Intel Announces Availability of Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X

[btarunr]

Intel expanded the upper end of its Core X "Skylake-X" HEDT processor family, with the introduction of the Core i9-7980XE 18-core flagship processor, and the i9-7960X 16-core processor. Designed to give pro-sumers and PC enthusiasts extreme mega-tasking performance, the i9-7980XE features all components physically present on the 14 nm "Skylake-X" silicon, featuring 18 cores, with HyperThreading enabling 36 threads; 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core, 24.75 MB of shared L3 cache, and rather restrained clock speeds of 2.60 GHz, with Turbo Boost speeds of 4.20 GHz, and Turbo Boost Max 3.0 frequency of 4.40 GHz.

Despite its gargantuan core-count, the TDP of this chip is rated at 165W, lower than the 180W rated for competing Ryzen Threadripper processors. The other high-end processor launched by Intel is the Core i9-7960X. This 16-core/32-thread chip features clock speeds of 2.80 GHz, with 4.20 GHz Turbo Boost, and 4.40 GHz Turbo Boost Max 3.0. It features 22 MB of shared L3 cache, and 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core. The Core i9-7980XE is priced at USD $1,999 in the retail channel; while the Core i9-7960X goes for $1,699.



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[P4-630]

Maybe an upgrade for me in 10 years from now....

 

[StrayKAT]

So was any of this planned before Ryzen's release? If not, you have to admit it's impressive to get entirely new product lines out in the same year that directly compete.. or exceed. I bought a 7700k at the beginning of this year. Figured that was "new". I guess not

 

[Nokiron]

So was any of this planned before Ryzen's release? If not, you have to admit it's impressive to get entirely new product lines out in the same year that directly compete.. or exceed. I bought a 7700k at the beginning of this year. Figured that was "new". I guess not

Anandtech explained that quite well in their review. Intel has most likely considered the option for some time and waiting for the right opportunity to release it. That is almost certainly why we saw them when AMD announced Threadripper.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11839/intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-core-i9-7960x-review/3

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Maybe an upgrade for me in 10 years from now....

When I hit the lotto...

 

[yotano211]

I'll buy one when I stop paying my taxes.

 

[cadaveca]

Anandtech explained that quite well in their review. Intel has most likely considered the option for some time and waiting for the right opportunity to release it. That is almost certainly why we saw them when AMD announced Threadripper.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11839/intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-core-i9-7960x-review/3

No. Just no no no no no. I knew about this chip LONG before I ever knew about threadripper. In fact, I was pretty much a singular voice saying AMD still had HEDT to release and Ryzen was not it, when Ryzen launched and everyone was calling Ryzen a HEDT chip. AMD admitted that they had a very short development cycle for TR; less than two years, but Skylake-X was actually supposed to launch in 2016 originally IRCC. I knew about Skylake-E in early 2015, 100%. In early 2016/late 2015, it was rumored to come out in Q3 2016. AMD didn't have much impact on this launch at all, really, contrary to what seems to be popular belief. It's actually quite the other way around... AMD knew about Skylake-E HCC
and XCC CPUs, and decided to target that market with TR. TR was NEVER part of the plan back then; it has 100% a reaction to Intel.

It’s not really a story of roadmaps and long-term planning or huge R&D budgets - it’s a lot more personal than that and stemmed from a skunkworks project and a small group of AMD employees who had a vision of a processor they’d really want in terms of a high-performance PC.

My boss was sharing a taxi with Jim on the way to Computex 2016 and mentioned Threadripper to him then. He loved it, gave it the green light and found a way to get it on the roadmap

So threadripper wasn't even part of AMD's plan until after Computex 2016 (which is held in June). Which was only shortly before SkyLake-E was originally going to launch. So, yeah, Intel held it back a bit, to improve it. But it wasn't reactionary to AMD at all.. AMD didn't even have any real plans for TR yet. they also said that they had only been working on it for a year, prior, so they knew already that Intel has these HCC CPUs coming... it was in Intel's roadmaps, after all.

I asked for two things – the specifications and also how quickly we could build it. I fell in love with it seeing the specifications, but the timeline was disappointing as it originally pointed at 2018 for launch. I immediately asked them to pull it in by about a year – so summer 2017.

So AMD pulled the launch ahead, in reaction to Intel!!!

