# Intel Core i9-10980XE "Cascade Lake-X" Benchmarked



## btarunr (Oct 25, 2019)

One of the first reviews of Intel's new flagship HEDT processor, the Core i9-10980XE, just hit the web. Lab501.ro got their hands on a freshly minted i9-10980XE and put it through their test bench. Based on the "Cascade Lake-X" silicon, the i9-10980XE offers almost identical IPC to "Skylake-X," but succeeds the older generation with AI-accelerating DLBoost instruction-set, an improved multi-core boosting algorithm, higher clock speeds, and most importantly, a doubling in price-performance achieved by cutting the cores-per-Dollar metric by half, across the board. 

Armed with 18 cores, the i9-10980XE is ahead of the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X in rendering and simulation tests, although not by much (for a chip that has 50% more cores). This is probably attributed to the competing AMD chip being able to sustain higher all-core boost clock speeds. In tests that not only scale with cores, but are also hungry for memory bandwidth, such as 7-zip and Media, Intel extends its lead thanks to its quad-channel memory interface that's able to feed its cores with datasets faster.



 

 

 

 

 





As we move to gaming and gaming-related 3D benchmarks, we see the i9-10980XE only marginally ahead of the 3900X in the 3DMark Physics test. This lends credibility to the report where the unreleased 16-core 3950X was seen beating the i9-10980XE in this particular test. With gaming still being the forte of mainstream-desktop processors with lower core counts and higher clock-speeds, we see the likes of the i9-9900K racing ahead on account of significantly higher speeds while having sufficient muscle to handle games. Find more interesting results in the Lab501 review here.



 

 

 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## amit_talkin (Oct 25, 2019)

Meh, just wait until 3950x roast it. I am not even talking about TR3.


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## birdie (Oct 25, 2019)

12 vs 18 cores?

3950X will obliterate the Core i9-10980XE.


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## GlacierNine (Oct 25, 2019)

3 Figure price?

That's not even accurate according to Intel's own information: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-edition-processor-24-75m-cache-3-00-ghz.html






Nevermind that it's barely faster than a product costing $499...


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Oct 25, 2019)

no hope ... XE series almost nothing worth since first XE out


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## Crackong (Oct 25, 2019)

I saw nothing but 3900x simply roasted the 10980xe ....


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## stimpy88 (Oct 25, 2019)

My god, the desperation coming from Intel...  They actually seem proud that their 18 core CPU is slightly faster than AMDs 12 core part...

Will they be so proud of this ancient CPU design being handily bested by AMDs 16 core (non Threadripper) part, for a fraction of its cost?


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## Vayra86 (Oct 25, 2019)

Í'll take two for the price of one.

No?

Fine, then don't.


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## btarunr (Oct 25, 2019)

GlacierNine said:


> 3 Figure price?
> 
> That's not even accurate according to Intel's own information



I too went by Intel's information, but I see now they meant tray pricing. Fixed title.


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## a111087 (Oct 25, 2019)

LOL, intel has seen better days...  the only saving grace is gaming and i9-9900k


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## fancucker (Oct 25, 2019)

I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
- HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
- lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
(unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
- none of the countless problems faced by AMD mobos and memory
- super ST performance, being more reflective and reliable in today's usages
- superior gaming experience
- availability of ITX option - Asrock X299-ITX/Server counterpart
- AMD's lack of optimization in windows

So many unmentioned advantages. I say its a good placeholder until the actual zen response (Tiger-Lake/Ice Lake) arrives. Kudos to AMD for catching up to Coffeelake though.


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## oxezz (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



this gave me a good chuckle


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## Noztra (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



That is the most funny thing I have read all day.  Thank you very much.


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## csatahajos (Oct 25, 2019)

"I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
- HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
- lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
(unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
- none of the countless problems faced by AMD mobos and memory
- super ST performance, being more reflective and reliable in today's usages
- superior gaming experience
- availability of ITX option - Asrock X299-ITX/Server counterpart
- AMD's lack of optimization in windows "

LOL, what do you smoke dude 

Other than maybe the first one the rest is pure BS or urban legends, and even the first one is only if you specifically need any of these three (but honestly Optane is pretty overhyped so far, PCI-E 4 NvmE SSD-s are not much worse).


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## Crackong (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



No No.
Based on your considerations,
You should take the 9900k, not the 10980xe.
The 10980xe is simply useless for you.


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## ppn (Oct 25, 2019)

no 9900 is history, take the comet lake 10 core 5Ghz allcore part and see the 3950 falling.


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## ZoneDymo (Oct 25, 2019)

What is up with the 8700k beating everything in DoW3 and Metro?


