The most profitable process node in the history of Intel has been its 14nm process. Since 2014, the company has been pumping out CPUs built on a variety of configurations of 14nm – slowly optimizing for power and frequency. We used to call these variants 14+ and 14++, but as the next process node isn’t yet ready, rather than draw attention to a soon-to-be 6-year old process, Intel just calls it all ‘14nm class’. The latest launch on 14nm is Intel’s new Cascade Lake-X processors: high-end desktop hardware that gives a slight frequency improvement over Skylake-X from 2017 but it also has the first round of hardware mitigations. Today we’re testing the best CPU of the new list, the Core i9-10980XE.

The Ups and Downs of Intel’s High-End Strategy

Way back in June 2017, Intel first launched its Skylake-X high-end desktop processors. The Core i7-7900X was a 10-core processor built using the smallest silicon die from Intel’s enterprise processor range. It was on sale for $999, a noticeable drop from the $1729 pricing of the 10-core in the previous generation, and fit into a market where AMD had just started to launch its 8-core Ryzen processors for half this price. The benefits over AMD at the time, as explained in our review, came down to new vector extensions, more PCIe lanes, more memory channels, and a higher rate of instruction throughput, all equating to more performance – if the cost didn’t frighten you away.

AMD quickly launched 16-core processors and then 32-core processors into the high-end desktop market, turning most of the areas in which Intel had been winning into wins for AMD. The 16-core 1950X/2950X and the 32-core 2990WX were able to stifle the usefulness of Intel’s 10-core offerings by being much more competitively priced. In response, Intel moved up another step in its enterprise CPU silicon, and started offering up to 18 cores to the high-end desktop market, first with the Core i9-7980XE at $1979, and then the Core i9-9980XE at the same price but with a small clock increase.

For 2019, both companies have kicked it up a gear. AMD now offers for its mainstream platform 16 cores built on TSMC’s 7nm process with the Ryzen 9 3950X, which has a recommended price of $749. It also has a fundamental performance per clock advantage, as well as a higher frequency than Intel's HEDT parts. This now means that Intel’s 18-core CPU, at $1979, competes against AMD’s 16-core CPU at half the price and with better efficiency.

Today’s Launch: Cascade Lake-X and the Core i9-10980XE

In order to be competitive, Intel is doing the only thing it can do, based on what it has in its arsenal: the new 18-core Core i9-10980XE that comes out today is going to have a tray price of $979. The new Cascade Lake-X processor, based on the same silicon as Intel's already-launched Cascade Lake generation of Xeon processors,  comes with many of the same features introduced for those parts. In particular, this means the new Intel HEDT chips come with hardware protections for the first round of Spectre/Meltdown security patches. Intel is launching a range of processors, from 10-core all the way up to 18-core.

The Core i9-10980XE is an 18-core processor that has a base frequency of 3.0 GHz (same as the 9980XE) and a turbo frequency of 4.6 GHz (+100 MHz higher than the 9980XE) and a turbo max frequency of 4.8 GHz (+100 MHz higher than 9980XE). It can support up to 256 GB of DDR4-2933 with a quad-channel design, and has a 165W TDP.

Intel Cascade Lake-X
AnandTech Cores
Threads
Base All
Core
TB2 TB3 TDP Price
(1ku)
Core i9-10980XE 18C / 36T 3.0 3.8 4.6 4.8 165 W $979
Core i9-10940X 14C / 28T 3.3 4.1 4.6 4.8 165 W $784
Core i9-10920X 12C / 24T 3.5 4.3 4.6 4.8 165 W $689
Core i9-10900X 10C / 20T 3.7 4.3 4.5 4.7 165 W $590
Skylake-X (previous generation)
Core i9-9980XE 18C / 36T 3.0   4.5 4.7 165 W $1979
Core i9-9940X 14C / 28C 3.3   4.5   165 W $1387
Core i9-9920X 12C / 24T 3.5   4.5   165 W $1189
Core i9-9900X 10C / 20T 3.5   4.5   165 W $989

If we compare the top parts from AMD and Intel, we get an interesting differential.

Intel vs AMD
Sub $1k
Core i9-10980XE AnandTech Ryzen 9 3950X
18 / 36 Cores / Threads 16 / 32
3.0 GHz Base Frequency 3.5 GHz
4.6 / 4.8 GHz Turbo Frequency 4.7 GHz
18 MB L2 Cache 8 MB
24.75 MB L3 Cache 64 MB
256 GB DRAM Capacity 128 MB
DDR4-2933 DRAM Frequency DDR4-3200
48 PCIe Lanes 24
165 W TDP 105 W
$979 (1ku) Price $749 (MSRP)

What we have here are two processors that are technically in different markets: AMD is making the ‘high-end desktop market’ for its processors go beyond $749, while Intel’s HEDT market is now from $569 to $979. This means that Intel does have an advantage in this price range for memory controllers and PCIe lanes. It is worth noting that Intel is not launching a 16-core processor in this family, to compete directly with AMD’s 16-core. The official reason is that Intel doesn’t see a need to insert a product between the 10940X and the 10980XE in that price range; however as most people have gathered, not having a direct competition product on core count saves Intel some expected embarrassment in performance comparisons.

With that being said, AMD is also launching its newest HEDT processors today as well. The AMD Threadripper 3960X (24-core) and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X (32-core) are (just) derivative designs of their enterprise processors, but signify that Intel has nothing to compete in this 24-core and above space.

