Homegrown Chinese CPUs bring Core i7 Raptor Lake performance to domestic gaming PCs — Hygon C86-4G lands between a Core i7-13700 and Core i7-14700

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

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 The SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark, however, is outdated and has been in the retirement home since 2018.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.

Regarding the V-Ray benchmark, the C86-4G achieved a score 29% higher than the Core i7-12700 and 7% higher than the Core i7-13700. However, the Chinese chip fell behind the Core i7-14700K by a substantial 22% margin.

The post also claims that the C86-4G is capable of running Valorant and Black Myth: Wukong; however, no proof or results were presented.

It is easy to comprehend why the C86-4G lags in single-threaded performance, given the speculation that it continues to utilize AMD's Zen execution cores. Clearly, it holds an advantage in multi-threaded performance due to its 16 cores. The Core i7-12700 and Core i7-13700 may appear impressive on paper with their 12 and 16 cores, respectively; however, only eight of these are P-cores.

While Hygon's processors are viable options for processing power, Chinese domestic graphics cards present a different situation. Despite their progress over the past few years, there remains a significant gap between domestically produced Chinese graphics cards and those offered by Nvidia, AMD, or even Intel. Consequently, Thunderobot's latest RGB-inspired, liquid-cooled gaming PC continues to utilize an Nvidia GeForce RTX gaming graphics card.

Meanwhile, Hygon celebrates a victory for domestic chips, and Thunderobot enjoys the spotlight for having released China's first domestically produced gaming PC, even if it's just the processor that's homegrown.

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