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## GlacierNine (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



- Thunderbolt 3 is able to be implemented by anyone already if they pay the licensing fee, and as part of USB4 if can be implemented even without that licensing fee. ASRock already has an AMD board with TB3. AMD is actually faster than intel in HEVC when comparing equal numbers of cores, despite the clockspeed disadvantage. AMD has their own alternative to Optane, called StoreMI.
- This simply isn't true. Full system power consumption for the 3900X under load is 55W compared to 9980XE at 101W. The 9980XE also doesn't really have any overclocking headroom.
- Those problems haven't really existed since the 2000 series revised memory management. The current 3000 series IMC actually holds the world record for highest overclock on DDR4.
- Actually, clock-for-clock, AMD now has superior IPC and therefore superior single-threaded performance to Intel's architecture. Clockspeed is the only reason Intel still has a Single-threaded advantage, and for highly-threaded CPUs like this that's irrelevant since AMD's clockspeeds are much more comparable to Intel's here.
- AMD X570 has ITX boards available, from ASRock and from Gigabyte.
- This is Microsoft's problem, not AMD's, and has already been resolved by Microsoft updating the task scheduler.

Do you have any other terrible, untrue points to make?



ZoneDymo said:


> What is up with the 8700k beating everything in DoW3 and Metro?


Higher sustained boost clocks is my guess. Could be either a chip with good boost behaviour, or even that the limitation of threads causes an anomaly where 6/12 forces a workload into an HT thread that would ordinarily be handled on a 7th physical core, limiting the performance of that thread in theory, but in practice keeping that one physical core operating more quickly and therefore at higher boost.


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## Vya Domus (Oct 25, 2019)

> This is probably attributed to the competing AMD chip being able to sustain higher all-core boost clock speeds.



It's not, Zen 2 has twice the floating point throughput, that's why. Zen 1 already had a very effective FP pipeline given the resources in each core.


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## Octavean (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



If by TB3 you mean Intel Thunderbolt 3 then you can remove that from your list.  There are actually some retail AMD motherboards that have Thunderbolt 3.  I find it hard to believe anyone "Needs" it but it is an option if you want it.

Odd but true.

Edit:

So for example, the ASRock Aqua X570 has Thunderbolt 3 built into the io.   Its probably one of the most expensive boards but its not the only AMD X570 board that now has Thunderbolt 3. 

So again if TB3 means Thunderbolt 3 then take that off the list,.....


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## The3D_ (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



He is delusional, take him to the infirmary


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## GlacierNine (Oct 25, 2019)

Octavean said:


> If by TB3 you mean Intel Thunderbolt 3 then you can remove that from your list.  There are actually some retail AMD motherboards that have Thunderbolt 3.  I find it hard to believe anyone "Needs" it but it is an option if you want it.
> 
> Odd but true.


Not to mention that Thunderbolt 3 is available to everyone anyway, as an optional part of the USB 4 specification, meaning it can be used by anyone who wants to implement it alongside their USB 4 implementation.



> "Regarding USB4 specification’s optional support for Thunderbolt 3, USB-IF anticipates PC vendors to broadly support Thunderbolt 3 compatibility in their USB4 solutions given *Thunderbolt 3 compatibility is now included in the USB4 specification and therefore royalty free for formal adopters," *the USB-IF said in a statement. "That said, Intel still maintains the Thunderbolt 3 branding/certification so consumers can look for the appropriate Thunderbolt 3 logo and brand name to ensure the USB4 product in question has the expected Thunderbolt 3 compatibility. Furthermore, the decision was made not to make Thunderbolt 3 compatibility a USB4 specification requirement as certain manufacturers (e.g. smartphone makers) likely won’t need to add the extra capabilities that come with Thunderbolt 3 compatibility when designing their USB4 products."


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

ZoneDymo said:


> What is up with the 8700k beating everything in DoW3 and Metro?



Older games that don't advantage of more than 4 cores.


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## Caqde (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



1) The 10980XE does not support any HEVC it doesn't have an IGP and AMD has a few TB3 motherboards. So optane i guess?
2) LOL what? X299 idle is not low by any means. Overclocking I could give you if you want a household heater.
3) Early adoption of AMD 1st gen Ryzen maybe what issues are you talking about now. 3rd Gen Ryzen is has very good motherboards and memory support.
4) Uhm Intel's HEDT uses a different internal memory architecture than desktop Intel chips. This leads to higher latencies and with that a loss is ST performance giving the lead to AMD whoops so much for ST performace. Check the game benchmarks above. And also pay attention to the point that the 10980xe and Ryzen 3900x have similar clock frequencies and AMD won when it came to games every time in the charts picked. Even going to the source site it is hard to find any real win for Intel even when cherry picking your data.
5) See 4.
6) X399 yeah. Although there are quite a few X570 boards if the 3950X is an option in that size category depending on your needs. 
7) It's new? And optimizations are coming with every new version of Windows 10. Although this really isn't a thing that should be an issue given that Ryzen is fast enough already.


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## ZoneDymo (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Older games that don't advantage of more than 4 cores.



