News Intel Core i9-10980XE Reviewed: Strong Performance, but Can It Beat AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X?

[Admin]

The first review of Intel's Core i9-10980XE 18-core chip has popped up in the wild.

Intel Core i9-10980XE Reviewed: Strong Performance, but Can It Beat AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X? : Read more

 

[nofanneeded]

excuse me but where is the
Ryzen 9 3950X
in this whole article ???

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Yeah, buuuuuuuut the Ryzen 9 3900X and the 9900K are very much NOT the competition for this CPU... AT ALL. This thing is going to be priced more similarly (I'm saying generously, it is likely to be a lot more) to a 32 core Threadripper if Intel stays true to form. Why not just write an article about its performance? Why compare it to a CPU that isn't out yet? Why compare it to CPUs that are simply NOT the competition?

Just write an article like "The first review of Intel's Core i9-10980XE 18-core chip has popped up in the wild" and talk about the strengths of the chip. You have a huge library of data to pull from to do some general comparisons, use that.

My theory is that Intel sent them one to test, under the table. They probably didn't want a repeat of their last benchmark fiasco.

 

[kinggremlin]

Yeah, buuuuuuuut the Ryzen 9 3900X and the 9900K are very much NOT the competition for this CPU... AT ALL. This thing is going to be priced more similarly (I'm saying generously, it is likely to be a lot more) to a 32 core Threadripper if Intel stays true to form. Why not just write an article about its performance? Why compare it to a CPU that isn't out yet? Why compare it to CPUs that are simply NOT the competition?

Just write an article like "The first review of Intel's Core i9-10980XE 18-core chip has popped up in the wild" and talk about the strengths of the chip. You have a huge library of data to pull from to do some general comparisons, use that.

My theory is that Intel sent them one to test, under the table. They probably didn't want a repeat of their last benchmark fiasco.

From the review:

"Unfortunately, I couldn't compare it directly to an equivalent processor, for several reasons. Thus, AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3rd gen have not been launched yet, Intel Core i9 9980XE has not been tested according to the new methodology, and those at Intel have refused to provide it to us, and the top of the range AMD , The Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX is currently locked in a long-term test by my colleague Matei. "

You can drop the conspiracy theories. They couldn't get their hands on anything else. If Intel shipped them one for a positive review, the website missed the memo. You should probably read the article conclusion. The only positive thing they had to say about the chip was the price reduction vs the last generation.

 

[cryoburner]

Why compare it to CPUs that are simply NOT the competition?

The 3900X is definitely worth testing it against, since it's the closest processor available at this time to the upcoming 16-core 3950X that should be launching in a matter of weeks, as well as upcoming Threadrippers. Assuming these results are indicative of final performance, there's a very good chance that the 3950X will outperform this processor in nearly all software.

Of course, you do get things like additional memory channels and PCIe lanes on an HEDT platform, which could allow the 10980XE to pull ahead in certain workloads, but the next-generation Threadripper platform should offer those things as well.

This thing is going to be priced more similarly (I'm saying generously, it is likely to be a lot more) to a 32 core Threadripper if Intel stays true to form.

Intel had to slash the prices of these processors to keep them competitive, and as such, this 18-core model will be priced at just $1000, similar to what prior 16-core Threadrippers launched for, and half of what their existing 18-core 9980XE is selling for. So I would not expect a 32-core Threadripper to be priced at a similar level. The 24-core model might be though.

 

[hannibal]

Yeah! Threatripper 3000 will rip this apart
Competition is good! These will com down in price somewhat... maybe... it is intell, who knows...

 

[Olle P]

excuse me but where is the
Ryzen 9 3950X in this whole article ???

It's mentioned. Just not available yet.

The 3900X is definitely worth testing it against, since it's the closest processor available at this time...

Available to the reviewer, yes.
As mentioned the closest competitor of the current generation Threadripper was being used for a long-term test.

One irritating detail in the review is that it's not mentioned if the archiving software was used for compression or decompression. Compression is a bit more demanding but decompression is used way more often. Ryzen is known to not handle 7-zip compression that well but excel at decompression.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Yeah, buuuuuuuut the Ryzen 9 3900X and the 9900K are very much NOT the competition for this CPU... AT ALL. This thing is going to be priced more similarly (I'm saying generously, it is likely to be a lot more) to a 32 core Threadripper if Intel stays true to form. Why not just write an article about its performance? Why compare it to a CPU that isn't out yet? Why compare it to CPUs that are simply NOT the competition?

Just write an article like "The first review of Intel's Core i9-10980XE 18-core chip has popped up in the wild" and talk about the strengths of the chip. You have a huge library of data to pull from to do some general comparisons, use that.

My theory is that Intel sent them one to test, under the table. They probably didn't want a repeat of their last benchmark fiasco.

Well it will depend on pricing. If AMD keeps it similar to TR2 then this would price near AMDs 16 core 32 thread TR3. I doubt they will, since Intels pricing is out on these AMD will price accordingly.

What I want to know is why is the 9980XE is not present to see if any gains have been made if at all.

 

[PCWarrior]

Three things worth pointing out:
1. This review from this Romanian website is about an engineering sample of a stock 10980XE tested on a previous gen X299 Gigabyte motherboard with an early bios for the new gen support (one month prior to actual launch). Gigabyte is notorious when it comes to early BIOSes.

2. Some cross checking against some 9980XE benchmarks shows that the reported 10980XE scores are worse than those of the 9980XE by about 3%. The 10980XE is expected to be better than a 9980XE by 5-10%, not worse by 3%.

