Intel Core i9-10980XE Review: Winning the middle - willheddleggliha

Intel's new 18-core Core i9-10980XE isn't reaching for the stars. IT's reaching for the middle. Squeezed by AMD's consumer 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X on one end, and the 32-marrow Ryzen Threadripper 3970X on the other, it put up't deliver the goods on peeled performance. Merely with Intel's aggressive pricing at $1,000, it really competes well connected bang for buck, a beguiling deal for the placid creators World Health Organization are the prime market for this chip.

Wherefore the Core i9-10980XE is almost a deal

The Core i9-10980XE takes Intel pricing in a new direction—downfield. Patc the 2 previous 18-core CPUs were released at $1,999, Intel will be shipping this inexperienced generation at $1,000.

For Intel, which has been loath to chase AMD on price wars, this fat discount could potentially change the fortunes for the new CPU. In the craziest turn of events, Intel is actually less per core than AMD's upcoming Threadripper 3000-series of CPUs (see chart infra).

Who'district attorney thunk we could put "Intel" and "deal" in the same sentence. but here we are.

bucks per core nov — Consider information technology or non: Intel is actually charging inferior per nitty-gritty than AMD's new Threadripper CPUs.

Why Pith i9-10980XE isn't exactly a 10th-gen chip

Before we engender to performance, we're going to try to explain where the Core i9-10980XE falls among Intel's chip generations, because… it's confusing.

Obviously, the new Intel Core i9-10980XE is a 10th-gen role because of the '10' in its name right? Well, not exactly. Information technology bears no relation to the 10th-gen Ice Lake CPUs based on the new 10nm process. Nor is it connected the 10th-gen Comet Lake U CPUs, which are essentially upgraded versions of the 8th-gen Whiskey Lake U.

The Core i9-10980XE actually doesn't look all that antithetic from Intel's previous two 18-core chips, the Core i9-7780XE and the Core i9-9980XE. If you seem at all three 18-core Core i9 chips on Intel's Ark of the Covenant, they'atomic number 75 all 14nm chips, with hardscrabble clock speed improvements all generation.

18s — Intel's last three 18-inwardness Core i9's compared

Core i9-10980XE presents one Major change over its predecessors. Intel uses its newer Cascade Lake X cores, introduced in its Xeon line earlier this year. Shower Lake increases validated memory to DDR4/2933 and officially supports up to 256GB of RAM.

The chip off also supports Intel's DL Boost operating instructions, which accelerate low-pitched encyclopaedism and inference public presentation. The Central processor should technically work with Intel's Optane Persistent Memory DIMMs, too (although there are no announced plans to support it yet). And In a move certain to give some AMD fans jealous rage, Core i9-10980XE will fit into existing X299-based motherboards.

Some of performance promises of Cascade Lake X are still a little firmly to quantify, though. You'll see as we dig up into the benchmarks, climax up next.

How we tested

A respectable terms isn't a manage unless favorable performance comes with it. Can the rising Heart and soul i9 prolong with its Ryzen rivals?

For this showdown, we installed the Core i9-10980XE in an Asus X299 Prime Serial 30 motherboard with a Founders Variation GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU, a 512GB M.2 Samsung 960 Pro SSD, and 32GB of DDR4/3200 CL15. The CPU was cooled with a Corsair Hydro H115i with its fans manually set apart to 100 percentage and iCue software unloaded. The latest BIOS was used in the X299 Prime Series 30, and the artwork notice driver was the same among all the systems.

And yes, we left MCE on. We've lately decided non to turn out Multi-Kernel Sweetening manually, as we smel that nary consumers actually do that. While that can induce slight variances as motherboard makers economic consumption MCE slightly differently, the results a consumer will see are closer with MCE connected, rather than off.

3D Modelling performance

We'll kick this off in the area that an 18-Congress of Racial Equality CPU lives for: 3D model and interpreting. Among the tasks run on the PC, 3D modelling and visual image typically offers the biggest return along investing for multi-core CPUs.

First up is Maxon's Cinebench R20 benchmark. This updated benchmark uses the selfsame engine you'll find in newer versions of the companion's Celluloid 4D application and now supports AVX2 and AVX512 as part of its workload.

