While Chinese chipmaker Hygon may not currently have a processor that surpasses the best CPUs, it seems only a matter of time before it introduces a very competitive chip. Recently, Thunderobot launched the Black Warrior Hunter Pro, China's first gaming PC powered by a domestic Hygon C86-4G processor, which appears to deliver performance close to that of Intel's 13th Generation Raptor Lake models.
The C86-4G, designated with the OPN 3490, features 16 cores, 32 threads, and 32MB of L3 cache. If the specifications appear familiar, it is because Hygon licensed AMD's Zen IP through a joint venture several years prior. Current speculation suggests that Hygon employs the Zen core design in the C86-4G, despite the company's latest roadmap indicating that the C86-4G utilizes a "new, self-developed microarchitecture." The C86-4G operates at a clock speed of 2.8 GHz, which is lower than AMD's first-generation Zen processors.
The C86-4G supports cutting-edge technologies, including DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. Neither was supported on Zen, but Hygon may have identified a method to transfer AMD's Zen chiplets to a more recent I/O Die (IOD) equipped with a DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 controller.
More significantly, the C86-4G is an x86 processor, so it'll run Microsoft Windows and compatible applications and games, unlike other Chinese domestic processors based on Arm or RISC-V architectures. This represents a significant advancement for China, as the C86-4G can be readily used beyond gaming without worrying about compatibility or translation layers.
Hygon C86-4G CPU Benchmarks
Swipe to scroll horizontally Processor SPEC06 STint SPEC06 STfp SPEC06 MTint SPEC06 MTfp Core i7-14700 81 97 585 501 C86-4G 47 64 607 460 Core i7-13700 76 92 498 427 Core i7-12700 71 85 386 331
A recent Weixin post demonstrates the C86-4G competing with the Core i7-12700, Core i7-13700, and Core i7-14700. The SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark, however, is outdated and has been in the retirement home since 2018. Nevertheless, the V-Ray benchmark remains a reliable option for assessing processor performance.
The C86-4G's single-threaded performance was inferior to that of all Intel processors. It was up to 33% less efficient than the Core i7-12700.
In the context of multi-threaded performance, however, the C86-4G demonstrated an improvement of up to 22% over the Core i7-13700 in integer benchmarks and up to 8% in floating-point benchmarks. It additionally achieved performance levels up to 4% higher than the Core i7-14700 in the multi-threaded integer benchmark.
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