Intel 10th Gen Core X "Cascade Lake-X" Pricing and Specs Detailed

[GoldenX]

What was the price of the past Intel CPU? Is this the price of a true Intel CPU? Have you suddenly found a manufacturing cost reduction method that is different from the previous Intel CPU? Is it only me that feels fooled?

And you noticed this just now?

 

[Pinktulips7]

AMD Fanboys are scared and running!!! intel made CPU with quality and higher density[14nm=10nm] where AMD has been lacking forever!!!intel CPU price should be higher right? BMW price higher than Camry?

 

[Aquinus]

It's damage control until Intel has a real solution that's ready to go. Until then, I would expect to see more of the same.

 

[jayjr1105]

Well, you drool over the fact that there's an EPYC bar on top, but you fail to notice it is a Dual 64-core system barely beating Dual 28-core (8280) and Dual 24-core (8260).
Hence, this is a very good example of how important AVX-512 is.

Did you know that those 64 core EPYC's cost LESS than the two 28 core Xeons???

 

[ncrs]

Did you know that those 64 core EPYC's cost LESS than the two 28 core Xeons???

And take less power to produce those results as well.

This TDP is as real as it gets. It's just a number. And Intel CPUs will behave accordingly by default.
Looking at Intel's earlier LGA2066 stuff, there's a good chance 10 and 12-core CPUs are within those 165W at full blast (sans AVX-512).

That's not "full blast" now, is it? Intel TDP is well defined by them - it's measured at base clocks. I'm expecting these processors to exceed it while boosting, by a lot...

Intel is not marketing HEDT towards professional use (not for production systems anyway). There's no official ECC support. And they aren't put in big OEM workstations.
Intel has a large Xeon lineup that is meant to cover all production scenarios.
On the other hand, Intel doesn't have a separate "consumer" and "pro" variants - many CPUs are vPro-eligible. And they offer IGP in multiple CPUs - including Xeons.

There is no reason to hold ECC support from the mainstream sector. All the parts are on the CPUs already since the dies are shared with the lowest Xeons. In the past they selectively enabled ECC on Pentiums, Celerons and i3s. It's pure anti-consumer market segmentation. It was exactly the same way with virtualization extensions in the past (VT-x, VT-d), but when AMD enabled it on everything Intel had to follow.

 

[Shatun_Bear]

How anyone can defend Intel's current state is beyond me. They're screwed. But carry on.

 

[1d10t]

Maybe you have. We don't know the REAL TDP of that 10 core CPU.

Intel will "committed" to their spec this time around, so nominal will be 165W and not more than 255W when it peaked. They still had more headroom than Threadripper for overcloking, so expect 600W++ TDP @ 4.3Ghz all core
Another trick to "increase" their stalemate IPC, is with the help Microsoft for favored cores update , combine these with new algorithm longer boost Turbo Boost Max 3.0 plus higher T Junction, voila, you will have solid 5% increase over previous generation

 

[notb]

Did you know that those 64 core EPYC's cost LESS than the two 28 core Xeons???

Yes. And do you know how datacenters work?
Do you understand that once this 64 core CPU lands in a server (be it on-premise or cloud), it'll be "cut" into pieces - e.g. 8 cores each?
You should not underestimate single-core performance in servers (maybe even more so than in PCs).

As for the ability to pack more cores in a socket and dominate scenarios where all of them can be used (e.g. on-premise rendering machines) - AMD's current domination is indisputable. But it's mostly down to node and that's a fragile lead.

There is no reason to hold ECC support from the mainstream sector. All the parts are on the CPUs already since the dies are shared with the lowest Xeons. In the past they selectively enabled ECC on Pentiums, Celerons and i3s. It's pure anti-consumer market segmentation. It was exactly the same way with virtualization extensions in the past (VT-x, VT-d), but when AMD enabled it on everything Intel had to follow.

Intel is enabling ECC in all CPUs that are meant for any kind of servers or production devices - hence it's available in some CPUs in Pentium and Atom families.

