Benchmarks: CPU
Cranking up the Turbo speed to 4.5GHz and using the Skylake architecture is a solid recipe for excellent single-thread performance. AMD's Ryzen 7 made great strides in improving its own single-thread metric, but it's clear that Intel has a significant lead still.
It is reasonable to assume that potential purchasers don't care too much about how well these CPUs perform under light loads. What's more important is the speed when all available cores and threads are taxed.
The result is predictably impressive, as the newer Core chips retake the HandBrake crown that was temporarily handed over to Ryzen 7 1800X. Core i7-7820X is about 12 per cent faster than the best AMD chip here.
This benchmark relies more on core frequency than all-out core utilisation, and that is how it is able to beat out the 10-core Core i7-6950X with comparative ease.
We reckon that Cinebench is a better test of multi-core performance as all CPUs are at, or very close to, 100 per cent load. Comparing like-for-like, or as close as we can get it, the Core i7-7820X is less than 10 per cent faster than Ryzen 7 1800X.