Is Intel's X299 Platform Better than the X99? @ [H]

For me specifically, I was looking at the compile benchmarks posted on a couple of Threadripper reviews I read. I'm told that the Linux compile segfaults on Ryzen don't affect TR, which is good but it concerns me a little.
I also work with a number of online based tools so I'm looking at some JS benchmarks - I just need stability on this one really but it's disappointing nonetheless.
Both stuff have variable threading, that's predominantly my usage so that's why I care about balance.

As a software developer those are both very big concerns for me. If X299 had ECC I would easily take a 10C i9 over the 16C TR (even though the X399 platform is better than the X299 platform) however it does not so I am going to purchase the TR sometime in the future (most likely winter since I really don't have the time now).
 
As a software developer those are both very big concerns for me. If X299 had ECC I would easily take a 10C i9 over the 16C TR (even though the X399 platform is better than the X299 platform) however it does not so I am going to purchase the TR sometime in the future (most likely winter since I really don't have the time now).

This reminds me: we are able to stick Xeons on our old HEDT boards, at least with X58 this is possible (not sure about the platforms that followed). Cheap used Xeons gave X58 a fresh breath of life from corporate server upgrade cycles.
This is no longer possible with X299 which is another regression on my list.
 
Great analysis Dan_D - really ties a lot together

I'm looking at X299 as bringing HEDT to parity with Consumer line, rather than leaping past the Consumer stuff (as we had come to expect in X58 and X79 days).

I mean, if I actually utilize 6+ CPU cores or GPUs more than 40% of the hours in a day, I guess it makes sense to buy them instead of doing work in the cloud. I mean a Ferrari is also an underutilized asset, and a decked out workstation is a heck of a lot more affordable as underutilized cool toys go, but there's a lot to be said for renting a boat or Ferrari vs. owning

However, if I had personal needs or a small workgroup driving utilization, I'd be inclined to throw dual Xeon / GPU machines in another room, rather than under my desk. DMI 3.0 has made 10gig (or IB I guess) viable in cheap Consumer systems for a while now, and left me perplexed at the persistence of the HEDT niche. Admittedly, I don't literally manage IT for a group of content creators or R&D types, so if actually getting work done this way is a pipe dream, I'm open to being schooled.

Seems the bulk of platform R&D is going into Mobile and Datacenter, and probably that's where it should be?

Back when I went X58, it allowed me to consolidate a bunch of separate storage systems, video gear, etc, and only maintain 1 system (and some VMs). Nothing in Consumer line had the PCIe lanes, memory capacity, or core count, but for the past few years I've tolerated boot time and M.2 envy. I've basically been no further than a vid card upgrade away from high-end (not that I need to preach to this crowd about the merits of X58 - X99), but there was no reason to upgrade my platform. Now I'm looking at CFL on the Consumer side, and finally have something to get excited about. +good on AMD for surprising us all and lighting things up.

My $0.02 on HEDT is that for it to remain relevant, it needs to leapfrog, not just come to parity. If a vendor can provide something I can't get from Cloud, the Server Room, or Consumer, then I'll jump on that differentiator and use it where appropriate. I'm just not sure the market has a need for HEDT without that
 
Good article.

I'm eyeing an upgrade to Threadripper, not in any rush though. Mainly concerned about platform stablity, I can't risk having a bunch of issues as I primarily use my rig for work. The X99 Deluxe board I have gave me some issues initially, but was fixed with later BIOS updates. Prices also dropped pretty quick on Ryzen and I wonder if the same will happen with Threadripper later in the fall, once the launch frenzy is over.

X299 is not in consideration at all to me, unless the price happens to drop significantly on the 16/18 core. I don't care too much about the lower gaming performance with Threadripper, from what I've seen it would not matter all that much at 4K resolution. Slowly but surely more games are starting to use more cores as well, so I doubt the performance gap will get any worse with future titles.

That being said my 5930K is still holding up extremely well. I certainly don't feel a need to upgrade, even though I could make use of the extra cores with TR it isn't a pressing need, so I may even just hold off until another round of chips hit.
 
This reminds me: we are able to stick Xeons on our old HEDT boards, at least with X58 this is possible (not sure about the platforms that followed). Cheap used Xeons gave X58 a fresh breath of life from corporate server upgrade cycles.
This is no longer possible with X299 which is another regression on my list.
X79 could
X99 could
 
This is what bothers me about X299 and X399, One thermal pasting heat spreaders and the other "almost" in "almost better in every way"

And what happened to Direct X? I thought it was created to stop devs from having to directly access and support hardware like in Dos? And here we are again not supporting all cores or all gpu's or this or that...


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I'd give both X299 and X399 another 6 months and then do another head to head. Maybe chuck in a high end X99 setup to see how far it's all come. I do like older points of reference in a benchmark review and not just the chips from 6 months previous that probably most of us haven't upgraded to yet. The most popular HEDT chip sold was probably the 5820K but hardly any X299/X399 roundup included that in any comparison.

