INTEL CORE i9-9980XE

Tweaks in manufacturing boost Skylake-X speeds

Extreme performance at an eye-watering price

IF IT FELT LIKE THE HEDT wars got silly over the past year or so, that was only a prelude. AMD took its Zen architecture and doubled down on core and thread counts, the result being the 16-core/32thread Threadripper 1950X. Intel had no choice but to respond with some oneupmanship of its own and an 18-core/36thread monstrosity with the Core i97980XE. Fast-forward to today, and AMD has continued to push core counts, with up to 32-core/64-thread HEDT products, and 64-core/128-thread server parts. Intel has 28-core Xeon workstation processors, and those will be coming to a different HEDT platform, but with 10nm nowhere in sight, LGA2066 is in a tough spot. That brings us to the updated Skylake-X CPUs and the Core i9-9980XE.

Fundamentally, there’s little difference between this Skylake-X part and previous offerings. The architecture is the same, and it’s only the surrounding elements that see some changes. Intel has tweaked its 14nm process, now called 14nm++ (14nm+ having been used for Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake). The update increases the transistor gate pitch from 70nm to 84nm, and while that appears to be going in the wrong direction, it allows for higher frequencies. The other major change is that the new ninth-gen Core X-series will switch to a solder thermal interface to help manage temperatures.

Those two changes allow Intel to move the base clock speed from 2.6GHz on the i9-7980XE to 3.0GHz on the i9-9980XE, with the Turbo Boost Max frequency moving from 4.4GHz to 4.5GHz. In practice, at similar power levels, the 9980XE clocks about 200–300MHz higher.

Here’s where things get a little weird. Ostensibly, this is a 165W TDP part, like its predecessor. In AVX workloads, the CPU generally adheres to that. But we measured 261W of power draw in Prime95. That’s a lot higher than 165W, but nothing compared to the power use in Cinebench, where using an Asus X299-A Prime motherboard, we measured up to 370W. At “stock” if you want to call it that.

Needless to say, our Corsair H115i cooler has difficulty keeping up with such a thermal load, and temperatures can peak at over 95 C, and induce throttling. Behavior in other X299 motherboards can differ, but all the boards we’ve tested tend to be more than a little aggressive with clock speeds and thermals. That’s great for performance, not so great for noise levels or peace of mind. Overclocks of 4.4GHz are possible, with the right cooling solution, but that’s a stretch for most users. At stock, all-core clocks are 3.8GHz, but 4.2GHz and above induced throttling with our test rig.

There’s also the matter of pricing, which is a weak spot compared to AMD’s second-gen Threadripper parts. Percore performance remains a strong point for Intel’s architectures, with the singlethreaded Cinebench result reflecting the higher IPC and clock speed. Threadripper performance can also be a bit bipolar, especially with the WX models that have higher memory latencies for two of the CCX modules. That can hurt performance in some applications, including gaming. But professional applications often don’t mind so much.

Intel’s Core X-series processors still take top honors in applications that leverage AVX instructions, especially AVX512 instructions. Lighter threaded workloads also prefer the higher clock speed and IPC of Intel. But with the right application, Threadripper flexes its muscle and makes even the i9-9980XE look tame—at a far more attractive price.

There’s not much incentive to upgrade from last year’s model, but if you want lots of high-speed cores and prefer Intel platforms, this is as good as it gets, short of Xeon workstations. At least until 10nm and 7nm parts arrive, which could still be a couple of years away. –JARRED WALTON