so here we are with another CPU review from Intel this time and it is the cascade
Lake X the core I9 10980XE but at this time you probably know how
dominating AMD's Ryzen 3rd gen threadripper processors are in fact we
did post that video yesterday because that was when this processor was also
launched in fact there was an interesting story behind this it looks
like someone from Intel leaked the launch date for the Cascade lake X
processors to AMD because it was supposed to launch at 9 a.m. and what
ended up happening is AMD decided to launch Threadripper on the same day
at the same time but then Intel knew that until they decided to launch it 9
hours earlier so this is this is what the industry is in 2019 now when you
compare the core I9 10980XE to 3rd gen threadripper which is the 3960X
and 3970X there's just no comparison because those processors
absolutely destroy this guy and by the way this is the box that Intel sample
dozen we had to label the processor on it just because we need to find a way to
differentiate which ones which so yeah that's how we do things here
specifically with Intel parts so here we
are a day later covering cascade Lake X I
think it deserves a little bit of coverage but it's this is gonna be I
think this is gonna be a fairly short video so why don't we get into it but
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really quick because there's nothing really new about Cascade Lake X because
they're still based off the ancient skylake X architecture I mean it's the
the processors are still using the old x29 motherboards so at this point Intel
doesn't really have any new and that is bad now what you need to
know is that all the court counts are identical to previous generation and the
one before that yeah but the number of PCI lanes has gone up by four and prices
have been reduced by about fifty percent by the end of this video you'll realize
that the price cuts still weren't enough though another thing that's happening is
a super small increase in clock speeds from the 9000 series which was possible
because until refined their 40 nanometer plus plus plus plus plus plus plus times
infinity manufacturing process but about those clock speeds because of the way
Intel's turbo algorithms work overall performance can be determined by just a
base and Boo speeds there are a lot of frequency points in between those which
are controlled by power temperature and more that means the 10980xe may
struggle to uh perform be 9980XE in some situations now about that pricing
it still really doesn't look competitive if you're buying a new system plus the
$980 at 10980XE sits in a weird space between AMD's $750
3950X and the $1400 entry level price of threadrippers 3960X and we've already
seen how it under performs against those two CPUs one thing that's important to
consider is how the incremental clock speeds could end up benefiting someone
who might have purchased a 7100 series CPU back in 2017 so for instance if you
take these 7980XE that had a base clock of 2.6 q Hertz and it boosts up to 4.4
but now you have the 1098 exe that starts at 3 gigahertz base and boosts
all the way up to 4 point 8 gigahertz and it costs a lot less compared to the
7980XE so I personally think that this could be a great drop-in upgrade
for people who bought that set up back then because that's the only good thing
that's or I guess that's the only thing that cascade lake X is it's really
geared for now I'm gonna go in a little bit of a rant mode here because I am
absolutely frustrated with Intel sampling strategy because every single
time when they launch a new processor they end up sampling their highest end
processor and not their lower tiers or lower SKUs below that and the perfect
example is this guy right here the only processor we have in cascade Lake X is
the 10980XE in this ridiculous box we really wish if we were able to give you
a fresh perspective on what these I could offer respected to their price
points then again they're all pretty poor value in my opinion but you know
it's just something that we hope until could improvise later down the line so
with that out of the way let's get into the benchmarks first up nothing has
changed from our test systems and the overall set up from our last video other
than the fact that I talked about TRX 40 and third-gen threadRipper
I've also updated some items like power consumption since we found some issues
with HW Infosys stability test load as we go through these benchmarks I wanted
to keep this in mind the 10980XE is almost $250 more than AMD's 3950X
but $400 less than the Threadripper 3960X that should give you some idea
about where it stands from a value standpoint right away we can see the
difference between the 9980XE and the 10980XE is minimal at best but
moving on from Cinebench on to more real-world testing and from a price to
performance ratio it's obvious that a 3950X is just untouchable the 3960x
on the other hand demolishes everything we're all its course are fully loaded
but it isn't a great value if you're running meta shape or reality capture
since depending on the situation those programs don't utilize all threads
honestly if these results show anything it's how the 3950X is a crazy goodbye if
you can find one now switching to a compiler and things start to go real
sideways fully 10980XE it might edge out the 3950X but there's no way it's
worth $250 more it then goes to lose in handbrake transcoding and even premiere
pro the only convincing win here is our Adobe Transco test which seems to really
favour Intel CPU architecture right now I have to wonder if that's just a matter
of lacking optimizations on Adobe's part where then quickly back to reality in
resolve where the 1090XE does add Java threadedripper 3960X but it also
gets beat by the cheaper 3950X and in Autodesk Maya yeah it gets tanks like
no one's business moving on to gaming and I'll just let
these run through since 10980XE basically performs exactly the same as
our 9980XE there are different times when each one but those were well
in margin of error more importantly the 3950X actually wins in a bunch of cases
yep that's right Intel can't even claim to
have superior gaming performance anymore it's really amazing to see how far amy
has come now while this might look like any other
chart explains a lot it looks like the updated power
consumption test proves that our 9980X is actually quite power-hungry that
actually makes me wonder if a more efficient sample would have led to it
matching the 10980XE's performance in some cases it goes to show you these
CPUs are literally clones of one another all right so I think I'm gonna start
this conclusion with something that should be obvious by now the tenant ATX
C's main challenge is its price point especially in a competitive market until
was able to shave 50% off of the 1988 C's price point and add a little bit
performance to it but it's just not enough
the Ryzen 9 3950X which costs hundreds less eats this thing for
breakfast AMD is just so dominant guys period I think the biggest problem with
cascade Lake X is its platform because Intel's high-end desktop market used to
target gamers who ended up using dual GP configurations that can take advantage
of those two full x16 slots or people who might end up using all those
processing threads but now things are different
both Nvidia and AMD are moving away from dual GP support so a good chunk of
Intel's customers are better off buying AMD's x570 or z390 me X299 doesn't
even feel like a hind motherboard anymore it comes with a lot of
compromises you're not getting things like PCI Gen 4 10g ethernet USB 3.2 2x2
it's just it's a dead end motherboard I mean if you're building a new system
right now you should definitely stay away from X299 and more importantly
cascade Lake X but if you look at cascade Lake X from another perspective this
could be an interesting drop-in upgrade solution say for instance you bought
yourself a 7900X for a $1,000 and right now spanning the exact same money would get
you eight physical cores and more threads but you don't have to worry
about switching ecosystems or platforms it's simply the same motherboard because
it's still using the same X tune and platform so I think that's a pretty big
deal for businesses or for you just don't want to spend a lot of
time dealing with that entire switch but if you are thinking about building a
brand new system right now you should totally avoid extremely nine and Cascade
Lake X because they're just far better options in the market right now
so that's it for me guys thank you so much for watching make sure to check out
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I mean Burt with Hardware Canucks signing off and I'll talk to you guys in the next
one