Intel has typically done fairly well on the older Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R20, simply Eastern Samoa you can see from the results below, Ryzen 3000-chips suffer flipped that on its head. Despite having two more cores than the Ryzen 9 3950X, the Sum i9-10980XE still loses. The only answer that explains this surprise is that Ryzen 9's Zen 2 cores are just quicker in Maxon's rendering engine.

core i9 10980xe cinebench r20 nt — The 18-core Core i9-10980XE loses to the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X.

To taste to overestimate the performance of a respective core group, we as wel run Cinebench R20 using a single thread. The 18-core Core i9-10980XE is nudged aside by the 5GHz Center i9 consumer chips, every bit fortunate as both the 16-meat and 12-core Ryzen 9 CPUs. Oof.

core i9 10980xe cinebench r20 1t — The single-burden performance puts the 18-core Core i9-10980XE behind the nimbler Center i9-9900KS, as well as some Ryzen CPUs.

The visualization humankind isn't totally focused on Cinema4D performance, though, so we besides run the "proudly CPU-supported" Saint Elmo's fire renderer. It's an unbiased photorealistic renderer ("indifferent" basically means it doesn't take any shortcuts in work). Here, the 18-heart Marrow i9-10980XE rallies and lands in frontmost of the other CPUs we tested. In point of fact, IT's about 8 percent in front end of the 16-burden Ryzen 9 3950X.

core i9 10980xe corona — The 18-core group Core i9-10980XE finally pulls ahead of the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X in Corona.

Up next is the Persistence of Vision Ray tracer bullet that got its start on the Amiga. Luckily, it's been updated on the years for more modern ironware. Like all 3D modelling apps, more cores means to a greater extent performance—normally. Merely equally with Cinebench R15, we catch the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X slightly outpace the 18-core Core i9 10980XE chip.

core i9 10980xe pov ray nt — POV-Beam of light says Ryzen is quicker

Every last is non forfeit as we get to the Chaos Group's V-Ray Side by side renderer, which was used in such movies as Avengers: End game. The Nucleus i9-10980XE slightly pulls ahead of the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X.

core i9 10980xe vray next — V-Ray of light Next was used to to establish Thanos in Avengers: End game.

It's clear to the States that 3D modelling is mostly a devote-and-bring on between the Ryzen 9 and the Core i9-10980XE, with certain rendering engines favoring Ryzen and others favoring Center. Overall, it feels like a tie in 3D modelling—which, if you're AMD, isn't pitiful, because its top of the inning Ryzen 9 has two fewer cores and costs about 25 percent fewer.

Encoding Carrying into action

Moving happening to TV encryption performance, we want to point out that video encryption usually doesn't scale with core count atomic number 3 efficiently as 3D version. A platform's computer memory bandwidth, cache performance, especial instructions, and microarchitecture can easy move the outcome.

Our first mental testing tasks the free and popular HandBrake 1.2 to convert a 4K video using the HEVC encoding to 1080p resolution. The results put the Ryzen 9 firmly in front—but we have to say—we wonder if we didn't misrecord this execution run, as we expected it to equal closer to the Core i9. We'll rebroadcast our tryout and update this section PR.

Even so, if you look at the performance of the 18-core Core i9-10980XE against the 8-core Core i9-9900KS, it's a win, but not exactly what you might expect with the core count.

core i9 10980xe handbrake 1080p hevc — We'Ra in the process of retesting the Ryzen 9 as its performance, spell unspoiled, may non be quite this good.

Also encryption our 4K file to 1080p HEVC, we also did runs at 2160p with a 60-fps frame rate. We've constitute this workload seems to scale better with core count, as the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X is now handily in front of the Gist i9-9900KS. We also see the scads of the Gist i9-10980XE and Ryzen 9 3950X surrounding up nicely. The win, however, withal handily goes to the Ryzen 9 3950X. With two tests in a row going to Ryzen 9, we're wondering if possibly Ryzen 9 is really quicker after all.

core i9 10980xe handbrake 2160p hevc — Ryzen 9 has and edge over Kernel in our Handbrake encodes

Heavenward next is Cinegy's Cinescore 10.4 test. This is a free benchmark motivated to let broadcast professionals bore performance of commercial off-the-shelf ironware (that's the Microcomputer, common people) at handling diffuse-focused codecs. You'll acknowledge that we again don't see that huge a jump as we work from 8 to 12 to 16 and 18 cores. Spell IT doesn't in a flash lead, the Ryzen 9 3950X has a slight edge over the Nitty-gritty i9-10980XE.

core i9 10980xe cinescore — Cinescore lets the broadcast diligence easily gauge bump off-the-shelf PC hardware performance.

