Intel Core i9-7980xe

I am. Still deciding between OC Formula and Apex. I've been spamming Amazon search function for days lol.
 
I am. Still deciding between OC Formula and Apex. I've been spamming Amazon search function for days lol.

I've read it comes out on 9/25. I was planning to get it as well. I've been exclusively using Macbook Pro since 2012, so I figure it would be fun to play with the latest and greatest being on PC again after being 100% Apple for the past several years.
 
Yeah but I want to make sure I'm one of the first on the list after the 7820x preorder mess. The first batch were sold out and took over a month to ship to me.
 
Yeah but I want to make sure I'm one of the first on the list after the 7820x preorder mess. The first batch were sold out and took over a month to ship to me.

It’s a little painful that the CPU is the last piece I’m waiting for. I have absolutely every other piece I need.

Also, I'm assuming/hoping this is a mistake on PC Part Picker - "Intel - Core i9-7920X 2.9GHz 12-Core Processor and Asus - ROG RAMPAGE VI EXTREME EATX LGA2066 Motherboard are not compatible" because if the 7920 has issues, I'm sure the 7980xe would as well.
 
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Um of course it will be warm if you run it full throttle all of the time, but you don't have to. Kind of a dumb thing to say. It's like saying a Bughatti is a gas hog because it only gets 6 mpg while going 230 mph.
 
165W
18 cores
Max turbo speed of 4.4Ghz?

It's gonna be a WEE bit on the warm side...

Countless other parts uses more power.

What uses more power, 7700K+GTX1080TI, 7980XE+GTX1080 or a single Vega 64 LC :p
 
I was if it were about $500 less. There is nothing on earth for me that can justify that kind of Price... 2000 dollars. I dont care what you say. I am not debt free and until that day I have no bidness spending that much on a chip.

I am happy with my Threadripper, but if INtel were to drop the price of the 7980 I would absolutely sell my 1950x and get it instead. Its just at the point of too much money. Intel would kill it even more if they would sell them for $500 less.
 
Um of course it will be warm if you run it full throttle all of the time, but you don't have to. Kind of a dumb thing to say. It's like saying a Bughatti is a gas hog because it only gets 6 mpg while going 230 mph.

This literally made me LOL. I wonder if that 6 mpg is accurate. I can’t image it would be high at full speed.
 
The Veyron gets 8mpg in the city and at top speed it gets 3mpg (1.4 gallons a minute)

The new Chiron gets a sizable 12% increase in fuel economy, 9mpg.

Point still stands though. :)
 
I wonder when we’ll be able to actually get these. It’s getting painful staring at my stack of parts waiting for this final piece.
 
Um of course it will be warm if you run it full throttle all of the time, but you don't have to. Kind of a dumb thing to say. It's like saying a Bughatti is a gas hog because it only gets 6 mpg while going 230 mph.

Yes. Because people who buy chips like this let them sit idle 99% of the time and are interested only in e-peen.
 
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And just so I'm clear here. I'm not trying to detract from the chip. Just saying that it's a beefy chip that's gonna run warm when used seriously.
 
Well, pretty close actually! How often is your pc doing serious work compared to idle/browsing/video playback? Why would they be so different? 1% of a day is about 15 minutes. You could do quite a lot with this chip in that time and get an extra 30 min of pork each day in the time savings.
 
Anyone planning on getting one of these? Looks like a beast.

Fuck no. At $2,000 Intel can keep it. I'm not what you'd call frugal about purchasing computer hardware as someone who has run SLI'ed Titan X's and even had four GPU's in his machine at several points over the last few years. I've also purchased several Extreme Edition CPU's and even I have to draw the line at this point. I thought the Core i7 6950X's introductory price was bullshit at $1,700 and this CPU is worse. I don't like Intel's latest trend of upping the highest end CPU offering's price point by hundreds of dollars each generation. I'm voting against that crap with my wallet. I understand that this CPU is down right cheap compared to last generation's Xeon CPU's with 18 cores and 36 threads. I get that, but Extreme Edition CPU'sand Xeon's are intended for very different markets.

Expanding on my thoughts, I primarily play games and only occasionally do things which would necessitate more than 8 CPU cores and threads such as encoding. As a gaming CPU, the Core i9 7980XE is not worth the price increase over the Core i9 7900X. For productivity, I can see the appeal but I'd be tempted to go with Threadripper because it doesn't lock me out of bootable M.2 NVMe RAID arrays with a separate paywall and I can get 16 cores and 32 threads for half the price. I doubt this chip will offer double the performance of an overclocked Threadripper chip.
 
