Zhaoxin KX-7000 8-Core CPU Gets Geekbenched

[T0@st]

Zhaoxin finally released its oft-delayed KX-7000 CPU series last December—the Chinese manufacturer claimed that its latest "Century Avenue Core" uArch consumer/desktop-oriented range was designed to "deliver double the performance of previous generations." Freshly discovered Geekbench 6.2.2 results indicate that Zhaoxin has succeeded on that front—Wccftech has pored over these figures, generated by an: "entry-level Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU which has 8 cores, 8 threads, 4 MB of L2, and 32 MB of L3 cache. This chip was running at a base clock of 3.0 GHz and a boost clock of 3.3 GHz which is below its standard 3.6 GHz boost profile."

The new candidate was compared to Zhaoxin's previous-gen KX-U6780A and KX-6000G models. Intel's Core i3-10100F processor was thrown in as a familiar Western point of reference. The KX-7000 scored: "823 points in single-core, and 3813 points in multi-core tests. For comparisons, the Intel's Comet Lake CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads plus a boost of up to 4.3 GHz offers a much higher score. It's around 75% faster in single and 17% faster in multi-core tests within the same benchmark." The higher clock speeds, doubled core counts and TDPs do deliver "twice the performance" when compared to direct forebears—mission accomplished there. It is clear that Zhaoxin's latest CPU architecture cannot keep up with a generations old Team Blue design. Loongson's 3A6000 processor is a very promising prospect—reports suggest that this chip is somewhat comparable to mainstream AMD Zen 4 and Intel Raptor Lake products.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[kondamin]

4th gen intel core performance with a node advantage

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

It beats my Ivy Bridge-E 2667v2 in SC, but loses to it in MC. I guess SMT on ye ol' Xeon saves the day.

 

[arbiter]

in SC its ~33% slower then my old 11 year old i7 4770. MC it almost matches it but 4 + HT core vs 8 core cpu. its on par with i3 4th gen intel on SC.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Why do we care about only for China garbage cpus. Even if competitive and for sale in the West, not if hell freezes over would you buy one.

 

[R-T-B]

Why do we care about only for China garbage cpus. Even if competitive and for sale in the West, not if hell freezes over would you buy one.

Because believe it or not, this is an international website and doesn't just cater to the west.

I doubt we have a ton of Chinese readers given english is our press language, but still. We. cover. all. things. tech.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I don't see why not. No, we very likely won't ever use one of these, but it's interesting all the same.

 

[regs]

Why do we care about only for China garbage cpus. Even if competitive and for sale in the West, not if hell freezes over would you buy one.

14 years ago Musk was laughing at BYD. Now BYD is largest electric car manufacturer in the World and doing some best cars in classes. And Musk is now using BYD batteries in his Teslas.
Zhaoxin is evolving. KX-6000 IPC was on pair with Bulldozer. KX-7000 IPC seem to be on pair with Skylake and Gracemont. And this is an efficiency architecture, so should be compared to second. It should have been come out in 2020, but was delayed due to western sanctions. They didn't have access to TSMC N7 and Samsung 7LP. They had to wait for SMIC N+2. But they haven't been wasting their time while waiting. Last year they merged some IDs of KX-8000 into Linux Kernel. Which is very likely be utilizing SMIC N+3 ("5 nm"). Although they won't able to use it in masses until late 2025 - early 2026. Huawei will likely be in priority.

 

[sLowEnd]

Why do we care about only for China garbage cpus. Even if competitive and for sale in the West, not if hell freezes over would you buy one.

Even if Chinese chips do still currently suck, it's probably better to keep tabs on them anyway, if only to avoid developing dangerous levels of hubris

 

[Frank_100]

Because believe it or not, this is an international website and doesn't just cater to the west.

I doubt we have a ton of Chinese readers given english is our press language, but still. We. cover. all. things. tech.

I agree that the story is important and interesting.
The Sandy-Bridge Xeons were a game changer.
China can do a lot of work with these chips.

........but

The "We cover, all things tech" is wrong.

TechPowerUp ignores audio creation.
I have never seen an article comparing DAW's .

In all the benchmarks, Audio creation is never considered.

It is a glaring hole in the reporting.....and it is desperately needed.

Most Audio Interfaces are junk.
Most still use USB 2, a data exchange technology that is over 20 years old and is slower then Firewire 400 in any practicle test. (because firewire is memory to memory streaming)

A lot of the software has had the same bugs for years.

Someone really needs to do a serious beat-down on this part of the tech industry.

 

[W1zzard]

In all the benchmarks, Audio creation is never considered.

Because i am a total noob with it, and finding proper, realistic benchmarks seems impossible. Spin up a new thread please, convince me and give me some ideas.