Consumers don't care what ECC is, so this functionality is not available in consumer platforms. They don't, really.
AMD fans are stressing this being a huge advantage of Ryzen lineup, but most of them don't know what ECC gives, let alone how it works.

Yes, maybe this move from AMD will force Intel to enable ECC in all CPUs. But that's very unlikely. Intel has separate processors for production systems. They support ECC and other things that are omitted in consumer stuff.

How anyone can defend Intel's current state is beyond me. They're screwed. But carry on.

But what do you mean by "screwed"? Is it the same "no one will buy Intel anymore" we've heard in 2017?

 

[efikkan]

There is no reason to hold ECC support from the mainstream sector. All the parts are on the CPUs already since the dies are shared with the lowest Xeons. In the past they selectively enabled ECC on Pentiums, Celerons and i3s. It's pure anti-consumer market segmentation. It was exactly the same way with virtualization extensions in the past (VT-x, VT-d), but when AMD enabled it on everything Intel had to follow.

There are a few reasons; firstly it would require more testing of each sample to verify a memory controller with ECC enabled, and secondly it will lead to more chips failing verification, so it would make sense to at least have some chips without ECC.

For HEDT, I really dislike Intel's decision of having three different product lineups. I hope the competition from AMD will encourage Intel to enable ECC on all of their HEDT CPUs, as these are premium workstation hardware anyway.

How anyone can defend Intel's current state is beyond me. They're screwed. But carry on.

How anyone can believe Intel is screwed is beyond me.
Stop trolling, go play with someone your own age.

 

[ncrs]

Intel is enabling ECC in all CPUs that are meant for any kind of servers or production devices - hence it's available in some CPUs in Pentium and Atom families.

You conveniently skipped the ECC enabled Core i3. How is that a "production device" and how does it differ from a Core i5 or i7 that don't have ECC in terms of being a "production device"?

Consumers don't care what ECC is, so this functionality is not available in consumer platforms. They don't, really.
AMD fans are stressing this being a huge advantage of Ryzen lineup, but most of them don't know what ECC gives, let alone how it works.

I'm not sure about the "stressing" part, but it is a part of the larger argument about Intel platforms being more limiting than AMD's. Take overclocking for example - both CPU and RAM overclocking require a higher-end chipset on Intel platforms. This doesn't really have any technical reason because the IMC is in the CPU and the chipset has little impact on it. Nothing would stop motherboard manufactures from having good power systems for OC on cheap H-class chipsets it his was not an artificial limitation by Intel.

Yes, maybe this move from AMD will force Intel to enable ECC in all CPUs. But that's very unlikely. Intel has separate processors for production systems. They support ECC and other things that are omitted in consumer stuff.

You're probably thinking about the desktop-derived Xeons here? Let's take Coffee Lake for example, what is the difference between Core i3/i5/i7 and Xeon E beside the ECC support? I'm curious about the "other things" you mentioned.

But what do you mean by "screwed"? Is it the same "no one will buy Intel anymore" we've heard in 2017?

Well this time around we have "confirmation":

While it's just one retailer it paints a grim outlook for Intel's current generation. The problem for Intel is that for the desktop segment they don't have much planned. Only Rocket and Comet Lakes that are still on 14nm and still seem to be Skylake-derived. Ice Lake 10nm desktop parts have been cancelled and that uArch is instead only coming to servers and laptops.
On the other hand AMD is openly talking about Zen 3.

 

[Mephis]

Well this time around we have "confirmation":

While it's just one retailer it paints a grim outlook for Intel's current generation. The problem for Intel is that for the desktop segment they don't have much planned. Only Rocket and Comet Lakes that are still on 14nm and still seem to be Skylake-derived. Ice Lake 10nm desktop parts have been cancelled and that uArch is instead only coming to servers and laptops.
On the other hand AMD is openly talking about Zen 3.