Fuck no. At $2,000 Intel can keep it. I'm not what you'd call frugal about purchasing computer hardware as someone who has run SLI'ed Titan X's and even had four GPU's in his machine at several points over the last few years. I've also purchased several Extreme Edition CPU's and even I have to draw the line at this point. I thought the Core i7 6950X's introductory price was bullshit at $1,700 and this CPU is worse. I don't like Intel's latest trend of upping the highest end CPU offering's price point by hundreds of dollars each generation. I'm voting against that crap with my wallet. I understand that this CPU is down right cheap compared to last generation's Xeon CPU's with 18 cores and 36 threads. I get that, but Extreme Edition CPU'sand Xeon's are intended for very different markets.

Expanding on my thoughts, I primarily play games and only occasionally do things which would necessitate more than 8 CPU cores and threads such as encoding. As a gaming CPU, the Core i9 7980XE is not worth the price increase over the Core i9 7900X. For productivity, I can see the appeal but I'd be tempted to go with Threadripper because it doesn't lock me out of bootable M.2 NVMe RAID arrays with a separate paywall and I can get 16 cores and 32 threads for half the price. I doubt this chip will offer double the performance of an overclocked Threadripper chip.
Wouldn't an unlocked Xeon be amazing? I'm really looking forward to see if the larger surface and possible better silicon will yield better performance.

As for 10 cores or 18. I don't think I need it. But, its been 7 years since I last made a build, and seing the cost of everything, spending $1000 or $2000 on the cpu may not matter all that much.
 
I'd be more inclined to spend 2K on a processor given how long I tend to keep them. However, my procesor longevity is mostly due to the nature of the HEDT market while Intel had no competition. My X99 system is over three years old. I'm getting the itch to upgrade, but now we have Threadripper and Intel's X299. I don't care for the VROC license key nonsense and Intel's rapid price increases for it's top end consumer CPU but I might do it anyway if I was sure it would be top dog or close to it for the time my 5960X has been. With the market heating up, and Intel panicking with their shotgun processor approach, throwing chips out there and AMD's Ryzen successor due out by the end of that period, I'm not inclined to spend that much on a chip now or in the near future.
 
Intel needs to rethink the gimping of ECC from the HEDT platform, and and the same time, locking the multipliers on the xeons. For those reasons, Intel really doesn't sell something directly comparable to TR.
I would imagine most people who can justify spending 2k on a proc, would also want or need ECC as their work would be pretty important.
 
I'd be more inclined to spend 2K on a processor given how long I tend to keep them. However, my procesor longevity is mostly due to the nature of the HEDT market while Intel had no competition. My X99 system is over three years old. I'm getting the itch to upgrade, but now we have Threadripper and Intel's X299. I don't care for the VROC license key nonsense and Intel's rapid price increases for it's top end consumer CPU but I might do it anyway if I was sure it would be top dog or close to it for the time my 5960X has been. With the market heating up, and Intel panicking with their shotgun processor approach, throwing chips out there and AMD's Ryzen successor due out by the end of that period, I'm not inclined to spend that much on a chip now or in the near future.

Yeah 2k is just retarded for a chip that probably wont game as well as an 8600k CLake which im gonna buy in the next couple weeks.

We already know its not a true wk station cpu. So it really just boils doen to being an overpriced slug of ePeen. I would never recommend x299 to a client. The lack of ecc killed it right out of the gate for business critical operations.
 
X299 is a regression from X99 in a lot of ways, lost any xeons and respectively ECC (both unbuffered and registered) options for memory. You can actually have more cores on X99 than X299 will probably ever see :) XCC going to be 3467 only for sure.

Lost unlocked 1P xeons in the middle of X99,. Lost yet more lanes at the normal price points as well, they doubled down on the BS segmenting that started with X99.

Added the hilarious fanboytard-only desktop cpu "options" to pay $100 more for absolutely nothing instead of putting it towards gpu or cooler or hookers n blow.

PS how many years until we find out what a bizzare RFID chip on your cpu can actually do, a la AMT broken code aka backdoor 8 years later. (inside a frickin metal case? the engineer side of me screams WHY IS THIS HERE!)
 
Oh so Threadripper who still remains the current HEDT king is not a competition? The 7980xe is under NDA and any benchmark is unofficial thus rendering them irrelevant until they are official. I think you should reconsider what you define as Intel having no hedt competiton.