 

[Frank_100]

Because i am a total noob with it, and finding proper, realistic benchmarks seems impossible. Spin up a new thread please, convince me and give me some ideas.

I'll do that, but I think I will start by writing a few of the DAW and hardware producers and seeing if they have any internal benchmarks or what they would suggest.

Cockos and Steinberger come to mind.

Steinberger(Yamaha) makes Cubase and some very good Audio Interfaces.
They are also the developers of ASIO.

Cockos makes Reaper.

 

[W1zzard]

I'll do that, but I think I will start by writing a few of the DAW and hardware producers and seeing if they have any internal benchmarks or what they would suggest.

Cockos and Steinberger come to mind.

Steinberger(Yamaha) makes Cubase and some very good Audio Interfaces.
They are also the developers of ASIO.

Cockos makes Reaper.

Oh I thought you were experienced in the DAW field? Basically my question is: what does everybody use? how? how are you CPU limited and how can I reproduce that and test scaling.

 

[Frank_100]

Oh I thought you were experienced in the DAW field? Basically my question is: what does everybody use? how? how are you CPU limited and how can I reproduce that and test scaling.

I'm experenced in the use of a couple of DAWs.
As you are aware, there are lots of different DAWs
Most everybody knows some Pro-Tools.
Reaper is a very strong competitor to Pro-Tools as more recording is done at home.
Ableton and Studio One are also very popular.
Cakewalk is free and very MIDI friendly.

As far as everyone using the software:
Everyone uses the plug-ins melodyne or autotune.

In general DAWs like one core per audio track so you could get CPU limited playing too many tracks on too few cores.
Too slow is also not good. Too slow means you need to use a large buffer and will have to live with latency or audio dropping out.

Disk speed used to be an issue but M2's seem to have fixed it.

Some plug-ins are memory hogs.

The waves plug-ins used to use (and my still use) AVX512, so having a Xeon or Ryzen could be an advantage.
Waves plug-ins do work on Apple hardware, but I don't know anything about the new apple chips.

.........

Here is the guy you need to contact:

DAWbench – DAW Performance Testing & Analysis

dawbench.com

maybe this conversation should be moved to a new thread.

 

[W1zzard]

Here is the guy you need to contact:

DAW Bench : DAW Performance Benchmarking

I see crazy numbers of tracks/plugins in the test setup. Is that something people actually use? are modern CPUs even a bottleneck for audio production?

 

[Frank_100]

I don't believe anyone uses those crazy numbers of tracks and pug-ins, but I expect the pros doing sound tracks for movies use more tracks and plug-ins then anyone would guess.
If they are using soft synths on the same machine, a modern CPU might have some problems.

Many songs can use 60 to 100 tracks, but not all at the same time.
Ten tracks and a bus or two is not unusual for drums.
I just record demos of songs so I use canned drums. Much easier.

It is still frustrating to wait on a computer to bounce, import or convert a track.
Are gamers ever satisfied with the speed of their CPU? Is anybody?

(My opinion.) The biggest hardware bottlenecks are from the audio interfaces. Many just feel slow. Most of them still use USB 2.
USB 2 is getting to be to like a DVD.
Most recording is done at 24bit Integer. It sounds great but 32bit integer has a much lower noise floor.
There is even a 32bit float that clams to do away with digital distortion. It's all about ease of use.

As long as musicians keep buying the weak audio interfaces the manufactures will not upgrade.
Regularly publishing of benchmarks might help push things along.

 

[马嘉伟]

14 years ago Musk was laughing at BYD. Now BYD is largest electric car manufacturer in the World and doing some best cars in classes. And Musk is now using BYD batteries in his Teslas.
Zhaoxin is evolving. KX-6000 IPC was on pair with Bulldozer. KX-7000 IPC seem to be on pair with Skylake and Gracemont. And this is an efficiency architecture, so should be compared to second. It should have been come out in 2020, but was delayed due to western sanctions. They didn't have access to TSMC N7 and Samsung 7LP. They had to wait for SMIC N+2. But they haven't been wasting their time while waiting. Last year they merged some IDs of KX-8000 into Linux Kernel. Which is very likely be utilizing SMIC N+3 ("5 nm"). Although they won't able to use it in masses until late 2025 - early 2026. Huawei will likely be in priority.

This "世纪大道" core ipc march Ivy Bridge to Haswell in AVX2 I guess......

 

[regs]

This "世纪大道" core ipc march Ivy Bridge to Haswell in AVX2 I guess......

Its on par with Gracemont and Skylake. And this is Efficient architecture, as Gracemont. Unfortunately VIA sold Centaur Technology to Intel in 2021. And they've been working on Performance architecture. Although very likely they granted Zhaoxin a copy of CHA IP before sell out, so they could be working on Performance core as well. Hope something will come up with KX-8000.