The arrival of the Intel Core i9 7900X, the first Core i9 processor from the company’s new Core-X series to land in stores, has started to shake things up in several 2D benchmarks. In the last few days we’ve seen quite a tussle between Sofos1990 (Greece) and RULE (Italy) with the XTU Global First Place ranking for a 10-core switching back and forth several times in just a matter of hours.

Looking back at early July we find Sofos1990 laying down a strong marker with an XTU score of 4,257 marks. The rig used included a Core i9 7900X clocked at 5,750MHz, an impressive +74.24% beyond the chip’s stock settings, plus a GIGABYTE X299 SOC Champion motherboard. Other rig components include a G.SKILL Trident Z DDR4 kit plus Corsair Neutron GTX SSD and 1,500 watt PSU.

Fast forward to just about two days ago and we find RULE (Italy) enter the fray with an XTU score of 4,285 marks in the XTU benchmark. He managed to push his Core i9 7900X to a very nice 5,800MHz (+75.76%), remarkably using a pair of Trident Z kits with all eight DIMMs clocked at 1,800MHz (11-10-10-28). The lead didn’t last too long however as Sofos1990 clearly had plenty left in the tank, submitting a score of 4,299 marks just hours later. This was done with higher CPU frequency of 5,840MHz (+76.97%).

However, before the day came to a close, the Italian struck back with an even more epic XTU score of 4,313 marks with his CPU clocked again at 5,800MHz (perhaps his DDR4 kit was pushed to higher frequency?). Congrats were exchanged on both sides as the action looked to have subsided. Not a chance. Sofos1990 made an almost immediate reply (sandbagging much?) with a retort of 4,327 marks XTU. It seems his CPU had a few more megahertz left in it, this time hitting 5,850MHz (+77.27%).

In the early hours of this morning however RULE made what we can assume must be last effort to claim the GFP ranking, submitting a score of 4,342 XTU marks with his i9 7900X ramped up to 5,880MHz. Within hours however, he was left with a second place finish as Sofos made a submission of 4,356 marks with CPU pushed to 5,900MHz (78.79+). This score (at the time of writing) is the fastest ever XTU score made with on a 10-core CPU. The last comment on the submission comes from RULE who simply states “Man you win. For now :D”. Let’s hope he gets back on horse soon.

It’s been great two see to real pros fight it out using the new Skylake-X platform, and even better to see some old fashioned gentlemanly conduct too. You can check out all the score submissions in the links above and also by checking out the Sofos1990 and RULE profile pages here on HWBOT.