http://www.pcgamer.com/intel-core-i9-7960x-review-16-cores-at-105-each/ >2017 is officially the year of the CPU—I can't recall a year where new product launches were so frequent. And these aren't meaningless 100MHz bumps in performance either, as both AMD and Intel have been on a roll. To recap, we've had the initial Kaby Lake desktop launch, with the i7-7700K, i5-7600K, and i3-7350K (plus other non-K chips). Then AMD had a staggered rollout of its Ryzen line, with the Ryzen 7, Ryzen 5, Ryzen 3, and finally Ryzen Threadripper parts. In between Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5, Intel also came out with initial Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors, and we specifically looked at the Core i9-7900X (and later, at least in the Threadripper charts, the i7-7820X). Today we have the second set of Skylake-X parts with the Core i9-7920X through i9-7980XE, and we're not done yet, as Coffee Lake and the i7-8700K will arrive on October 5. Whew! >But what's crazy with all of these CPU launches is that, at least as far as PC gaming hobbyists are concerned, many older CPUs remain perfectly acceptable solutions. If you have a Core i7 from any time in the past several years, you'll want to think twice before upgrading—at least, unless you want to do things besides playing games. Even AMD's aging FX-series processors continue to work well enough for most games, particularly if you're not using a top-end graphics card and hoping for 100+ fps framerates. But with bragging rights on the line, Intel reclaims the top two spots in consumer CPU rankings with the i9-7980XE and the i9-7960X.