Yeah but how does that explain it? the 8700k is a 6 core cpu, 9900k/9700k is a more modern, higher clocked, 8 core cpu.
Both have more cores the games can use but the 9900k/9700k is better right? so why are they doing worse?

EDIT, guess Glacier's speculation will have to do, but its still just odd to me, I would think processor makers could figure stuff like this out.


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## GlacierNine (Oct 25, 2019)

Caqde said:


> 1) The 10980XE does not support any HEVC it doesn't have an IGP and AMD has a few TB3 motherboards. So optane i guess?
> 2) LOL what? X299 idle is not low by any means. Overclocking I could give you if you want a household heater.
> 3) Early adoption of AMD 1st gen Ryzen maybe what issues are you talking about now. 3rd Gen Ryzen is has very good motherboards and memory support.
> 4) Uhm Intel's HEDT uses a different internal memory architecture than desktop Intel chips. This leads to higher latencies and with that a loss is ST performance giving the lead to AMD whoops so much for ST performace. Check the game benchmarks above. And also pay attention to the point that the 10980xe and Ryzen 3900x have similar clock frequencies and AMD won when it came to games every time in the charts picked. Even going to the source site it is hard to find any real win for Intel even when cherry picking your data.
> ...


Not to be too pointed, but I already did a point-by-point breakdown of why this is wrong, including sources linked like this.


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## ZoneDymo (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



Welcome to TPU my man, hope you did not just make a new account to do some blind fanboying


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## Octavean (Oct 25, 2019)

GlacierNine said:


> Not to mention that Thunderbolt 3 is available to everyone anyway, as an optional part of the USB 4 specification, meaning it can be used by anyone who wants to implement it alongside their USB 4 implementation.



Good to know. I wasn’t aware of that until you mentioned it.  That is the sort of thing that could boost Thunderbolt to actually being mainstream beyond niche Apple users.

However, I was talking in terms of currently available hardware.  USB 4 isn’t something we can take advantage of quite yet.  

Thunderbolt support would be an interesting option (better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it) but 99.9% of users don’t need it.  I’ve had Thunderbolt 3 support for quite some time and never had need of it.


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## ShurikN (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> - superior gaming experience


> Loses to 3900X in all 3 gaming tests.


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## GlacierNine (Oct 25, 2019)

Octavean said:


> Good to know. I wasn’t aware of that until you mentioned it.  That is the sort of thing that could boost Thunderbolt to actually being mainstream beyond niche Apple users.
> 
> However, I was talking in terms of currently available hardware.  USB 4 isn’t something we can take advantage of quite yet.
> 
> Thunderbolt support would be an interesting option (better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it) but 99.9% of users don’t need it.  I’ve had Thunderbolt 3 support for quite some time and never had need of it.


Ditto. I did also link the boards you mentioned in my post, just felt it was worth pointing out Intel has officially given up any advantage TB3 might have allowed them, by giving it to everyone.


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## ShurikN (Oct 25, 2019)

GlacierNine said:


> Ditto. I did also link the boards you mentioned in my post, just felt it was worth pointing out Intel has officially given up any advantage TB3 might have allowed them, by giving it to everyone.


The standard originally required a license thus adding cost. When Intel realized it's going nowhere fast, they gave up, and made it free.


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

Octavean said:


> Good to know. I wasn’t aware of that until you mentioned it.  That is the sort of thing that could boost Thunderbolt to actually being mainstream beyond niche Apple users.
> 
> However, I was talking in terms of currently available hardware.  USB 4 isn’t something we can take advantage of quite yet.
> 
> Thunderbolt support would be an interesting option (better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it) but 99.9% of users don’t need it.  I’ve had Thunderbolt 3 support for quite some time and never had need of it.



I would rather have Optane support those drives have some serious i/O


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## GlacierNine (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I would rather have Optane support those drives have some serious i/O





			https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
		


Behold, the same damn thing, but for AMD.


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

GlacierNine said:


> https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
> 
> 
> 
> Behold, the same damn thing, but for AMD.



I have used Store MI. It is honestly meh for me. The maximum size you can add without paying a premium is 256GB and one of the drives has to listed as fast and slow. It really only makes sense if you have an HDD and you would like to turn it into a SSHD with 256GB of flash. Optane is more like a different version of NVME than a software based program. Windows already has Storage spaces that does way more than Store MI anyway.


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## Caqde (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I would rather have Optane support those drives have some serious i/O



The Optane support reallly isn't about supporting the drives but the "Optane" software. There are multiple products that Intel places their Optane tag on. One of them being the software they use with their Optane drives. If your only concern is using an Optane SSD as a boot drive any AMD system with the proper connection will suffice. The only other Optane tech Intel has exclusive use of is the Optane Memory supported by certain Xeon platforms. Idk if AMD will eventually add support for those in their EPYC line eventually or something similar.


