The Chinese domestic x86 chip, Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU, has been benchmarked in a wide range of tests at stock & overclocked settings, showcasing a huge performance increase versus the previous generation while also offering the domestic marketplace a new option for their PC needs.
Zhaoxin KX-7000 x86 CPU Tested: First Die Shots, LGA 1700 Socket Motherboards From ASUS, Overclock Benchmarks & More
The latest performance benchmarks of the Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU come from ASUS's China General Manager, Tony Yu, who routinely conducts in-depth performance tests and product evaluations on his official Bilibili channel.
The latest product that was tested out is the Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU, an x86 chip designed for the domestic Chinese market. The CPU was launched at the end of 2023 and we saw the first products roll out in the first quarter of 2024. Early performance tests showed that the chip can reach performance similar to the Intel 10th Gen "Comet Lake" lineup which utilizes a refined version of the Skylake architecture and should also be able to match the first-gen Zen core architecture.
Starting with the specifications, the Zhaoxin KX-7000/8 CPU is based on the x86 Century Avenue architecture and features a 7nm chiplet design. The CPU die is separate from the I/O die with the CPU die measuring 78.6mm2 and the I/O die measuring 151.8mm2. The CPU die features 8 CPU cores with 8 threads, 512 KB of L2 cache per core (4 MB total), 32 MB of shared L3 cache, and a core clock of up to 3.6 GHz (3.2 GHz base).
The I/O die features the IMC which supports both DDR4-3200 and DDR5-4800 memory standards with up to 128 GB capacities, there's also an on-die GPU known as the C1190 which supports DX12, OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL 4.6, and H.265. The iGPU supports DP, HDMI, and VGA output interfaces. The rest of the blocks include 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes, 4 USB 3.2 Gen2, and a single USB4 controller. There's also a single SATA III controller for up to 4 port support.
Now for the design of the Zhaoxin KX-7000/8 CPUs themselves, the CPU manufacturer decided to go with a similar design as the LGA 1700 socketed chips from Intel and both the design and the IHS look very similar.
The difference is underneath the IHS and on the backside of the PCB. The caps on the back are very different from the ones featured on Intel's LGA 1700 CPU & Intel also uses mono-lithic packages instead of chiplets for its current lineup. You might be able to fit the Zhaoxin CPUs on a LGA 1700 motherboard designed for Intel CPUs but they are unlikely to boot up.
Coming to the platform, ASUS has developed its own dedicated LGA 1700 socketed motherboards for the Zhaoxin KX-7000/8 CPUs. The motherboard is similar to its entry-level offerings with a 6+2 phase VRM without any heatsinks, a single M.2 slot, two SATA III ports, two full-length PCIe x16 4.0, and a single PCIe x1 4.0 slot.
The motherboard comes in the mATX form factor and features just 2 DIMM slots. There's a DEBUG LED on the motherboard and I/O is very standard. The motherboard also lacks a PCH since all of the connectivity is handheld by the I/O die on the CPU itself.
Moving over to the performance figures, the CPU was first tested at stock and scored more than double the performance of its predecessor, the KX-6780 in both single and multi-threaded tests. The CPU also was on par with the Core i7-7700K and managed to be faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X in single-core tests.
The CPU can also be overclocked beyond its 3.6 GHz (Max 1-Core) and 3.2 GHz (All-Core) clocks to 3.6 GHz (All-Core). This requires a better cooling solution and a 360mm AIO was used.
This resulted in up to a 21% increase in multi-core and a 10% increase in single-core tests which is significant. As for stock power, the CPU consumes 85W in multi-threaded tests.
While application performance was decent enough, it looks like gaming performance still needs a lot of optimization work as the CPU could barely handle the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. It was only able to manage 46 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K and just 30 FPS in Counter Strike 2 with the GPU being severely bottlenecked.
In the end, it is concluded that the Zhaoxin KX-7000/8 CPUs are a good alternative for the Chinese domestic market and progress for the x86/CPU development in mainland China. The company is expecting to expand its family with chiplet offerings that offer 16 or higher cores.
Also, ASUS is saying that while they have set the upper limit for OC at 4 GHz in their motherboards, the limit can be expanded to 5 GHz for extreme overclocking. ASUS Tony says that he'll ask his team at ASUS to update the BIOS if the video reaches 100,000 likes so that's an interesting proposition.