I never said Threadripper wasn't competition did I? I was speaking of my processor buying habits and platform longevity when Intel DIDN'T have any competition. That word being the key in my post. I don't think I need to reconsider anything. Also, if you read my thoughts on AMD's X399 platform on the forums, you'd know I'm a huge fan of the platform and Threadripper itself. Intel's faster due to the IPC advantage with equal cores, but it's current pricing model is appalling and I think AMD has more to offer the consumer in terms of bang for your buck even if/when the performance favors Intel. Features and not having additional paywalls to those features is why I say this.

That one word you seemed to have missed is key.

For 1. X299 does not suppprt ECC. 2. It may have an 18 core part coming but it is just a really high core count gaming chip to be honest. 3. 44 pcie lanes max on the highest tier of the line. Amd has 64. Amd supports ECC.

I agree. I also think that it's a stupid chip at that price because it's not going to be any faster in games than the existing Core i9 7900X. AMD has 60 usable PCIe lanes, not 64. 4x PCIe lanes are reserved for the connection to the PCH. 8 additional lanes are provided at the PCH. Intel has 44 dedicated PCI lanes and uses it's DMI 3.0 link to the PCH. AMD has more, but everything on the PCH is only PCIe 2.0.

Getting back to PCIe and the platform, I think Intel's still got advantages over AMD. ECC support is something people read about and think they need, but in reality I still see servers crash or BSOD every week which are equipped with ECC RAM. It doesn't make PC's immune to errors. I've seen systems that were just as stable as anything with ECC that don't have it. I'm not saying it doesn't have it's place, but on a desktop machine, even a high end one I think this support and its importance is over estimated. AMD has M.2 ports which access PCIe lanes on the CPU directly, but it's limited. Far more limited than Intel is. VROC allows for up to 20 NVMe devices to be used via the CPU's PCIe lanes. Of course Intel has fewer PCIe lanes and it looks like M.2 is still trapped behind the PCH unless you use M.2 cards via the expansion slots by way of adapters. However, you correctly point out that Intel las AMD on total lanes and VROC has licensing bullshit surrounding it that I don't like.

To be a workstation you need to meet a few defining criteria and high core counts are not enough to define a workstation.

I am aware of this.

Surely Threadripper is a huge competition for HEDT otherwise Intel would have never even release with such a massive kneejerk reaction, the x299 platform the way it was rocket launched.

No kidding, I've said as much. Again, there is that one word you missed which makes all the difference.

With Zen 2 cores coming online next year on a smaller process you can bet competition is back in full swing.

My only reason for mentioning this is in talking about longevity. I would go Intel only for it being the absolute fastest thing on the market, except it's longevity is in question BECAUSE AMD is being so competitive right now and Ryzen / Zen +, 2, or whatever it's called will be due in the middle of my usual upgrade cycle for CPU's. The market hasn't been this hot in years and I think now is a bad time to drop 2k on a CPU. I don't think it's good enough to warrant that, nor will it be top dog for long enough to justify the cash for it.

I am excited for the 18 core if only it costed less. Its a great gaming chip but with lack of ECC and with moral fortitude I WOULD NEVER recommend the platform to a business critical client. AMD wins here.

This is where I disagree, business customers are the only place I would suggest should go for the 18 core CPU. I think it's stupid that Intel doesn't offer ECC support, but again I think people on these forums overstate it's importance. ECC RAM is not a magic bullet that makes systems that much more reliable. I get why people think that reading about it on Wikipedia and shit, but in the real world, I've seen it make little difference in workstations. Again I've seen ECC equipped systems that crash all the time and regular boxes without it that don't crash for anything. If they need the absolute performance, aren't interested in overclocking and need a better and more flexible NVMe and storage subsystem, Intel's where it's at. Businesses can write off the cost of the CPU and 1k on a high end build is usually not a deal breaker unless they need to procure lots of them. Even then, you might still be able to sell them on it for other reasons.

Where AMD fucked up, was in it's platform. Not it's CPU. AMD's got PCIe lanes but that's all it's got going for it over X299. X299 offers a better feature set and better performance. I've tested this myself, side by side. AMD's SATA performance is weaker and less flexible. Even with the latest AGESA code, AMD still lags behind Intel in SATA performance. It's array controls for SATA don't support the same amount of stripe sizes or RAID levels. I've had trouble installing to SATA volumes on AMD TR4 boards with the controller in RAID mode TWICE now. Next, is M.2. It's no secret that M.2 has taken the storage world by storm. AMD did good on paper allowing for three devices to connect directly to the CPU. That's fantastic. They fucked up by not releasing RAID support or bootable RAID support with the platform. Supposedly this happens on the 25th of this month.

