Intel's new Skylake-X series of processors, including the current flagship Core i9-7900X being tested in this review, has been one of those launches where everybody has had a strong opinion since the announcement. Whether it's through stiff competition from AMD, anger at Intel's seemingly-intentional aggressive product segmentation, or the overall launch that seems to have been rushed, X299 and Skylake-X have been hot topics for several weeks.

We finally got our hands on the new 10-core, 20-thread Core i9-7900X processor that serves as the X299 platform's and, by extension, Intel's consumer CPU flagship? for the next couple of months, at least. How will the new $999 part based on Intel's fast Skylake architecture perform?