I don't know why this needs to be explained on every Intel thread, but the custom builder market is a tiny fraction of the entire x86 market. Yes, AMD is doing very well with enthusiasts and is even gaining market share in the server and workstation market, but to call Intel screwed is ridiculous. AMD is hoping for at best to get up to 10% to 20% of the lucrative server market, guess who has the other 80% to 90%. Intel can't make enough CPUs, they are production constrained for the last year or more. People really need to stop and realize that Intel has built such a huge beachhead it would take AMD years of total dominance to even begin to truly hurt Intel. Also don't forget what happened the last time AMD started making huge gains. Intel responded with Core. If anyone really believes Intel is done, they need to get their head checked.

 

[1d10t]

I don't know why this needs to be explained on every Intel thread, but the custom builder market is a tiny fraction of the entire x86 market.

Ah, so that also makes Steam hardware survey obsolete then

 

[ncrs]

I don't know why this needs to be explained on every Intel thread, but the custom builder market is a tiny fraction of the entire x86 market. Yes, AMD is doing very well with enthusiasts and is even gaining market share in the server and workstation market, but to call Intel screwed is ridiculous. AMD is hoping for at best to get up to 10% to 20% of the lucrative server market, guess who has the other 80% to 90%. Intel can't make enough CPUs, they are production constrained for the last year or more. People really need to stop and realize that Intel has built such a huge beachhead it would take AMD years of total dominance to even begin to truly hurt Intel. Also don't forget what happened the last time AMD started making huge gains. Intel responded with Core. If anyone really believes Intel is done, they need to get their head checked.

I agree with your last statement, but at the same time unless Intel fixes their roadmaps they will be in trouble in the long term. This is not a black-and-white situation.

 

[(*^^*)]

And you noticed this just now?

No jealousy about that. I was expecting a better AMD product than lowering Intel prices.

 

[efikkan]

I agree with your last statement, but at the same time unless Intel fixes their roadmaps they will be in trouble in the long term. This is not a black-and-white situation.

For the most part, Intel's roadmaps looks very good. In the server space they have Ice Lake(Sunny Cove) for 2020, and then Sapphire Rapids(Golden Cove) for 2021, both with major performance improvements. For laptops and tiny computers they have Tiger Lake for 2020, a minor upgrade to Ice Lake.

The only part that looks uncertain (or even bad) is the mainstream desktop. Comet Lake-S arriving very late 2019 or early 2020 is only going to be a minor upgrade. There are rumors of a "Rocket Lake-S" later using a Ice Lake chipset, but that remains unconfirmed. But just the fact that Intel is nearly completely silent about this compared to other segments kind of tells us that they are weighing their options.

 

[Mephis]

Ah, so that also makes Steam hardware survey obsolete then

Umm, no. The steam survey is definitely not a perfect indicator of the entire cpu or GPU market by any means, but it is definitely a better snapshot than a single web retailer. It encompasses both custom machines and major oem manufactures. Unfortunately, unless you want to pay thousands to get detailed breakdowns from someone like IDC, it is very hard to judge the entire market. Whether we like it or not, enthusiasts are a small percentage of the market. A vast majority of machines are store (or web) bought from major manufactures like HP, Dell, Lenovo and others.

For the most part, Intel's roadmaps looks very good. In the server space they have Ice Lake(Sunny Cove) for 2020, and then Sapphire Rapids(Golden Cove) for 2021, both with major performance improvements. For laptops and tiny computers they have Tiger Lake for 2020, a minor upgrade to Ice Lake.

The only part that looks uncertain (or even bad) is the mainstream desktop. Comet Lake-S arriving very late 2019 or early 2020 is only going to be a minor upgrade. There are rumors of a "Rocket Lake-S" later using a Ice Lake chipset, but that remains unconfirmed. But just the fact that Intel is nearly completely silent about this compared to other segments kind of tells us that they are weighing their options.

It's not surprising that the 2 markets Intel has been most vocal about are Servers and Mobile. Servers are the most profitable market and mobile is the largest consumer market. That is also how they were able to turn around after Netburst. They used a mobile design (Merom) and scaled it up to work on the desktop. Nehalem was then used to incorporate features that would benefit the server space and were brought down to the desktop and mobile.