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## dont whant to set it"' (Oct 25, 2019)

The elefant in the room just turned the lights on.


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## HwGeek (Oct 25, 2019)

10980xe and 9980xe have same all core boost so they would perform the same in most benchmarks that not using the new features.
so it's going to be even boring benchmarks then 2080Super ;-).


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## SamuelL (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



I own/have owned both intel and AMD mainstream and HEDT platforms in the last two years. I have to disagree with all but your first point. TB3 was the biggest pain for me, Would’ve been useful several times now on my X399 workstation.

As to everything else, if you’re gaming at 1440p or 4K - you do not notice the difference. If anything, my current X399 build seems to have more consistent FPS (“smoother”) at 4K vs my previous AM4 or Z270 builds. SIngle threaded performance is a terrible metric to build a system around FYI - the tasks and applications that are truly single-threaded are mostly the stuff of benchmarks now. ITX isn’t  realistic with X399 due to the size of the socket. Windows optimizations / lack thereof had much to do with NUMA vs UMA and this has been resolved for Zen 2.

Overclocking is where I have to disagree most. Zen overclocking has more to do with building a custom cooling solution, tweaking PBO options / wattage / scalar, and many hours of memory adjustment and testing. To do it well is harder than bumping vcore and cranking the multiplier on a mainstream intel board - this is especially true regarding the memory.


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## PanicLake (Oct 25, 2019)

The only thing I take from those benchmarks is the outstanding value of the 3700x that despite costing (where I live) around ~€350 against the ~€500 for the i7 9900k  is neck to neck and in more than one case even better.


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## thesmokingman (Oct 25, 2019)

This is product stack is already dead at release. I don't see much reason to leave your 9900K, let alone a 3900x. You'd be crazy to pay twice the price of a 3900x for this, imo.


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## jeffj7 (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



LOL riding a boat on D-Nile


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## dirtyferret (Oct 25, 2019)

Finally a CPU for reading email, posting on Instagram and can play Crysis!


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## Nkd (Oct 25, 2019)

I am not sure how to think about this. This processor seems DOA. I mean its not great in gaming and doesn't blow past in multicore tests against 12core AMD. Its probably generating too much heat to sustain any higher boost clocks. 3950x is just going to destroy it. Intel couldn't have a node shrink fast enough.


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## dirtyferret (Oct 25, 2019)

ZoneDymo said:


> What is up with the 8700k beating everything in DoW3 and Metro?



Seriously this is either fake or they gave the chip some secret sauce...it's a good 10% better then anything else in their tests yet no ones else has seen those numbers


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## MikeZTM (Oct 25, 2019)

GlacierNine said:


> Higher sustained boost clocks is my guess. Could be either a chip with good boost behaviour, or even that the limitation of threads causes an anomaly where 6/12 forces a workload into an HT thread that would ordinarily be handled on a 7th physical core, limiting the performance of that thread in theory, but in practice keeping that one physical core operating more quickly and therefore at higher boost.



Actually it is much simpler than that: 8700k have less cores resulting in lower ring bus latency than 9900k. In 1080P CPU frame rate test RAM/Cache system latency is critical and this architecture shows it weakness.

BTW I'm using my Optane SSD 900P AIC with a X570. All client Optane devices are standard NVMe SSDs including those H10 hybrids. It's hilarious to think a standard NVMe SSD will not work on AMD platform.

Only server part like Optane DC Persistence Memory are limit to Xeon platform and anyway they are not compatible with desktop or HEDT platform and not even Xeon E or Xeon W.


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Oct 25, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...



wake up mate, we already at the end of 2019 ...


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## MikeZTM (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> I would rather have Optane support those drives have some serious i/O



Sitting with 900P on a X570.
It works day one as those drives are just NVMe SSDs.


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

Caqde said:


> The Optane support reallly isn't about supporting the drives but the "Optane" software. There are multiple products that Intel places their Optane tag on. One of them being the software they use with their Optane drives. If your only concern is using an Optane SSD as a boot drive any AMD system with the proper connection will suffice. The only other Optane tech Intel has exclusive use of is the Optane Memory supported by certain Xeon platforms. Idk if AMD will eventually add support for those in their EPYC line eventually or something similar.



Yeah I know what you mean


MikeZTM said:


> Sitting with 900P on a X570.
> It works day one as those drives are just NVMe SSDs.



Nice those are a little rich for my blood but are very tempting.


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## Tomgang (Oct 25, 2019)

At first i was like





But then i was like





If these results are true, intel… sorry i mean Shintel is gonna have a hard year a head of them on the desktop marked. Intel HEDT is a dying breed as it is right now.
Well this just confirms for my needs Ryzen 9 3950X is a better choise for me. I want the best possible gaming performance mixed with high core count for multi tasking perpose and other core needy stuff and there it seems so far Ryzen 9 3950X doing a better job based on the 3900X gaming results. AMD wins my money this round.


