Chinese Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU can’t beat old Intel and AMD chips — Core i3-8100 and Ryzen 5 5600G come out on top

The Zhaoxin KX-7000, one of China’s latest desktop CPUs, has finally received its first comprehensive review from PC Watch. The review shows that old budget chips from Intel and AMD are still firmly in the lead.

Made by Shanghai Zhaoxin, the KX-7000 originally debuted in December. It boasts eight cores, a boost clock of up to 3.7 GHz, support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, PCIe 4.0, and the company’s latest C-1190 integrated GPU. The older KX-U6880A, the fastest member of the KX-6000 desktop family, also had eight cores but only a maximum clock speed of 3 GHz and lacked support for PCIe 4.0 and DDR5 memory.

Like AMD’s Ryzen CPUs since the 3000 series, the KX-7000 uses a chiplet design: one chip for CPU cores and another for I/O functions. Zhaoxin hasn’t disclosed what company fabs the KX-7000 chiplets, nor what node they’re fabbed on.

Although the KX-7000 slots into Intel’s LGA1700 socket, it’s almost sure that the Chinese CPU won’t work in 600- or 700-series motherboards since Zhaoxin has likely wired its chips differently than Intel. Instead, using the LGA1700 socket seems to be a move to ensure broader cooler compatibility, an important consideration for a socketed processor.

Perhaps the most notable characteristic of the KX-7000 and other Zhaoxin chips is that they’re based on the x86 architecture, just like CPUs made by Intel and AMD. Zhaoxin inherited its x86 license from VIA Technologies when it partnered with the local Shanghai government to form the KX-7000 CPU designer.

PC Watch tested its KX-7000 on a generic, unlabeled motherboard that supports DDR4 instead of the newer DDR5 made by ASUS. Strangely enough, only DDR4 clocked strictly at 3,200 MHz by default could get the CPU to boot for the first time. According to PC Watch, this limitation can be changed in the BIOS. The publication raised concerns over the firmware and software support, particularly access to drivers, which the reviewer only got access to thanks to “determination.”

As for performance, the KX-7000 made gains over its predecessor but couldn’t quite catch up to old, low-end CPUs like the Core i3-8100 and Ryzen 5 5600G. In Cinebench R23, the KX-7000 could only tie the 8100 in the multi-threaded test and was only 60% as fast as the Intel chip in the single-threaded test. The 5600G, meanwhile, was about three times faster in both single- and multi-threaded performance.

The C-1190 iGPU, which PC Watch claims, is based on the Arise GT10C0 graphics card made by Chinese graphics company Glenfly. Given that Glenfly’s latest Arise 1020 didn’t impress, it’s unsurprising that the review found the KX-7000’s iGPU to be pretty slow, scoring a paltry 42 points in 3D Mark Time Spy to the 8100’s 469 and 5600 G’s 1440. The C-1190 was similarly behind in other 3DMark tests.

When equipped with an RX 6400, AMD’s cheapest and slowest graphics card, the KX-7000 could finally match the 8100 in 3DMark and Final Fantasy XIV. However, it wasn’t nearly as good in Dragon Quest X, an older game that relies more heavily on single-threaded performance.

The KX-7000 cannot battle modern Intel and AMD CPUs, and it’s unlikely Zhaoxin chips will be able to go head-to-head with Western x86 CPUs soon. However, performance is beside the point for China’s semiconductor industry, and self-sufficiency is the more important goal as the US government gradually places more trade restrictions on China. Earlier this year, the US government blocked Intel from selling Meteor Lake CPUs to Huawei, making domestically produced chips more appealing concerning supply chain stability.