 

[Shatun_Bear]

For the most part, Intel's roadmaps looks very good. In the server space they have Ice Lake(Sunny Cove) for 2020, and then Sapphire Rapids(Golden Cove) for 2021, both with major performance improvements. For laptops and tiny computers they have Tiger Lake for 2020, a minor upgrade to Ice Lake.

No they do not. It seems that short of them announcing 'we won't be releasing any new CPUs for the next 2 years', there's room for people like you to say 'it's not too bad actually'.

The things you palm off as positive are actually really bad. All those products, even if they do make 2020 in volume, will have to contend with Zen on 7nm+ which is landing the same time. Unlike Intel's 10nm, which is gonna have major yield issues (still), bugs and flaws as it comes out the gate for the first time in volume, all AMD have to do is iterate and improve upon a proven process and architecture from Zen2.

 

[chodaboy19]

Intel increased the PCIe 3.0 lanes by 4 or are they counting in a different way?

 

[HwGeek]

We already know that Zen3 is socket compatible + it will be 8c ccx with over 32mb l3 cache, so the IPC and frequency will improve even more, IMO Intel will make the comeback only with all new 7nm part, not the current icelake.

 

[Vayra86]

Your comment makes me laugh.
Shamelessly copy ? Ever seen Intel Core 2 Exteme QX6850 from 2007, Kentsfield and even in 2010 with Clarksdae. Guess not lol, And hit Anandtech piece on this same processor and see what AMD called Intel as fake LOL during Phenom days.

AMD Ryzen CPUs use MCM because their WSA and R&D budget and how cheap it is (Intel also did the MCM due to same reason) vs Monolithic Nonpureplay Foundry like Intel. Foveros is coming and also EMIB came into KBL G CPU as well. This is not new thing lmao and how HBM failed hard and fell flat for Consumer (Ofc Vega/GCN needed it to scale and we know RVII EOL)

Intel stagnated due to no competition and they milked the whole world, Still do (CSL X Server a.k.a Cooper Lake glued server processor) and their 10nm went too aggressive and also BK as CEO failed. And their Knights Landing also failed but that socket lives !

Zen2 has DRAM latency but their high Cache and Intel IPC catchup helped them with their brilliant Ryzen 3000 series. And 14nm or not it beats 7nm still with what ? A 4 year old microarch, Zen+ was Haswell and what happened with 8C/16T 2700 vs a 7700K (Massacre happened). Turbo is inferior ? What ? XFR is completely pushing the edge of thay stupid Low power 7nm TSMC node (Made for Apple since they arr primary for CapEx funding and ARM) thank god Ngreedia went with HPP 7nm Samsung node and not suffer from same crap off inferior 7nm node. So yeah back to Turbo, Intel PL2 set to max. There you go Max clocks on all cores without any Junk of PPT, PBO, XFR2 marketing drama (Watch GN on this if you did not).

Intel processors also are made to be scalabale if you are not under a rock LCC, HCC (HEDT), XCC (Xeon) until SKL X because they switched HEDT to XCC due to AMD closing in as their 10nm failures, since their uArch is coupled with node. So yeah the uArch scales here while Cores are not scaled like AMD.

AMD recycles their cores off this MCM due to WSA as it helps keeping budget off CCD at 7nm and I/O chip of decoupling Northbridge at 14nm GoFlo (EPYC Rome, where as 12nm for Ryzen Matisse)

And finally Intel is still raking profits due to DC arena where adoption rate is slower when you bring in a new competetor esp given how NUMA Ryzen 2000 to non NUMA Ryzen 3000 uArchs came. While Monolithic Intel still didn't had to change the programming much.

Iris Plus IGP has advantage over existing AMD APUs consider it getting tougher only not simple when you count Intel's massive R&D. And finally Apple AirPods profit is higher than AMD at gross $5Billion.