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## skizzo (Oct 25, 2019)

ZoneDymo said:


> What is up with the 8700k beating everything in DoW3 and Metro?





8700K is 6 cores / 12 threads

9700K is 8 cores / 8 threads

apparently more threads was more beneficial for such benchmarks

PS....now I see a 9900K is in there too which is 8 cores / 16 threads....OK so 8700K beating 9900K is a bit perplexing. However, not perplexing in my initial response between 8700K and 9700K


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## MikeZTM (Oct 25, 2019)

skizzo said:


> 8700K is 6 cores / 12 threads
> 
> 9700K is 8 cores / 8 threads
> 
> ...



Games usually gain more FPS when you disable HT/SMT on the CPU. Those threads are not easy to optimize and not suited for game data processing.

8700k is 6 cores so ring bus latency is 20% lower by average. Unless 8700k is limited by its 6 cores throutput, its always better than a Intel 8 core CPU. Same goes for 7700k, if game does not overwhelm a quad core then 7700k is slightly faster than a 8700k.
Next gen Intel high end 10 cores only make this situation worse.

The problem for Intel right now is more core == less gaming performance.

This is their fault in architecture, AMD does not affected by this. Each CCX is a 7700k equivalence and can enjoy low latency. For old games 1CCX is enough so Ryzen will act like a 7700k. For newer games they can group threads into group of 4 and make them run on different CCX to minimize cross CCX latency. And AMD is trying to improve that by adding a larger cache to the CCX.


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## Patriot (Oct 25, 2019)

A lot of reviewers include old results with a handy * saying we didn't re-run with spectre/meltdown/zombieload/md---- mitigations.


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## skizzo (Oct 25, 2019)

MikeZTM said:


> Games usually gain more FPS when you disable HT/SMT on the CPU. Those threads are not easy to optimize and not suited for game data processing.
> 
> 8700k is 6 cores so ring bus latency is 20% lower by average. Unless 8700k is limited by its 6 cores throutput, its always better than a Intel 8 core CPU. Same goes for 7700k, if game does not overwhelm a quad core then 7700k is slightly faster than a 8700k.
> Next gen Intel high end 10 cores only make this situation worse.
> ...



thanks for an explanation, however now you gotta tell me what the heck is CCX?

and no thanks (jk) for worrying me about waiting for comet lake. the yet to be released 10 core / 20 thread Intel CPU. I've been holding out for the new Z490 series chipsets and 10 core / 20 thread CPU. Thinking it would be just that much better for gaming. Though, I use my workstation as an audio workstation running Pro Tools, but also game on it just as much. So I'm trying to upgrade into a system that still gives me the best of both worlds.


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## Patriot (Oct 25, 2019)

skizzo said:


> thanks for an explanation, however now you gotta tell me what the heck is CCX?
> 
> and no thanks (jk) for worrying me about waiting for comet lake. the yet to be released 10 core / 20 thread Intel CPU. I've been holding out for the new Z490 series chipsets and 10 core / 20 thread CPU. Thinking it would be just that much better for gaming. Though, I use my workstation as an audio workstation running Pro Tools, but also game on it just as much. So I'm trying to upgrade into a system that still gives me the best of both worlds.


I am curious how the DAW benchmarks will go between Threadripper and i9, it's a place where AMD struggled a bit last gen curious if the io-die helps or hurts on that situation.


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## Octavean (Oct 25, 2019)

Patriot said:


> A lot of reviewers include old results with a handy * saying we didn't re-run with spectre/meltdown/zombieload/md---- mitigations.



Very good point!


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## MikeZTM (Oct 25, 2019)

skizzo said:


> thanks for an explanation, however now you gotta tell me what the heck is CCX?
> 
> and no thanks (jk) for worrying me about waiting for comet lake. the yet to be released 10 core / 20 thread Intel CPU. I've been holding out for the new Z490 series chipsets and 10 core / 20 thread CPU. Thinking it would be just that much better for gaming. Though, I use my workstation as an audio workstation running Pro Tools, but also game on it just as much. So I'm trying to upgrade into a system that still gives me the best of both worlds.



CCX is AMD's core cluster on the CPU die. 1 CCX contains 4 cores in a group. Cores inside same CCX have low latency access.

And 10 core comet lake will not be something you really want. According to current testing with more core count, 10 core will have worse performance in gemming compared to 9900k.

Intel switched to "mesh" bus for Xeon and HEDT with Skylake-X just because ringbus doesn't hold up.


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## pantti (Oct 25, 2019)

8700k just was without a outdated bios. I was just debugging similar performance issue just to discover some of company computers were on old bios and performance was way better than in the IT test lab.  2017-2019 security penalty is well over 20%


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## efikkan (Oct 25, 2019)

MikeZTM said:


> Games usually gain more FPS when you disable HT/SMT on the CPU. Those threads are not easy to optimize and not suited for game data processing.


