU's are really only intended for industrial/government use, where x86 and windows compatibility is still a necessity everything else is secondary, Loongarch is what they want to replace x86 with so that might explain why Zhaoxin haven't done much with it.Reply
The GPU is based off the Via Chrome series from the mid 2000's, allegedly their updated win 10 iGPU driver even recognised the old Chrome cards but never seen it proven. -
TCA_ChinChin Albert.Thomas said:It's really sad to see the lack of improvement of the KX-7000 series compared to Centaur's unreleased CNS CPUs.
Those Zhaoxin chips were built upon Centaur's tech, and in eight (?) years they've only managed to increase the memory speed support and the CPU's clockspeeds - it looks like there is a complete lack of IPC improvement.
I'm tempted to import one to bench it against the unreleased Centaur chip
Yeah honestly kinda disappointing the improvements are so small. It's about a decade behind in terms of performance still which even other Chinese developed CPUs seem to be doing better. -
nookoool With a proper nvdia video card, I have seen black myth, new Doom, Battlefield 5 , etc being played off the Zhaoxin with acceptable framerate and quality. Seems the big hindrance is the poor integrated gpu and price/performance. With all the tech sanctions... every review will be "china cpu is behind...blah blah" for the next 5-10 years.Reply -
zsydeepsky Albert.Thomas said:It's really sad to see the lack of improvement of the KX-7000 series compared to Centaur's unreleased CNS CPUs.
true, from history Zhaoxin doesn't seem like a competitive CPU maker. they are "slow", to put it in a nice way.
their biggest value is the x86 IP license they got from VIA (somewhat questionable in legal terms), and man they really took a lazy nap on it. once the tech industry moves to ARM/RISCV, the gov support they could get will probably evaporate. once that happens, they almost certain will be out competed by other Chinese chip makers, let alone top tier companies like AMD or Intel. -
snemarch
It would be interesting to see another competitive x86 chip, but like erazog says – the point of that chip is probably self-sufficiency for legacy needs, while focusing new development on LoongArch.Albert.Thomas said:It's really sad to see the lack of improvement of the KX-7000 series compared to Centaur's unreleased CNS CPUs.
In that light, while this CPU might be disappointing when compared to current-gen x86, the ability to produce a domestic x86 compatible chip with some oomph IMHO does seem newsworthy :) -
Amdlova I'am using right now the 2500K feels super good... if they catch a i3 8100 it's good news.Reply