Intel fucked this up too as VROC is technically unreleased and you need the license key to go with it. However, Intel again has a more flexible RAID configuration than AMD does and isn't limited to three devices. It can handle up to 20 NVMe devices and multiple arrays. So, Intel has better IPC performance, better BIOS code, better memory compatibility, and a more flexible platform. These are the things that businesses often care about in a perormance oriented build. They also need hardware that's certified for certain applications which is another area where AMD will lag Intel. Applications like Video Toasters, ProTools, AutoDesk products, 3D Studio Max, and Lightwave which sometimes have proprietary hardware paired with them or not, will see certification of Intel's platform before AMD's. This isn't even the fault of AMD, but rather a matter of choice for these companies who will certify on the dominant platforms first. This isn't a big deal for consumers, but fpr prosumers and professional content creators this can be a big deal. If you want support on the above software without a supported platform you are on your own.

And Dan I know your a gamer at heart and you buy Intel for the IPC. But you cant sit there and suggest Intel has no competition in the HEDT market..... anymore. Times have changed again.

For the last time, I didn't fucking suggest that. Yes, I'm a gamer but I'm a long time IT professional and system builder. I do not only think of gaming performance. Intel has competition as AMD offers a lot more for the money than Intel does. However, Intel has the processor which is ultimately the fastest. There are pros and cons to each and I'm working on comparing these in a future article in more depth. For my money I'd likely go AMD and probably will. I'm not going to pay 2k for a processor that's going to be out dated more quickly than we have seen in recent years BECAUSE AMD is competitive again.
 
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X299 is a regression from X99 in a lot of ways, lost any xeons and respectively ECC (both unbuffered and registered) options for memory. You can actually have more cores on X99 than X299 will probably ever see :) XCC going to be 3467 only for sure.

Lost unlocked 1P xeons in the middle of X99,. Lost yet more lanes at the normal price points as well, they doubled down on the BS segmenting that started with X99.

Added the hilarious fanboytard-only desktop cpu "options" to pay $100 more for absolutely nothing instead of putting it towards gpu or cooler or hookers n blow.

PS how many years until we find out what a bizzare RFID chip on your cpu can actually do, a la AMT broken code aka backdoor 8 years later. (inside a frickin metal case? the engineer side of me screams WHY IS THIS HERE!)

X299 isn't really a regression as far as the platform goes. It's a regression only due to what Intel has made available for it that makes it a regression. The deal with Xeons is something I can agree with. Most X99 motherboards didn't support ECC RAM if I recall correctly. In fact, many boards that showed Xeon compatibility still didn't show ECC compatibility as a feature. GIGABYTE's X99 Designaire shows registered memory support and no ECC support just like X299. However, X299 did not lose support for registered RAM. According to GIGABYTE website, all the X299 boards I've looked at show support for up to 512GB of RAM if you use registered DIMMs. Intel did fuck up with it's processor lineup in my opinion. You are boxed into a $1,000 dollar minimum CPU just to fully utilize X299. Without Skylake-X, you don't get VROC. Without spending a grand, you don't get access to all the platforms PCIe lanes.
 
I never said Threadripper wasn't competition did I? I was speaking of my processor buying habits and platform longevity when Intel DIDN'T have any competition. That word being the key in my post. I don't think I need to reconsider anything. Also, if you read my thoughts on AMD's X399 platform on the forums, you'd know I'm a huge fan of the platform and Threadripper itself. Intel's faster due to the IPC advantage with equal cores, but it's current pricing model is appalling and I think AMD has more to offer the consumer in terms of bang for your buck even if/when the performance favors Intel. Features and not having additional paywalls to those features is why I say this.

That one word you seemed to have missed is key.



I agree. I also think that it's a stupid chip at that price because it's not going to be any faster in games than the existing Core i9 7900X. AMD has 60 usable PCIe lanes, not 64. 4x PCIe lanes are reserved for the connection to the PCH. 8 additional lanes are provided at the PCH. Intel has 44 dedicated PCI lanes and uses it's DMI 3.0 link to the PCH. AMD has more, but everything on the PCH is only PCIe 2.0.