Games may be affected negatively by SMT due to latency issues. While the OS scheduler controls which threads share a core, the CPU itself is fully in control about when it switches them. From the application there is really not much to "optimize", other than controlling thread count and possibly setting affinity and priority.



MikeZTM said:


> 8700k is 6 cores so ring bus latency is 20% lower by average. Unless 8700k is limited by its 6 cores throutput, its always better than a Intel 8 core CPU. Same goes for 7700k, if game does not overwhelm a quad core then 7700k is slightly faster than a 8700k.
> Next gen Intel high end 10 cores only make this situation worse.
> 
> The problem for Intel right now is more core == less gaming performance.





MikeZTM said:


> And 10 core comet lake will not be something you really want. According to current testing with more core count, 10 core will have worse performance in gemming compared to 9900k.
> 
> Intel switched to "mesh" bus for Xeon and HEDT with Skylake-X just because ringbus doesn't hold up.


There are rumors about a dual ring bus in Comet Lake-S, but we'll see if that claim holds up.
The mesh network of Skylake-SP only makes sense with high core counts, and even with 10 cores the ring bus will probably offer lower latency.
The ring bus will only be a bottleneck when the bandwidth is exhausted, which will not happen during gaming.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Oct 26, 2019)

Intel is desperate. Even their 18-core i9-10980XE can't even topple AMD's Ryzen 9 3900X in all benchmarks. They (Intel) is riding on the 14nm+++ node too much. Them scrapping out 10nm & other future smaller node shows they no longer innovate.


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## Berfs1 (Oct 26, 2019)

Wow no comparisons against the 9980XE to show architectural improvements...


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## ador250 (Oct 26, 2019)

Ok, I honestly expected much from a 10980XE. 3900X is just right behind 10980XE in workloads, with 3950X it's game over.


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## IronMetal84 (Oct 26, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...


Come on *cucker tarlson*, we all know it's you with a fake account


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## Octavean (Oct 26, 2019)

If someone has an older motherboard that supports Cascade Lake-X and the compromised with an older slower processor yielding fewer core, I can see why they might want to upgrade.  Intel prices have been slashed and a drop-in CPU upgrade would likely be cheaper and easier then a new AMD RyZen 3900X, 3950X or Threadripper build.

Having said that, I’m waiting for early November RyZen 3950X and Threadripper releases.

The major problem I see with AMD right now is that they pushed back the release of the 3950X and 3900X availability is scarce (with outrageous pricing if you can find it in stock).  AMD needs to keep up with demand and better assure MSRP.  

It doesn’t matter if AMD has a better product if customers can’t buy it Or can’t buy it anywhere near MSRP.


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## Dave65 (Oct 26, 2019)

Intel is dead to me!


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## thesmokingman (Oct 26, 2019)

Octavean said:


> If someone has an older motherboard that supports Cascade Lake-X and the compromised with an older slower processor yielding fewer core, I can see why they might want to upgrade.  Intel prices have been slashed and a drop-in CPU upgrade would likely be cheaper and easier then a new AMD RyZen 3900X, 3950X or Threadripper build.
> 
> Having said that, I’m waiting for early November RyZen 3950X and Threadripper releases.
> 
> ...



First if ya have an existing x299 setup, obviously these new chips are your path to a questionable upgrade. I'm not really into throwing more money into a dead end platform. I've got a 7820x and MSI carbon pro... Instead throwing more at it, I'm retiring it and handing it down. I'd rather invest in a platform that is forward thinking.

As for the 3900x, stock fluctuates. Stop with the hyperbole of outrageous pricing. There are always ppl who take advantage of popular and highly desired product by jacking prices up. This is NOT an AMD thing, its a human nature thing. What it also tells us is ppl really want these chips. That said 3900x are in stock at msrp. It's an individuals choice if they cannot wait for restock to buy at msrp. Timing is key obviously. AT my local MC, 3900x "10+ in stock at Tustin Store" priced at retail.


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## Octavean (Oct 27, 2019)

That’s a little like saying criminals are going to crime.  Sure there are always going to be people who will unscrupulous try to profit by buying up stock and inserting themselves between legitimate  venders and legitimate customers.

I have four MicroCenters that are local to me.  The availability of the 3900X has fluctuated significantly over time. Half of my local Microcenter stores currently don’t have the 3900X and the other half that do require you to come into the store So you can’t order it online for delivery like the other AMD CPUs.

Not everyone has a Microcenter near them though so people shouldn’t pretend that everyone can just walk or drive to their local MC store and buy a 3900X  assuming they have it in stock Which is by no means a guarantee.


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## thesmokingman (Oct 27, 2019)

3900x is in stock everywhere atm, the egg, amazon, bh, etc etc and ofc MC. The 3900x is not sold online at MC, only in store as its a major loss leader. The other thing is this happens every time some new super cool part comes out. It's what happens and as I wrote it's not an AMD thing.