I’ve never actually told anyone this, but Threadripper never had a business plan –

Interestingly, some of the original team behind Threadripper joined AMD from the press, with a critical and appreciative eye for PC hardware from years of reviewing a wide range of products. This perspective was core to creating the Threadripper concept and product definition. It is very much a CPU made by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.

And now today we see many "enthusiasts" doing the AMD hype train, like they did before. Perhaps some of these enthusiasts here on TPU even are AMD employees in disguise?

And here's some surprising honesty:

Forbes: The original roadmap obviously had quite a big gap between Ryzen and EPYC. Were there any other plans to launch a high-end desktop (HEDT) processor to compete with Intel here?

John Taylor:

If you go back a few years, our roadmap was focussed on building products like Ryzen 7 from our new Zen core, and we prioritized the desktop market for the first the simple reason that we felt enthusiasts had passionately waited for a new AMD high-performance desktop product for a long time. While Threadripper is a high-end desktop platform, Ryzen 7 was also designed to disrupt the HEDT market as its eight cores were only matched by Intel’s Core i7-6900K – an HEDT product.

However, we still left the leadership crown with Intel as it obviously had the Core i7-6950X, which is a 10-core product.

AMDers like James and Jim realized that Infinity Fabric and the EPYC package allowed us to define a version of Ryzen that was even more powerful than Ryzen itself, and used the basics of the EPYC platform to take that ultimate performance crown.

As a result, I think we really surprised the industry, and while Intel has more CPUs coming in September and October, as we sit here today the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is the most powerful CPU made for the consumer market.

So AMD knew they could not be the top dog, always, and never aimed to.

See here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antony...d-the-processor-that-beat-intel/#34c2ca4b230c

 

[efikkan]

So was any of this planned before Ryzen's release? If not, you have to admit it's impressive to get entirely new product lines out in the same year that directly compete.. or exceed. I bought a 7700k at the beginning of this year. Figured that was "new". I guess not

It's impossible to design a new chip in just a few months.
Skylake-X engineering samples of up to 18 cores were sent out for testing last year, so this was planned way before the release of Ryzen and Threadripper. The chip was planned ~2.5-3 years ago.

 

[StrayKAT]

It's impossible to design a new chip in just a few months.
Skylake-X engineering samples of up to 18 cores were sent out for testing last year, so this was planned way before the release of Ryzen and Threadripper. The chip was planned ~2.5-3 years ago.

I figured.. I know the tech was there in their workstation chips. It's more like I'm impressed about all of the new product lines for regular consumers. It didn't take long.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

It's impossible to design a new chip in just a few months.
Skylake-X engineering samples of up to 18 cores were sent out for testing last year, so this was planned way before the release of Ryzen and Threadripper. The chip was planned ~2.5-3 years ago.

The delay was so they could milk the consumer of it current chips. They had no reason to push forward with any kind of speed except SLOW.

 

[cadaveca]

The delay was so they could milk the consumer of it current chips. They had no reason to push forward with any kind of speed except SLOW.

Actually, the delays were kind of something that Intel has been dealing with for many years, and the information as to why they have made these delays isn't really public knowledge, which is what allows these sorts of rumors to perpetuate. If we go back to even the SandyBridge launch, the P67 chipset had issues that then caused them to have need to redesign the chipset slightly. Such errors continued to pop up, but as a whole, Intel ahs done really well at dealing with these problems while also keeping interesting products on the shelves.

If they delayed such as you have said, they actually did AMD a huge favor by giving AMD more time to released their Zen core design. We all heard about when the design was done... so maybe it was a favor to an individual, even... nobody knows.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Actually, the delays were kind of something that Intel has been dealing with for many years, and the information as to why they have made these delays isn't really public knowledge, which is what allows these sorts of rumors to perpetuate. If we go back to even the SandyBridge launch, the P67 chipset had issues that then caused them to have need to redesign the chipset slightly. Such errors continued to pop up, but as a whole, Intel ahs done really well at dealing with these problems while also keeping interesting products on the shelves.

If they delayed such as you have said, they actually did AMD a huge favor by giving AMD more time to released their Zen core design. We all heard about when the design was done... so maybe it was a favor to an individual, even... nobody knows.

my crystal ball knows !