To conclude consumer wins when competition arrives like this (9980XE ST and Gaming was good and comparable to 9900K, 10K CSL X will improve at the cost of power but if people buy what to lose, more lanes more options better pricing all win) and shakes up the incumbent. So stop frothing over corporates

Yes shamelessly copy, because for some reason Intel didn't deem it necessary to continue with what they had and tried instead to make the ultimate monolithic CPU architecture (and sit on it...). This is now biting them in the ass. If you're saying they should just port their old design to 2019... yah. Good luck with that. 2007 is 12 years ago. You're right they have some designs already. But we cannot deny those only popped up after the Zen fact. Hence, copied. Having an idea is not the same as implementing it and actually developing it. Every halfwit can consider chiplet to be a good idea. What matters is what you do with that idea, and when.

The rest... irrelevant. Intel is not in a great position right now, and they need something new and it certainly has to go beyond good IGP and further optimization. Realistically, that is what we have. The recent hiring of Jim Keller is no coincidence - it underlines that they're still searching or that they need more input. But there is another problem much bigger than Intel. Physics. The big node shrinks are pretty much over, and it all comes down to architectural changes. Most of those will be tradeoffs - we already saw this with the 3 generations of Zen. Its going to get increasingly difficult to one-up the competition without doing something radical. AMD needed about a decade for that.

Wrt your comments about turbo... you're confusing it with overclocking there. Its not the same thing. Intel's turbo out of the box isn't that fantastic and it certainly is not dynamic the way XFR is today. I'm not talking about how to extract optimal clocks at the expense of power draw, because that's what you're saying here. Those all core turbo Intels you speak of royally exceed the stated TDP. And the kicker is, for the largest markets, consumer and enterprise, overclocking is not an option, but a dynamic boost/turbo certainly is. And about clocks... we've already seen Intel's latest don't quite clock as high on smaller nodes.

Note I'm not a big AMD fan, but as much as I can whine about how their GPU division stacks failure upon failure, its impossible to deny AMD's contribution to CPU design, and its clear they haven't been rewarded fairly for all those efforts. Hopefully they are, now, because its a valuable company for all of us.

Frothing no. These are interesting times

How anyone can believe Intel is screwed is beyond me.

Screwed is a big word, but losing leadership is definitely one of the possibilities IF they cannot adjust radically, and fast. But still, time is on their side and AMD has to keep pushing competitive stuff to market year after year to make a dent. So far so good, but this is a long term game.

, all AMD have to do is iterate and improve upon a proven process and architecture from Zen2.

Given the rate of progress though, we have to wonder how long Zen can keep giving. The low hanging fruit will soon be gone, that is for sure. This will rapidly look very similar to the progress of Core.

Ah, so that also makes Steam hardware survey obsolete then

Yup, even for just gaming.

 

[notb]

You conveniently skipped the ECC enabled Core i3. How is that a "production device" and how does it differ from a Core i5 or i7 that don't have ECC in terms of being a "production device"?

i3 chips are quite popular in single board computers and entry-level enterprise NAS (like surveillance).
Performance-wise i3s are above the Pentium family, so it made sense to give them ECC.
i5 and i7 have Xeon counterparts.
Intel usually makes enterprise CPUs because there is some demand from major partners - not because they *hope* they'll sell. You should not worry about their CPUs making sense or not. The certainly do for Intel's partners.

part of the larger argument about Intel platforms being more limiting than AMD's

I can 100% agree that Intel platforms are less tweaking-friendly. These CPUs work best for people who know what they want and prefer to use a computer - not play with it.
You have a particular need, you buy an Intel CPU that fits best, you leave it at default and don't care much. That's the idea.

If you like to tweak, OC, tune, test drivers and so on - AMD will give you more pleasure.

I'm not sure if the word "limiting" should be used, though. What is "limiting"?
Lets say I'm running a tiny architectural consultancy firm and I'm not a computer geek, but I need 14-18 cores for my work.
Which platform is more "limiting"? Intel - because I can't OC ("what is OC?"). Or AMD because I'll spend more time solving quirks? ("what is BIOS?")