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## Arc1t3ct (Oct 27, 2019)

it’s just like the Athlon 64 x2 days... Unbelievable...


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## Vayra86 (Oct 27, 2019)

ZoneDymo said:


> Yeah but how does that explain it? the 8700k is a 6 core cpu, 9900k/9700k is a more modern, higher clocked, 8 core cpu.
> Both have more cores the games can use but the 9900k/9700k is better right? so why are they doing worse?
> 
> EDIT, guess Glacier's speculation will have to do, but its still just odd to me, I would think processor makers could figure stuff like this out.



This is why I always say Intel's turbo is an ancient POS in need of refinement. Its either turbo, or its base clock. Nothing in between - well, there is, but only if the CPU is going down or up through C states - which it doesn't do at full sustained load.

So what happens here, the 8700K can sustain its turbo across any number of cores much better than the 9700/9900K can within the stock TDP limit. And there is no 'mild turbo' that covers the gap, its boom down to baseclock and back up again. Consider that 8700K still comes with a conservative turbo of 4.3 all core; 8 physical cores just take more juice, there is no denying it, and peak turbo is also higher on the newer parts. The larger the gap between base and turbo, the more erratic these CPUs will become.


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## Octavean (Oct 27, 2019)

thesmokingman said:


> 3900x is in stock everywhere atm, the egg, amazon, bh, etc etc and ofc MC. The 3900x is not sold online at MC, only in store as its a major loss leader. The other thing is this happens every time some new super cool part comes out. It's what happens and as I wrote it's not an AMD thing.



Sure,.....

I’m going on what I said earlier which is at or very much near MSRP.  Newegg has the 3900X.  However, stock was and has been an issue.  Sometimes they had it sometimes they didn’t. Sometime you could buy it but only bundled with a motherboard.

Also, last time I checked and Newegg had stock it was about ~$80 over MSRP and that wasn’t a third party it was Newegg themselves selling the part.  Third party from Newegg at the time was around ~$700 USD.  Right now it’s just about ~$30 over MSRP, so I suppose we should consider that good?

Keep in mind that AMD processors haven’t historically kept their value very well.  For example, The MSRP for Threadripper processors like the 2950X cost roughly ~$900 USD in late 2018 but now it can be had from MC for $599.  The 2920X is only ~$299 at MC (down from an introductory ~$650 USD) and neither part has been replaced with an official successor by AMD.

One central reason for scarcity and jacked up prices has to do with supply and demand. If there isn’t enough supply then the manufacture or some other entity in the chain has an issue.

Lower end RyZen 3000 series processors are much easier to find and the MSRP is much better respected by venders.  Maybe there is a yield issue I don’t know but the higher end of lineup has been problematic with respect to supply and price.  Is it getting better? Sure but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still problems.


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## F-man4 (Oct 27, 2019)

Crackong said:


> I saw nothing but 3900x simply roasted the 10980xe ....


How about 8700K > 9900K & 9700K (>>>10980XE) in gaming test lol.


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## thesmokingman (Oct 27, 2019)

Octavean said:


> Sure,.....
> 
> I’m going on what I said earlier which is at or very much near MSRP.  Newegg has the 3900X.  However, stock was and has been an issue.  Sometimes they had it sometimes they didn’t. Sometime you could buy it but only bundled with a motherboard.
> 
> ...



This is my last post on this as you make no sense to me. Thanks for stating obvious laws of supply n demand as if I've never heard that before. I swear if I read of any more whiners regarding stock...

And you blame AMD for pricing last years tech at reduced price? WTF? Threadripper is being replaced. Everyone and their damn dogs has read the news, so I've no idea why you would troll and say there is no replacement. TR3 release date is the Nov 19th iirc. Previous gen gets slashed to make way for new stock. That's the way shit is supposed to happen.

This is like opposite world....? And the high end parts are more effin rare because they are the highest binned. WTF?


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## Octavean (Oct 28, 2019)

thesmokingman said:


> This is my last post on this as you make no sense to me.



fine by me,.....

As I stated before, AMD having a superior product isn’t worth much unless MSRP is respected and there is healthy availability.   Things are improving with the 3900X but I would rather not see the 3950X and upcoming Threadripper line go through what I’ve observed the 3900X go through.

One can only hope that the delay of the 3950X release date can help prevent the poor availability and jacked prices that plagued the 3900X early on.


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## ratirt (Oct 28, 2019)

Octavean said:


> fine by me,.....
> 
> As I stated before, AMD having a superior product isn’t worth much unless MSRP is respected and there is healthy availability.   Things are improving with the 3900X but I would rather not see the 3950X and upcoming Threadripper line go through what I’ve observed the 3900X go through.
> 
> One can only hope that the delay of the 3950X release date can help prevent the poor availability and jacked prices that plagued the 3900X early on.