Our next run shifts gears from the broadcast industry to Adobe's immensely popular Premier Pro 13.5. For this test we take a short 4K video shot connected Sony Alpha cameras and output it victimization the Blu-ray preset in Premiere, with the Upper limit Render selection checked. We likewise direct Premiere to use the CPU for its encoding rather than the default option of the GPU. Such a test is useful because despite the encoding performance of GPUs, close to video nerds will turn their nuzzle up at anything exclude CPU-based encoding for the far in quality.

The leave? It's essentially a tie between the Core i9-10980XE and the Ryzen 9 3950X.

core i9 10980xe premiere blu ray cpu 1080p — Our Premier exportation says it's a dead tie 'tween the Ryzen 9 and 18-core Core i9

We longed-for to dial it up a notch though, so we took the same workload and exported it using HEVC to 2160p, using the High Profile. The event finally gives the 18-core Effect i9 some breathing space, equally we see it finish the encode about 15 percentage faster.

core i9 10980xe premiere hevc 2160p cpu — Victimisation HEVC in Premiere Pro, the 18-core Core i9 finally opens up a performance disruption.

Just like the 3D rendering section, the good word for Core i9-10980XE is IT posterior Be faster. The bad news is it can be slower to a fault. Contingent on how you look at it, it's not that intense, or IT's a disaster, because the Ryzen has less cores and costs less, too.

Hold over recital for gambling functioning and more.

Gaming Performance

Did you real buy a 16-sum or 18-burden CPU to play games?! aforementioned that stale time gamer who doesn't understand that in any case playing games, you might also pelt it to multiple platforms at one time and past also re-edit information technology, add in 3D graphics and other Congress of Racial Equality-count-intensive actions that old-school gamers just don't get.

So yes, gaming throne be important to someone who as wel needs a double, roly-poly, hairy Central processing unit. We'll also state that we essentially skip reporting performance at 2566×1440 resolution, because you're just GPU-bottlenecked nearly of the time and the performance gap between any of the CPUs is fairly hardscrabble. And if you're playing at 4K resolution, even with the mighty GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, it's not going to matter which CPU you have 9 kayoed of 10 times.

The first game is Gears of War 5, which is fairly GPU-apprenticed even at 1080p. What we terminate see is that higher pin grass matter, and it doesn't look like the Core i9-10980XE has quite sufficiency. The fastest is Intel's all-5GHz Core i9-9900KS chip. The Core i9-9900K follows next, and then the pair of Ryzen chips. The Core i9-10980XE is in terminal place but in the sumptuous scheme of things, the spunky is well-playable on all cardinal CPUs. Sol, we wouldn't make a federal case out of it.

core i9 10980xe gears — The lower clock speeds of the Substance ii-10980XE places it in last place.

Gaming, by and large, does like Intel, and as we move to Shadows of the Tomb Raider at 1920×1080 set to Highest Quality and with DXR turned off, the Inwardness i9-10980XE pulls forward of both Ryzen chips and is outpaced exclusive by the 5GHz Core i9 chips. But once again, even as its slower performance in Gears of War 5 wasn't a huge deal, this isn't really either.

core i9 10980xe sotr — Intel chips lead in Shadows of the Grave Raider

Sometimes with testing, nothing makes sense. Far Cry 5 is one of those games that runs best on Intel despite the Ryzen and Radeon logos splashed in your face at launch. We handily see the high-clock Core i9 chips lead the way. And yes, Ryzen chips scarcely do poorly in Far Cry 5, as we gestate. In point of fact, this is what we've come to call the "Ryzen gap," where games simply run 15 to 20 percent slower connected AMD.

But what explains the performance of the Congress of Racial Equality i9-10980XE? It should arguably be running at a slightly higher clock speed than the Ryzen chips, yet the results are essentially a tie. We're simply nonplussed here, and in few benchmarks it'll capture even weirder.

core i9 10980xe fc5 — Far Cry 5's results are plain weird

Our next game is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Over again, it's at 1920×1080 nonmoving to Ultra choice. We use this game particularly because it was combined of the games that was optimized in the years of introductory-gen Ryzen, which plain dragged in gaming against Intel. The result? Let's birdsong it a wash. Yes, technically the 5GHz Core i9-9900KS is exterior in front, but not enough to really matter. And yes, the Core i9-10980XE is technically slower, but not sufficiency to really thing.

core i9 10980xe deus ex — We'll this a washing boilers suit

Our next game is the DirectX12 poster child: Ashes of the Uniqueness. The game was one of the foremost optimized games for multi-core CPUs under DX12. The reality is information technology doesn't scale up to the core counts we have today. The results are again by and large a wash: The Core i9-10980XE is last, but non by enough to matter.

core i9 10980xe ashes — The 18-heart Core i9 is in last place yet over again but non by a significant amount.