We could safely say that Apple Mac is the most "limited" platform of them all. And yet, that's what makes it so popular among normal users and so hated on forums like this one.

Take overclocking for example - both CPU and RAM overclocking require a higher-end chipset on Intel platforms. This doesn't really have any technical reason because the IMC is in the CPU and the chipset has little impact on it. Nothing would stop motherboard manufactures from having good power systems for OC on cheap H-class chipsets it his was not an artificial limitation by Intel.

I don't care much about overclocking anymore and can't really give you any sensible answer to this.
I though we're talking about workstations, enterprise clients and ECC.

You're probably thinking about the desktop-derived Xeons here? Let's take Coffee Lake for example, what is the difference between Core i3/i5/i7 and Xeon E beside the ECC support? I'm curious about the "other things" you mentioned.

On pure specification? I can't name a single thing. Desktop LGA1151 CPUs are pretty much identical (other than ECC and name).

Well this time around we have "confirmation":

Seriously... Mindfactory again...? :/

For the most part, Intel's roadmaps looks very good. In the server space they have Ice Lake(Sunny Cove) for 2020, and then Sapphire Rapids(Golden Cove) for 2021, both with major performance improvements. For laptops and tiny computers they have Tiger Lake for 2020, a minor upgrade to Ice Lake.

The only part that looks uncertain (or even bad) is the mainstream desktop. Comet Lake-S arriving very late 2019 or early 2020 is only going to be a minor upgrade. There are rumors of a "Rocket Lake-S" later using a Ice Lake chipset, but that remains unconfirmed. But just the fact that Intel is nearly completely silent about this compared to other segments kind of tells us that they are weighing their options.

Well... this is the part that's so difficult to explain on this forum, isn't it? That the segment AMD takes care of the most (high-end DIY desktops) is the least important for Intel.

AMD - thanks to tiny market share - is able to focus on AM4 platform. It gives them great press.
But as their market share grows, they'll have to think about their mobile lineup as well. And enterprise sector in general.
What they're doing today is just totally opposite of what Intel is (and has to be) doing.
"PRO" Ryzen variants come out few months after the consumer models. Mobile architecture is a year behind gaming desktops.

Their chip engineering team is pushing very modern tech, but their planning and strategy looks like its 2005 again.

IMO Intel's actions show they may be thinking about sacrificing this segment for the time being.
It costs them a lot of work and money. The whole idea was to sell expensive 4-core chips and make a decent profit from the small revenue. They can't compete on the margins that AMD is willing to accept.
The already small demand for gaming desktops will soon be hit by cloud gaming and next-gen consoles...

 

[anachron]

Did you know that those 64 core EPYC's cost LESS than the two 28 core Xeons???

You have to take into account that depending on intended usage, Windows Server and some other applications have a core based license. So you may prefer more power per core than the other way around even if they are cheaper.

 

[Patriot]

Priced competitively enough.
The 18c is still worse than the 16c ryzen unless you need more pcie 3.0 lanes.
Probably better for a DAW workload, eager to see benchmarks.
Still overpriced but a touch closer to reality.

Keep in mind, Intel is holding back announcing the cascade lake Xeon-W's on 3647 socket for Threadripper 3000.
Xeon-w on 3647 should be up to 28c again, with more pcie lanes unlocked due to reallocating omnipath lanes.
Threadripper is supposed to debut at 24cores and will top out potentially all the way at 64 cores and rumored to have 2 variants 4 channel and 8 channel ram.

It's nice to see price cuts vs previous gens, shows you that competition is finally happening, consumers can only win in this.

As for only AMD fans being trolls..... please look at any AMD article to find your Intel shills, lets keep it civil lads, competition is goooooood, don't emotionally attach yourself to a company they don't care about you.

 

[efikkan]

Well... this is the part that's so difficult to explain on this forum, isn't it? That the segment AMD takes care of the most (high-end DIY desktops) is the least important for Intel.

