Zhaoxin ships the KaiXian KX-U6780A, an X86 PC processor line worth watching - pereztheince

Decades ago, microprocessors from Cyrix, Centaur, and Via Microsystems competed directly against AMD and Intel. While those days may be over, Shanghai's Zhaoxin wants to add some other X86 PC processor provider to the mix.

Tom turkey's Hardware brings Christian Bible of the Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-U6780A, a new X86 flake. Zhaoxin has begun selling the microchip on the Chinese online shopping site Taobao, bundled with a motherboard, for 4,300 yuan, or about $620. (According to Wikipedia, Zhaoxin is a joint venture 'tween Via and the Shanghai government.)

Is the KaiXian KX-U6780A a worthy competition to a chip like, say, AMD's Ryzen? For now, the answer is no, non even close. The chip doesn't even support hyperthreading, with eight cores and eight duds running at 2.7GHz. A Chinese YouTube channelise put the chip and the related C1888 motherboard (designed by Cjoyin Electronics) through its paces, and unconcealed that the chip generated a Cinebench R20 grievance of 845—which, accordant to the database collected by the Maxon benchmark, puts information technology good behind the 1059 score recorded aside a four-core Intel Core i5-3550U—an "Common ivy Bridge" mainframe discharged in 2012.

kaixian kx u6780a cpu z — The Processor-Z report card for the ZhaoxinKX-U6780A chip.

Withal, Tom's Hardware notes that the chip is an engineering sample, and the performance could improve middling. The KaiXian KX-U6780A is a 16nm chip currently. It's expected that Zhaoxin will try to hit the 7nm process lymph node in 2021, a milestone which AMD has already reached.

Right now, the KaiXian KX-U6780A doesn't sound equal a chip worth buying. More competition is forever good, however, and Zhaoxin appears committed complete the long run. IT's fair to say that Zhaoxin is in all probability a company deserving keeping an eye on over the next several years.

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As PCWorld's senior editor program, Mark focuses connected Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beat generation. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.