Zhaoxin Releases Its KX-7000 Processor

Published on December 15, 2023

Recently, Zhaoxin released its KX-7000 processor.

The new 8-core processor, KX-7000/8, is based on a new architecture named "Century Avenue". This, alongside other upgrades such as added support for DDR5, PCIe 4.0, and USB 4, could help the company capture more market share in the desktop computing market.

According to the company's official documentations, it seems like the company adopted a chiplet-based design, which works by combining modular chips together to form a bigger and more complete chip at a lower price. It is also important to note that the CPU is also one of the first from Zhaoxin that supports an LGA socket, as opposed to directly soldering the processor to the motherboard. This approach makes swapping out the processor for repairs or upgrades much easier. The integrated GPU is also upgraded to a C-1190 GPU with better performance.

The KH-7000/8 seems to come in two different configurations - a slower one clocked at 3.0 Ghz with a boost clock of 3.6 Ghz, as well as another one with a base clock of 3.2 Ghz and a bpoost clock of 3.7 Ghz. Given that the chip is claimed to support both LGA and BGA sockets, it is possible that the way the CPU is mounted to the motherboard is what impacts the clock speed. We're guessing that the ones with a LGA socket might be the higher clocked ones.

According to some allegedly leaked benchmarks online, the new CPU scored 40 points in the SPECint_base 2006 single core benchmark at 3.7 Ghz and 44.3 points at 4 Ghz (possibly overclocked), which is a bit higher than Intel's i3-10100 at 43.6 points.

In conclusion, this new processor from Zhaoxin is very interesting and brings a lot of new features to the table. It would be interesting to see how this new product would be recieved in the consumer market.

Sources:

https://www.zhaoxin.com/prod_view.aspx?nid=3&typeid=593&id=2757

https://www.zhaoxin.com/news_view.aspx?nid=2&typeid=273&id=1625

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/zhaoxins-zx-f-kx-7000-kh-40000-and-beyond.2564975/page-18

https://www.icsmart.cn/71275/