Getting back to PCIe and the platform, I think Intel's still got advantages over AMD. ECC support is something people read about and think they need, but in reality I still see servers crash or BSOD every week which are equipped with ECC RAM. It doesn't make PC's immune to errors. I've seen systems that were just as stable as anything with ECC that don't have it. I'm not saying it doesn't have it's place, but on a desktop machine, even a high end one I think this support and its importance is over estimated. AMD has M.2 ports which access PCIe lanes on the CPU directly, but it's limited. Far more limited than Intel is. VROC allows for up to 20 NVMe devices to be mapped to the CPU's PCIe lanes. However, you correctly point out that Intel las AMD on total lanes and VROC has licensing bullshit surrounding it that I don't like.



I am aware of this.



No kidding, I've said as much. Again, there is that one word you missed which makes all the difference.



My only reason for mentioning this is in talking about longevity. I would go Intel only for it being the absolute fastest thing on the market, except it's longevity is in question BECAUSE AMD is being so competitive right now and Ryzen / Zen +, 2, or whatever it's called will be due in the middle of my usual upgrade cycle for CPU's. The market hasn't been this hot in years and I think now is a bad time to drop 2k on a CPU. I don't think it's good enough to warrant that, nor will it be top dog for long enough to justify the cash for it.



This is where I disagree, business customers are the only place I would suggest should go for the 18 core CPU. I think it's stupid that Intel doesn't offer ECC support, but again I think people on these forums overstate it's importance. ECC RAM is not a magic bullet that makes systems that much more reliable. I get why people think that reading about it on Wikipedia and shit, but in the real world, I've seen it make little difference in workstations. Again I've seen ECC equipped systems that crash all the time and regular boxes without it that don't crash for anything. If they need the absolute performance, aren't interested in overclocking and need a better and more flexible NVMe and storage subsystem, Intel's where it's at. Businesses can write off the cost of the CPU and 1k on a high end build is usually not a deal breaker unless they need to procure lots of them. Even then, you might still be able to sell them on it for other reasons.

Where AMD fucked up, was in it's platform. Not it's CPU. AMD's got PCIe lanes but that's all it's got going for it over X299. X299 offers a better feature set and better performance. I've tested this myself, side by side. AMD's SATA performance is weaker and less flexible. Even with the latest AGESA code, AMD still lags behind Intel in SATA performance. It's array controls for SATA don't support the same amount of stripe sizes or RAID levels. I've had trouble installing to SATA volumes on AMD TR4 boards with the controller in RAID mode TWICE now. Next, is M.2. It's no secret that M.2 has taken the storage world by storm. AMD did good on paper allowing for three devices to connect directly to the CPU. That's fantastic. They fucked up by not releasing RAID support or bootable RAID support with the platform. Supposedly this happens on the 25th of this month.

Intel fucked this up too as VROC is technically unreleased and you need the license key to go with it. However, Intel again has a more flexible RAID configuration than AMD does and isn't limited to three devices. It can handle up to 20 NVMe devices and multiple arrays. So, Intel has better IPC performance, better BIOS code, better memory compatibility, and a more flexible platform. These are the things that businesses often care about in a perormance oriented build. They also need hardware that's certified for certain applications which is another area where AMD will lag Intel. Applications like Video Toasters, ProTools, AutoDesk products, 3D Studio Max, and Lightwave which sometimes have proprietary hardware paired with them or not, will see certification of Intel's platform before AMD's. This isn't even the fault of AMD, but rather a matter of choice for these companies who will certify on the dominant platforms first. This isn't a big deal for consumers, but fpr prosumers and professional content creators this can be a big deal. If you want support on the above software without a supported platform you are on your own.



For the last time, I didn't fucking suggest that. Yes, I'm a gamer but I'm a long time IT professional and system builder. I do not only think of gaming performance. Intel has competition as AMD offers a lot more for the money than Intel does. However, Intel has the processor which is ultimately the fastest. There are pros and cons to each and I'm working on comparing these in a future article in more depth. For my money I'd likely go AMD and probably will. I'm not going to pay 2k for a processor that's going to be out dated more quickly than we have seen in recent years BECAUSE AMD is competitive again.


Uggh Dan, Can you delete this my friend. I reread your post with less haste and deleted everything you are responding too before you actually responded. The timing is really bad here. THere is no reason to respond to what I said. After re-reading in a better spot I made a 1000% mistake on replying to your post. You clearly were writing this massive response to me without knowing I realized my mistake and deleted the post.