Well I remember Intel's supply problems this year starting March and companies arguing about this in the press. Those weren't new processors and I think AMD is in a different place with the demand of the CPUs since these were never in the market so supplying every single reseller, pc producer etc. will take time. 
BTW I can see availability of the 3900x basically in every single online pc market.


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## MikeZTM (Oct 28, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> This is why I always say Intel's turbo is an ancient POS in need of refinement. Its either turbo, or its base clock. Nothing in between - well, there is, but only if the CPU is going down or up through C states - which it doesn't do at full sustained load.
> 
> So what happens here, the 8700K can sustain its turbo across any number of cores much better than the 9700/9900K can within the stock TDP limit. And there is no 'mild turbo' that covers the gap, its boom down to baseclock and back up again. Consider that 8700K still comes with a conservative turbo of 4.3 all core; 8 physical cores just take more juice, there is no denying it, and peak turbo is also higher on the newer parts. The larger the gap between base and turbo, the more erratic these CPUs will become.



It's the RingBus.
We already know with more cores RingBus latency will become higher as a physical limitation. 10 core i7 6950x was never as fast as a 4 cores 4790k in gaming when clocked the same.

8086k in extreme RAM limited gaming cases like high refresh rate PUBG can out perform 9900k by 100%.

Intel really have to fix this POS or they will lose on gaming performance.


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## Vayra86 (Oct 28, 2019)

MikeZTM said:


> It's the RingBus.
> We already know with more cores RingBus latency will become higher as a physical limitation. 10 core i7 6950x was never as fast as a 4 cores 4790k in gaming when clocked the same.
> 
> 8086k in extreme RAM limited gaming cases like high refresh rate PUBG can out perform 9900k by 100%.
> ...



Thats a good observation there, very plausible


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## Octavean (Oct 29, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Well I remember Intel's supply problems this year starting March and companies arguing about this in the press. Those weren't new processors and I think AMD is in a different place with the demand of the CPUs since these were never in the market so supplying every single reseller, pc producer etc. will take time.
> BTW I can see availability of the 3900x basically in every single online pc market.




I’ve seen improved availability as well and have said about as much.  In this case things don’t improve without there first having been a problem.  Improved as it may be, I’m still seeing  prices above MSRP for the 3900X Via a number of venders.  It’s also true that the elevated prices have lowered but they aren’t inconsequential.  

currently on average I see about a ~$30 markup which is indeed an improvement from as high as about ~$200.  That doesn’t mean all venders  are doing this.  Some list the correct MSRP at about ~$499 but not all that list the correct price have stock, such as Bestbuy currently for example.  These things happen.

To be clear, if you want a 3900X you can  find one and very possibly at MSRP.  It’s also possible you might have to cough up ~$30 extra bucks or more,... depending where you go.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Oct 29, 2019)

with OEM PCs now shipping with Ryzen processors, I think that's a sign that Intel is losing their dominance in the PC space. Not a surprise to me anyways...


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## Tboj (Nov 7, 2019)

The only argument needed to choose Intel over AMD is that AMD is working with China and has adventured US national security for years. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tr...class-chips-china-got-them-anyway-11561646798


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## BitBleed (Nov 23, 2019)

fancucker said:


> I'd honestly take this over AMD's offerings, mainly because:
> - HEVC advantage, optane and TB3
> - lower idle consumption and better overclocking experience
> (unlike the sterile, meaningless and incremental one on AMD's zen cpus)
> ...


You'll take anything over AMD's offering since you're a big Intel fangirl . Reading your comments makes one cringe so hard that it poses a danger of breaking the person's spine


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## tps3443 (Sep 10, 2020)

birdie said:


> 12 vs 18 cores?
> 
> 3950X will obliterate the Core i9-10980XE.



3950X does not obliterate a 10980XE. My 7980XE has no issues outpacing a 3950X. and my CPU is like 3 years old. I get around 11,000 in R20 at just 4.6GHz. Technology advances yes.


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## tps3443 (Sep 10, 2020)

ador250 said:


> Ok, I honestly expected much from a 10980XE. 3900X is just right behind 10980XE in workloads, with 3950X it's game over.



huh? My old 7980XE at 4.6 wears out a damn 3950X Very easily. It’s 3 damn years old. The 3950X is pre-overclocked from the factory. Hell, you can’t even squeeze hardly anything out of one over stock vs overclocked. A 10980XE is running like 3Ghz on all of the cores. So yeah, it’ll get lower FPS In games and may even benchmark lower. But, the thing is you can easily overclock the 10980XE by 50 or 60 Or even 70% depending on your cooling solution. And a 4.6Ghz - 4.8Ghz (18) core 7980/9980/10980XE is going to smash the 3950X in multithreaded loads. The 3950X is a great value, I’ll give it that. But, faster than my 7980XE? no way.


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