Most of the games we ran are GPU-intensive. The reality is most of the games played today aren't like that at all. To look at that category of eSports game, we use Turkey cock Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege at 1080pad, with quality set to Ultra. In a better look for the Core i9-10980XE, it's basically bushed even out with the Core i9-9900K. Complete three Core i9 chips have seemly margins over the Ryzen 9 chips, but we're already spurting in the 360-FPS range, so it's not like anyone's hurting for systema skeletale rates.

IDG

All three Core i9 chips lebut not away vast margins.

Our conclusion on gaming is that the Gist i9-10980XE pulled out respectable, but not stellar scores. But then, so do the Ryzen 9 3950X and Ryzen 9 3900X. Basically you can't make a bad pick, so don't chose along play public presentation, rather choose on the activities surrounding the gambling. If you practise indeed need to render 3D graphics to drop in a game telecasting, more cores will help—and besides cost more money.

Performance analytic thinking

We'll close off by looking at the public presentation of the Core i9-10980XE running from 1 wander to 36 threads, using Maxon's older Cinebench R15. If you view the graphic below, you force out immediately see the issue for Core i9-10980XE: At no point does IT ever curb a commanding lead over Ryzen 9.

core i9 10980xe vs ryzen 9 3950x — Ryzen 9 3950X in essence never lets the Core i9-10980XE get ahead of it in Cinebench.

Presented American Samoa percent difference, it looks far much drastic for Core i9, which is essentially low water against the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X the intact time.

Granted, Ryzen 3000-series chips simply rock Intel in Cinebench these days. And if we could run V-Shaft Next or other renderer this way of life, the Core i9 office would likely improve. The lone problem with that is while the situation is likely to improve, it's only going to improve a little. Straight-grained if the Core i9-10980XE held a 7-percentage vantage, it's alleged to, as IT has two Thomas More cores and costs 25 per centum more.

core i9 10980xe vs ryzen 9 3950x percent diff — The Core i9-10980XE is basically underwater the entire time against the cheaper Ryzen 9 3950X and that's not redemptive.

What about DL Boost?

Unmatchable cool new feature of the Intel's new Cascade Lake X chips is the support for DL Boost which accelerates AI and Inference work dozens. We don't have much experience with Principled Tehnologies AIXPRT test but the OpenVINO workflow we used is supposed to mensurate illation performance, both response time and throughput in pictur recognition. And yes, OpenVINO (Clear Visual Inferencing and Neural Network Optimization) is an initiative started by Intel atomic number 3 it looks to fight back back over again both Google and Nvidia hardware.

We ran the test only on the two new CPUs Hera but with de facto hardware optimizations for low-pitched learning and, well, a platform it created, this is pretty much a home field advantage. Nonetheless, the performance is impressive however and in a solar day of more often than not blowouts, likely indicates that if you are a deep learning, AI investigator, you'll probably tend to Core i9-10980XE over a Ryzen 9 chip.

As a consumer though we harbour't seen decent compelling app support to make this a must have feature.

11 aixprt — High-principled Technologies AIXprt RESTNET 50 says you'll probably want Intel's new Cascade Lake-X for AI or deep learning tasks.

Close

When Intel slashed prices a calendar month agone connected its new Core i9 CPUs, we thought the move over was a sign that Intel was getting serious about AMD and was ready for the long fight.

Seeing the performance of the CORE i9-10980XE though, we now realize the move was really more about survival. If Intel had launched the Core i9-10980XE at the cookie-cutter $2,000 price as its predecessors, it would have been immediately immaterial in the facial expressio of the Ryzen 9 3950X. And yes, at $2,000 it would be crossing the path of the 32-core Ryzen Threadripper 3970X.

In the end, while some might say $1,000 is stock-still too expensive, we think it's actually not too horrible of an deman in the grand scheme of things. Yes, $800 would earn USA feel better merely considering the CPU it replaces started at $2,000, we're not expecting miracles.