AMD - thanks to tiny market share - is able to focus on AM4 platform. It gives them great press.
<snip>

IMO Intel's actions show they may be thinking about sacrificing this segment for the time being.
It costs them a lot of work and money. The whole idea was to sell expensive 4-core chips and make a decent profit from the small revenue. They can't compete on the margins that AMD is willing to accept.
The already small demand for gaming desktops will soon be hit by cloud gaming and next-gen consoles...

You got the last part wrong there.
The problem with Intel's mainstream selection is that it's held back by OEM deals. The majority of volume on socket 1151 is low-margin CPUs for OEMs, while the media attention is on the "enthusiast" models of the segment(i7-9700K, i9-9900K), which are comparatively "low volume" but high margin products. Traditionally, Intel have sold these by making them different bins of the same dies, but since the OEM deals require such high volume, it requires them a certain production capacity before they can release a new lineup. As a side-note, this is why Broadwell-S had to be cancelled, because 14nm wasn't ready for that high volume and clock speed. I think Intel's "stupid" policies need to change here; make the chipsets support different microarchitectures if needed (it is possible after all), and release the top two-three SKUs on the latest most fancy production node and microarchitecture.
And for the record, it was known that Intel was working on a mainstream 6-core around the time Skylake launched, still long before the public knew details about Zen, but 14nm was still a challenge then.

As for the HEDT/workstation segment, it has luckily starting to improve, while it took some time, but I'm very happy to see both Intel and AMD focusing on this segment now. Since the Sandy Bridge days, the HEDT selection have gradually improved until Broadwell-E reaching 10 cores at a very steep price. But as evident with the Skylake-X engineering samples from late 2016 featuring up to 18 cores, they had bigger plans. It was after this AMD decided to re-purpose Epyc and make Threadripper to compete, and I'm glad they did, since we are now finally starting to see this competition working.

As we know, HEDT is a fairly low volume segment, but it is still very important;
- Content creators, developers, researchers needs more performance or specific features the mainstream don't offer.
- It serves as a premium platform where expensive features can be showcased and made available to those who want it, before it usually trickles down to the mainstream later on, so it accelerates progress in technology.
- Increased flexibility and upgradability.
- Software. As we all know, hardware is useless without software, and better hardware fuels development of better software, which increases the demand for better hardware, etc. etc. This is something most people forget.
- And for Intel/AMD; HEDT is a very high margin segment, which helps to offset/finance development costs.

Priced competitively enough.
The 18c is still worse than the 16c ryzen unless you need more pcie 3.0 lanes.
Probably better for a DAW workload, eager to see benchmarks.
Still overpriced but a touch closer to reality.

You should wait for benchmarks of actual workloads, not synthetics like Geekbench etc. which has leaked this far.
The problem for high core count Cascade Lake will be heat. As long as they can stay within similar clocks, they will remain competitive.

Keep in mind, Intel is holding back announcing the cascade lake Xeon-W's on 3647 socket for Threadripper 3000.

Nope, they were released several months ago, but those prices, yuck.

 

[Shatun_Bear]

It's funny, desktop CPUs and performance has ALWAYS been the metric which computer enthusiasts and nerds have judged either AMD or Intel by. Now that Intel can't compete there or are perceived to be on the back foot in this segment, suddenly all that matters is mobile and servers.

Mobile!! If you told me 5 years ago that mobile CPU performance and sales would be the main argument for Intel fans defending the company I wouldnt believe you! That's how ridiculous that is. With these HEDT CPUs we're talking about high-end desktop, let's not pretend Intel weren't derided for years trying to improve efficiency and PPW over pure performance and more cores, because they were. Maybe some here only started following CPUs when Ryzen came out and hence weren't around for this.

Now that AMD, not Intel, has brought more cores and wins in pure performance, the people that were lambasting Intel for their mobile focus have changed tact and say it's this mobile performance (and servers!) which show the company is superior or in a great position. You couldn't make it up.