Intel vs AMD
HEDT
Core
i9-10980XE
AnandTech TR
3960X
TR
3970X
18 / 36 Cores / Threads 24 / 48 32 / 64
3.0 GHz Base Frequency 3.8 GHz 3.5 GHz
4.6 / 4.8 GHz Turbo Frequency 4.5 GHz 4.7 GHz
18 MB L2 Cache 12 MB 16 MB
24.75 MB L3 Cache 128 MB 128 MB
256 GB DRAM Capacity 512 GB 512 GB
DDR4-2933 DRAM Frequency DDR4-3200 DDR4-3200
48 PCIe Lanes 64 64
165 W TDP 280 W 280 W
$979 (1ku) Price $1399 $1999

If we were to compare the 10980XE to the 3960X/3970X, it wouldn’t necessarily be a fair fight, with the AMD processors costing a good chunk more. But comparing the 10980XE to the 3950X is comparing a mainstream processor against HEDT, so the mainstream CPU automatically loses on most memory bound and PCIe bound tasks.

If we put up a price list for the updated product families, it shows the following:

CPU Pricing
AMD
(MSRP Pricing)
Cores AnandTech Cores Intel*
(OEM Pricing)
    $2000+ 28/56 Xeon W-3175X ($2999)
TR 3970X ($1999) 32/64 $1750-$1999    
    $1500-$1749    
TR 3960X ($1399) 24/48 $1250-$1499    
    $1000-$1249    
    $900-$999 18/36 Core i9-10980XE ($979)
    $800-$899    
Ryzen 9 3950X ($749) 16/32 $700-$799 14/28 Core i9-10940X ($784)
    $600-$699 12/24 Core i9-10920X ($689)
    $550-$599 10/20 Core i9-10900X ($590)
    $500-$549 8/16 Core i9-9900KS ($513)
Ryzen 9 3900X ($499) 12/24 $450-$499 8/16 Core i9-9900K/F ($488)
    $400-$449    
Ryzen 7 3800X ($399) 8/16 $350-$399 8/8 Core i7-9700K/F ($374)
Ryzen 7 3700X ($329) 8/16 $300-$349    
    $250-$299 6/6 Core i5-9600K ($262)
Ryzen 5 3600X ($249) 6/12 $200-$249    
Ryzen 5 3600 ($199) 6/12 Below $200 4/4 Core i3-9350K ($173)
*Intel quotes OEM/tray pricing. Retail pricing will sometimes be $20-$50 higher.

Keep an eye on all our benchmarks, just to see where everyone ends up.

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  • wow&wow - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    ‘consumers don’t care about process nodes, so you shouldn’t either’

    The ex-CEO said, Intel processors function as intended, no bug, so using the design shortcut of partial addresses, causing many more security holes than AMD's, is intended, and enterprise and consumers don't care, so you shouldn’t either!

    The more the security holes, the more the demand; what an amazing company and business!
  • nt300 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    Intel Processors even dating back to 2008+ all have massive amounts of security and malware vulnerabilities nightmare. Not only is ZEN superior technologically, its faster, securer and much more cost effective.
  • HideOut - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link

    You state that the AMD loses on PCI lanes but those PCI lanes are 4.0 vs 3.0. They are twice as fast per lane. With the right hardware the total bandwidth is the exact same.
  • Thanny - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    Which means nothing if you can't use your RAID controller or 10g network card because there aren't enough lanes to create the required expansion slots.

    I don't think there's a single X570 board capable of running a computer with a RAID controller or 10g network card, both of which require x8 slots. You could, in principle, bifurcate lanes to create more slots, but no one does that. So the fact that the lanes are PCIe 4.0 is utterly irrelevant.

    If you want a non-toy computer, you need either Intel's -E/-X series processors, or, since 2017, AMD's Threadripper processors.
  • kc77 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link

    That summary makes no sense. The desktop AMD chip is beating the HEDT one with a $500 savings when you factor in motherboard cost. It's even beating it in gaming.

    If you picked up an older threadripper part for productivity it will walk all over the HEDT part and still be cheaper.

    It doesn't matter what Intel does there's an AMD part available for cheaper.
  • Thanny - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    TR 2000 is now cheaper, but its per-core performance lags behind Cascade Lake-X. It also has a higher-latency topology. If you want a real computer capable of running a RAID controller and 10g network card, for example, that also games reasonably well, and don't need really high core counts, then you'll get better results with Cascade Lake-X at the lower end.

    AMD has blundered. They should have released a 16-core Zen 2 chip, made it compatible with X399, and made it no more expensive than the MSRP of the 2950X.
  • kc77 - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    If you're going HEDT you need the cores that's the whole point. Further more if you need ECC you won't get that with these HEDT parts while you will on all Ryzen CPUs from the bottom to the top.

    For HEDT ECC can be mandatory. If you want that with Intel you'll spend an extra $1000. Nope not joking.
  • Jimbo Jones - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link

    "If you need HEDT but don't need cores ..."

    i7-7740x anyone? That CPU was laughed out of existence. Even the 8 core AMD TR died a quick death. That's how many people need a low core count HEDT processor.
  • peevee - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    AMD NEEDS 20-core TR right under $1000 to fill the gap between $750 3950X and $1400 3650X and take the ground from under Intel's 18-core part. Unfortunately, they are almost out of numbers. 3955X? ;)
    They would benefit from a $800 16-core part too, perfect for those who are limited by PCI lanes or memory on 3950X.
  • Thanny - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link

    As I see it, AMD is being daft by not releasing an X399-compatible 16-core Threadripper 3955X based on Zen 2.

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