Friday, October 25th 2019
Intel Core i9-10980XE "Cascade Lake-X" Benchmarked
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.
Source:
Lab501
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.
81 Comments on Intel Core i9-10980XE "Cascade Lake-X" Benchmarked
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
BTW I can see availability of the 3900x basically in every single online pc market.
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.
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.