3. There appears to be something off in this review. I find it very peculiar that in this review in the 10 gaming tests the 9900K won none against both the 9700K and 8700K at the same time. It instead got beaten by either the 8700K and/or 9700K in 8 out of the 10 cases and it only managed to draw twice. The 8700K alone won against the 9900K in 5 games and in 3 it was a draw. On the 5 occasions the 8700K won it was with a bigger margin than on the 2 where it lost.

1080p gaming:

1. GTA V: 9700Κ:129, 8700Κ 128, 9900Κ:126
2. Far Cry New Dawn: 9900K: 121, 8700K: 121, 9700K: 120
3. Rise of the Tomb Raider: 9900K: 176, 8700K: 176, 9700K: 175
4. Shadow of War: 8700K: 162, 9900K: 158, 9700K 155
5. Dawn of War 3: 8700K 145, 9900K: 134, 9700K: 134
6. Batman Arkham Knight: 9700K: 193, 9900K: 191, 8700K 189
7. Sleeping Dogs: 9700K: 287, 9900K: 280, 8700K: 276
8. Metro Exodus: 8700K: 101, 9700K 94, 9900K: 93
9. Ashes of the Singularity: 9700K: 99, 9900K: 98, 8700K: 98
10. Deus EX:Mankind Divided: 8700K: 117, 9700K 115, 9900K 114

I can understand why the 9700K could perform better on some games due to the lack of hyperthreading and 8 physical threads being more than enough for these games. But the 8700K winning against both the 9900K and the 9700K is very strange as it has both lower clock speeds and uses hyperthreading. And has fewer physical cores too. Probably some might say it might be due to the ring bus latency being smaller on a hexacore but I have never seen such a performance delta between a stock 9900K and a stock 8700K in any other review. In fact, the 9900K always prevailed against the 8700K in the vast majority of games. Never were these two cpus shown to trade blows, especially with the 8700K operating at stock and not being overclocked.

 

[joeblowsmynose]

Three things worth pointing out:

2. Some cross checking against some 9980XE benchmarks shows that the reported 10980XE scores are worse than those of the 9980XE by about 3%. The 10980XE is expected to be better than a 9980XE by 5-10%, not worse by 3%.

Yeah these numbers don't quite look right to me either, best to wait for proper reviews. It can't possibly be this underwhelming.

 

[evilhf]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w0u0tmELxU

I lovelly Lisa Su ❤💕

 

[Cableaddict]

The first review of Intel's Core i9-10980XE 18-core chip has popped up in the wild.

Intel Core i9-10980XE Reviewed: Strong Performance, but Can It Beat AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X? : Read more

As always, with HEDT cpu's, it would be INCREDIBLY helpful if you guys could test the maximum all-core speed, both with stock boost and with an OC. This is what every DAW user needs to know, yet the info is almost impossible to find. For DAW use, we of course need lots of cores, but it's at LEAST as important to have individual core speed, so as to have the smallest HW buffer / realtime throughput. - And just one fast core won't help, since they all will be in use.

Oddly, even though this is the one area where Intel has surpassed AMD even in the last 2 years, they don't make it easy to find this out.

PLEASE consider adding this to all future HEDT tests.

 

[cryoburner]

As always, with HEDT cpu's, it would be INCREDIBLY helpful if you guys could test the maximum all-core speed, both with stock boost and with an OC. This is what every DAW user needs to know, yet the info is almost impossible to find. For DAW use, we of course need lots of cores, but it's at LEAST as important to have individual core speed, so as to have the smallest HW buffer / realtime throughput. - And just one fast core won't help, since they all will be in use.

Oddly, even though this is the one area where Intel has surpassed AMD even in the last 2 years, they don't make it easy to find this out.

PLEASE consider adding this to all future HEDT tests.

You can often find the stock all-core boost frequencies by searching for a processor on Wikipedia. For example, on the page for the Cascade Lake architecture, the i9-10980XE is listed as having a 3.8GHz all-core boost, provided the processor has adequate cooling...

Cascade Lake (microprocessor) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Overclocking results could vary from one chip to the next. And of course, Tom's is only reporting on an unsanctioned review posted at another site, since official reviews are not available yet. In any case, the exact clock rates shouldn't really matter that much, outside of comparing processors within the same family, since different architectures will tend to be faster or slower at various tasks, and benchmarks in actual software are likely to be more relevant.

As far as comparisons to AMD's recent processors are concerned, their 3000 series actually offers better performance-per-clock at many tasks compared to Intel's chips, helping to counter their somewhat lower clock rates. And in the case of AMD's 16-core Ryzen 3950X for their "mainstream" AM4 platform, it actually slightly exceeds the 10980XE's all-core boost clocks, with a 3.9GHz all-core boost, and offers a similar 4.7GHz single-core boost. It also appears to overclock to around 4.3GHz or a little higher all-core, based on reviews I've seen so far. Intel's chip does have 2 more cores, but with the 3950X having higher IPC at many tasks, it looks like it should be very competitive in terms of performance. With these higher core-count chips, it simply becomes impractical for Intel to push higher boost clocks on their aging 14nm process, as the power demands and heat output become too high. It might be possible to overclock the 10980XE even higher, but cooling the thing is going to be a challenge, especially if one wants to cool it relatively quietly, which seems like something that would be relevant for an audio workstation.

And that's not even getting into the HEDT offerings coming from AMD, which will be offering even higher core counts later this month. The Threadripper 3960X and 3970X offer 24 and 32 cores respectively, and at the kinds of heavily-multithreaded tasks you would get an HEDT processor for, it doesn't look like Intel will have anything in the HEDT space to counter them with. This is clearly why Intel decided it was necessary to halve the prices of these upcoming HEDT processors compared to the previous generation.