Please disregard EVERYTHING I said. Now everyone is going to read this and be crazy confused.

To everyone reading Dan's response to me .... dont worry about what he quoted me saying. I deleted before he made this reply but he didn't catch in time. I made a 100% human mistake and hastily replied.

Sorry so much for this Dan. We can clear the forum from confusion if you delete your response to my long deleted post. I wil delete this as well once you read it haha ...

Man its so easy to derp a conversation up with forum text because of delays in when and how people read things. Again my bad literally. Everything you said I already knew about you. I just really got something crossed with another person somewhere in my response and it really made me post a confusing claim.
 
Like for real everyone I made a reading mistake and replied in the wrong context. Dan is in the right and I am sorry I subjected you guys to his long arduous defensive wall of text hahaha... Love you Dan! My bad really.
 
Like for real everyone I made a reading mistake and replied in the wrong context. Dan is in the right and I am sorry I subjected you guys to his long arduous defensive wall of text hahaha... Love you Dan! My bad really.

Ahh happens to the best of us, Dan misread one of my posts a few days ago. Sometimes when you read a message quickly it's easy to misplace a word or two.
 
It seems like a pointless chip to me. And a tremendously poor value.

According to its frequency behavior, it is going to perform worse than a 7940X. No matter how many cores are used, its boost clocks is at least 100 MHz lower than a 7940X's boost clocks:

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-7940x
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-7980xe

7980XE's base speed is 500 MHz lower than the 14-core. When you operate at 14 cores, the 7980XE boosts 300 MHz lower than the 7940X when all 14 of the 7940X's cores are used.

Then when you start using those last four cores on the 7980XE your clocks drop all the way down to 3400 MHz. So it's really not like you're getting an extra four cores' worth of performance. Maybe three more cores worth of performance, at best. All for an extra $600. And any time you use less than 15 cores, the chip will be inferior to a 7940X.

I foresee many scenarios in which I want to run some applications with fewer cores than 18, and the 7940X's better clockspeeds will come in handy for that. It should perform a little bit better for gaming and emulation than a 7980XE.

And let's be honest, the entire reason for buying into the Core i9 platform is so we can have most of the benefits of a server CPU and do a fair bit of gaming as well and not have to take a big hit in gaming performance like you would with a normal server CPU. Core i7s are too balanced toward the gaming side and pretty useless for heavy multithreaded workloads and Xeons are too crippled by lower clockspeeds to be good for gaming, so Core i9s are almost the best of both worlds in one chip. This is Threadripper's biggest problem unfortunately. It is poor for gaming and emulation, and there are server chips which yield superior performance to it, so it's not a good gaming chip and it's not the best server chip for the price either.

As for why I feel 7940X is the best value of the Core i9 lineup? Well, if you compare it to the 7900X, it has identical clockspeed at every core level as a 7900X all the way up to 12 cores. So it is an identical CPU to the 7900X when you are only using 10 cores. It has the same clockspeed as 10 cores on a 7900X when you use 12 of its cores. So with 12 cores used, the 7940X is 20% faster than a 7900X. When you use 14 of its cores, it does drop a little, to 3,800 MHz, but it is still very respectable. So maybe not exactly 40% faster than a 7900X, but ~35%. An extra $400 for close to 40% more performance over a 7900X is reasonable enough, but as far as the 7980XE goes, an extra $600 for not even 25% more performance than a 7940X, and *only* when you use applications that use more than 14 cores do you start to see any of this minimal benefit? Yeah, I'll pass on that proposition.

As far as the 7920X and the 7960X go, their boost clock speeds are also weirdly gimped; unlike the 7940X which boosts to 4 GHz all the way up to 12 cores in use, the 7920X drops down to a boost of 3.8 GHz after 8 cores are used, and so does 7960X. So just like the 7920X and 7980XE, it is actually inferior to an i9 7900X when 10 or less of its cores are used. 7940X is the only one that matches the i9 7900X at 10 cores or less.
 
It seems like a pointless chip to me. And a tremendously poor value.

According to its frequency behavior, it is going to perform worse than a 7940X. No matter how many cores are used, its boost clocks is at least 100 MHz lower than a 7940X's boost clocks:

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-7940x
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-7980xe

7980XE's base speed is 500 MHz lower than the 14-core. When you operate at 14 cores, the 7980XE boosts 300 MHz lower than the 7940X when all 14 of the 7940X's cores are used.

