Reviews Intel Core i9-7980XE Review

Kind of surprised the extra eight cores compared to the 7900X didn't reduce the OC potential by a bigger margin.

Anyway, no doubt its a sexy cpu, but at some point financial responsibility has to kick in and £2k for a desktop CPU is far beyond that point for me.

 

As regards pricing, nay chance - doesn't exactly drop into the average consumer bang per buck category considering the current financial climate...

This is what tickled me most

 

Thank you AMD. They have shaken up the market and got Intel 'trying' again.

 

That price though...

Thing is, a year ago this would have been a "good value" option since the only real comparison would have been against 18 core xeons, which were significantly more costly. But now, you're paying an extra £1k for the higher clocks and two extra cores. Your entire threadripper system could cost the same as the CPU alone here, which raises the point that you could feasibly build two threadripper systems for the same case, which for several of the multi-threaded workloads would destroy this one. Obviously that wouln't work in every scenario but it's certainly very possible if doing say render work, which is very easy to distribute reliably across more than one system.

IMO this is the point where having a dual socket threadripper (I'm not counting EPYC here) would be an amazing prospect.

This i9 is quite a technical achievement, but the pricing is just too far off, plus you get fewer PCIe lanes.

 

So the RRP has jumped £200. That explains why my mate can't find one for less than 2300 Euro.

I'd like to see those dummy dies ditched off and a 24/32c TR now

 

Not going to happen, rumours and vague promises point to Zen refresh next year with higher clocks, then as soon as someone is capable of manufacturing it, Zen 2 die shrink with doubled cores per module.

 

Hmm for the price of that CPU, someone could buy the EPYC 7401P and motherboard for around £1400.
Or 2 EPYC 7301 and motherboard for less than £2000

 

Intel just engaged Beast mode

 

To put it into perspective in terms of bang per buck -

Intel Core i9-7900X 10-core = $963 ($96.30 per core)
Intel Core i9-7980XE 18-core = $1999 ($111.05 per core)

AMD Threadripper 1950X 16-core = $999 ($62.44 per core)

I'll say no more.

 

Talking about bang per buck and then just listing price per core seems a little silly as it's not just how many cores you get for your money, it's also about what those cores can do each. Otherwise, we'd be as well to include the following in your comparison:

Intel Celeron G3930 2-core = £34.99 (£17.50 per core)

 

Just as listing a non HEDT CPU and twisting what is a genuine price comparison - adult behaviour or fan boy moronic behaviour I beg to ask??

You'd actually buy an i9-7900X 10 core over a Threadripper 1950X 16 core would you?

Grow up

 

Yes. But that's because I have a x299 board gathering dust in the next room. If i had to factor in the purchase of a motherboard, then probably not.

 

Which was exactly my point, secondly by time memory prices drop at the end of next year Intel will no doubt have released yet another revision of the existing chipset.

 

On a new socket, don't forget. Can't use the same socket... even though it's the same socket. Logic, Intel. Money grabbing **** bags.

 

Even if it is the same socket, compatability is not guaranteed.

 

That's exactly what I mean.

LGA 115* is all the same socket, as is LGA 2011 through 2066. They're all the same with different pin outputs.

 

He has a valid point about IPC and you tell him to grow up. Real mature on your part.
Yes, actually I'd still get the 7900X. I dont need 16 cores, 10 is plenty - even my 8 are plenty, and I'd take higher clock speeds and OC potential for single threaded throughput. Latency is important not the numbers game. If you spend a lot of time in CPU intensive apps, then sure the 1950X is ideal, but most of us use them for gaming and pissing about on the internet. You dont need 16 cores for that, it's pure willytug material.

 

IPC wasn't even mentioned in all fairness Rich - if your talking about Gaming and pissing about on the Internet being there sole use I'd not touch either or a HEDT platform.

Gaming in the here and now doesn't rely so heavily apon CPU cores in terms of numbers (the argument for IPC, overclocking and latency kicks in there), rather above a certain threshold resolution it's all about the GPU grunt.

 

Nothing was mentioned. You just listed price per core without any other reasoning. He had a valid point there's other attributes.