System News

Ripping threads off a Cascading Lake of X’s, Mark Williams is enjoying the heated HEDT competition.

For many years Intel’s High-End Desktop (HEDT) range has been the platform for higher tier enthusiasts or prosumers that need more than what the regular consumer grade parts have to offer. HEDT has typically offered more cores than consumer parts, more IO and connectivity options, plus higher RAM capacity support and more memory channels. Basically, if you want to beat your chest and boast about how big your numbers are, or you really do need the extra grunt for the things that you do, HEDT is the place to be – if you can afford it.

Another unique feature of Intel’s HEDT platform is that due to the popularity of the platform for use in business and enterprise workstations, Intel supports each HEDT series across two or three CPU product refreshes – giving businesses a clear and guaranteed upgrade path for these more expensive platforms, making them a good long-term investment. In the case of the current X299 platform, the LGA 2066 socket supports Intel’s Core 7000X and 9000X series CPUs and the just-announced (and crazily numbered) 10000X series.

The current lay of the land in this segment for market share is clearly in Intel’s favour, however AMD, through its Ryzen and Threadripper series of CPUs, is making inroads on Intel’s turf thanks to a very aggressive ramp up of core counts on its consumer products – currently 12-core in the Ryzen 9 3900X, but soon to be a massive 16-core in the soon to drop Ryzen 9 3950X – both of which are well into Intel’s HEDT territory for performance, and on cheaper consumer-grade hardware. That’s crazy.

Then there’re the Threadrippers, offering up to a massive 32-cores in the 2990WX. AMD is leaving Intel behind on raw core counts in this segment, which for Intel tops out at 18-cores in the Core i9 9980XE. Not to mention useable PCIe lanes.

So, Intel’s HEDT space is getting pinched from above and below by AMD. Its response? Massive price cuts! Intel’s soon to be released Cascade Lake-X series will slash the asking price for its refreshed line-up compared to the last generation. There are a few tweaks here and there over the 9000X series, like 200MHz higher turbo clocks, four more PCIe lanes for 48 total and faster memory support (2933MHz) plus higher system memory capacities (up to 256GB). But the most exciting part is that the average per-core cost is reducing from US$103 down to US$57 – basically half price! This is a massive move by Intel – a company that’s been able to avoid a price war for a decade. It not only signifies that Intel are now seeing AMD’s products as a direct threat, it also shows just how much of a profit margin Intel used to have on the products. 50% of the price is pure profit!

With AMD about to finally ship the long waited 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, and soon announce its Threadripper 3000 series (predicted to possibly sport up to 64-cores!), this is a move Intel had to make to remain competitive. It’s great for current Intel HEDT users as it’ll offer them half-priced upgrade options and it’s great for AMD users too, as it’ll keep prices in check and force more innovation and advancement in what was for quite a while a slow-moving stagnant segment of the market. As Jaimie from Leader Computers said in his Shop Talk comment for us this issue “the winner is the consumer”.