Then when you start using those last four cores on the 7980XE your clocks drop all the way down to 3400 MHz. So it's really not like you're getting an extra four cores' worth of performance. Maybe three more cores worth of performance, at best. All for an extra $600. And any time you use less than 15 cores, the chip will be inferior to a 7940X.

I foresee many scenarios in which I want to run some applications with fewer cores than 18, and the 7940X's better clockspeeds will come in handy for that. It should perform a little bit better for gaming and emulation than a 7980XE.

And let's be honest, the entire reason for buying into the Core i9 platform is so we can have most of the benefits of a server CPU and do a fair bit of gaming as well and not have to take a big hit in gaming performance like you would with a normal server CPU. Core i7s are too balanced toward the gaming side and pretty useless for heavy multithreaded workloads and Xeons are too crippled by lower clockspeeds to be good for gaming, so Core i9s are almost the best of both worlds in one chip. This is Threadripper's biggest problem unfortunately. It is poor for gaming and emulation, and there are server chips which yield superior performance to it, so it's not a good gaming chip and it's not the best server chip for the price either.

As for why I feel 7940X is the best value of the Core i9 lineup? Well, if you compare it to the 7900X, it has identical clockspeed at every core level as a 7900X all the way up to 12 cores. So it is an identical CPU to the 7900X when you are only using 10 cores. It has the same clockspeed as 10 cores on a 7900X when you use 12 of its cores. So with 12 cores used, the 7940X is 20% faster than a 7900X. When you use 14 of its cores, it does drop a little, to 3,800 MHz, but it is still very respectable. So maybe not exactly 40% faster than a 7900X, but ~35%. An extra $400 for close to 40% more performance over a 7900X is reasonable enough, but as far as the 7980XE goes, an extra $600 for not even 25% more performance than a 7940X, and *only* when you use applications that use more than 14 cores do you start to see any of this minimal benefit? Yeah, I'll pass on that proposition.

As far as the 7920X and the 7960X go, their boost clock speeds are also weirdly gimped; unlike the 7940X which boosts to 4 GHz all the way up to 12 cores in use, the 7920X drops down to a boost of 3.8 GHz after 8 cores are used, and so does 7960X. So just like the 7920X and 7980XE, it is actually inferior to an i9 7900X when 10 or less of its cores are used. 7940X is the only one that matches the i9 7900X at 10 cores or less.

Is all of this assuming stock clocks? Buying a chip like the 7980xe and not overclocking it seems crazy to me.
 
I’d rather buy the low end of W Xeon and know that I can grab one of these guys the day I actually need it.
 
Is all of this assuming stock clocks? Buying a chip like the 7980xe and not overclocking it seems crazy to me.

Stock clocks are indicative of how a manufacturer anticipates a chip being able to overclock.

For as much as you could overclock a 7980XE, you ought to be able to overclock a 7940X a bit more, so proportionally the two chips should have performance levels that, when overclocked, are similar to the performance discrepancy between the two when they are operating at their stock clocks.
 
Stock clocks are indicative of how a manufacturer anticipates a chip being able to overclock.

For as much as you could overclock a 7980XE, you ought to be able to overclock a 7940X a bit more, so proportionally the two chips should have performance levels that, when overclocked, are similar to the performance discrepancy between the two when they are operating at their stock clocks.
I understand your logic, but this is not what has been observed in the released Sky-X chips and I would be very surprised if it is the case in the 7940x 7980xe comparison. I do not beleive the 7940x will overclock 300MHz-500MHz higher than the 7980xe.
 
The 7820x definitely clocks higher than the 7900x. Those are both LCC chips. The same will most likely be true for the HCC save the 7920x which seems to be a dud with the lower tdp than the remaining HCC.
 
Spamming F5 be like:
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Intel needs to rethink the gimping of ECC from the HEDT platform, and and the same time, locking the multipliers on the xeons. For those reasons, Intel really doesn't sell something directly comparable to TR.
I would imagine most people who can justify spending 2k on a proc, would also want or need ECC as their work would be pretty important.
If you need ECC you have W Xeon. If you have W Xeon because you need stability from ECC you probably don’t overclock :)
 
7980xe NDA must have just lifted. Videos are hitting youtube in the last 10 minutes. It is officially a beast. Videos of easy 4.6GHz overclocks and Der8auer going 6.0Ghz+...
 
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