It's always nice if the most people that invested in a platform get to see how it compares rather than just showing the $600+ chips.
 
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The CPU has the memory controller, but there are some physical differences between Z270 and X299, even if their feature sets are nearly the same. X299 supports double the amount of memory and double the amount of memory channels that Z270 does. The Z270 supports passthrough of integrated graphics on CPUs and X299 does not. Furthermore, the package of Z270 is 23x24mm instead of 24x24mm. They are physically different. What drives up X299's cost over Z270 is unknown, but you can't say the chipsets are exactly the same. They are clearly not even if they largely have the same feature sets. There are technical differences, and not understanding those precise differences is not a reason to say the cost of the chipsets isn't justified.
You even say that the CPU has the memory controller, and then contradict that item with the claim that the X299 supports double the memory and memory channels. The chipset has nothing to do with either the memory or the graphics. they don't interconnect at all. Those are entirely handled by the CPU. The CPU is below the CPU on every board, while the graphics and memory are to either side, so the pathing is nowhere near them. The chipset has absolutely nothing to do with either of those features.
 
You even say that the CPU has the memory controller, and then contradict that item with the claim that the X299 supports double the memory and memory channels. The chipset has nothing to do with either the memory or the graphics. they don't interconnect at all. Those are entirely handled by the CPU. The CPU is below the CPU on every board, while the graphics and memory are to either side, so the pathing is nowhere near them. The chipset has absolutely nothing to do with either of those features.

You have no idea what you are talking about. It's as simple as that. I'm not an electrical engineer, but looking at the white papers and specifications, I can see quite a few differences. There are more specifications and details to look at than just the reported feature sets of these chipsets.

As I said, the chipset specifications DO include a listing of supported memory channels. This is a different specification between the two chipsets along with package size. I do not know all of the precise details about this support but there is a relationship between supported memory and the chipset. These chipsets have different I/O and therefore I/O decode ranges which are handled by the PCH and mapped into memory. Therefore, chipsets and memory do have a relationship. DMI is also part of that equation and again, mapping a larger range of devices into memory is part of that. It's also a specification that's listed on Intel's site for the chipsets. They also list support or a lack of support for integrated graphics. This information is taken directly from the datasheets on the chipsets. I haven't gone through it all, but there is more of a relationship between the chipset, memory and graphics I/O than you think. If this was totally driven by the CPU with no chipset interaction what so ever, there would be no need to list these specifications as part of the chipset.

Furthermore, I pointed out that the package sizes between X299 and Z270 are different. Lastly, these chipsets are different with regard to their supported SATA ports. Simply looking at the package differences and the differences in supported features will lead you to conclude that these chipsets cannot be the same. Anyone making statements that these chipsets "look the same" and that the only difference is "cost" have zero idea what they are talking about. Period, end of story. These chipsets look very close on paper but they are physically different. Saying these chipsets are identical is misleading and simply untrue.

EDIT: As I continue to go through the datasheets, there are even more differences between these chipsets. Things like internal clock timings, SPI timings, etc. are totally different between Z270 and X299. The enhanced serial peripheral interface or (eSPI) table shows that most of the commands are only available for X299 and no other chipset in the 200 series chipset family. Once again, if you look beyond the main surface specifications for these two chipsets they are quite different. Intel isn't just charging more money for a Z270 chipset in another package. More to the point, you couldn't build a motherboard with a cheaper Z270 Express chipset and slap an LGA 2066 pin socket on it and throw an 18 core CPU on it.
 
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I think i've only seen one board with 10 sata ports and it was some asrock extreme 11 thingamajiggy, why not a pcie sata card for extra ports?
Geez look at all those sata ports http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99 Extreme11/index.asp

That's glorious. Pure insanity, and I like it! I just try to reduce the amount of things in my htpc to keep it open and the air flowing through. There isn't any other reason why I couldn't just throw in a sata card.

This is the ancient beast currently driving my htpc with a gtx 1060 to run 4k files but I want to throw in a kabylake to stream 4k HDR with amazon and netflix.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423
 
Debating keeping my x99 deal (6850k and Gigabyte ga-x99m-gaming x99 board), or returning it and spending whatever the extra is on an 8700k and mATX 370 board when they come out.

I like the idea of having x99 platform -- all high end parts, gold plated sound, heavy as **** board... but its mostly meaningless to an average user. I'm sure a $50 z170 board would be just as good for me.
 
That's glorious. Pure insanity, and I like it! I just try to reduce the amount of things in my htpc to keep it open and the air flowing through. There isn't any other reason why I couldn't just throw in a sata card.

This is the ancient beast currently driving my htpc with a gtx 1060 to run 4k files but I want to throw in a kabylake to stream 4k HDR with amazon and netflix.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423

If you think that's glorious, then check out this one: https://www.servethehome.com/gigabyte-ma10-st0-intel-atom-c3958-released/
 
Dan_D When I saw the topic "Is Intel's X299 Platform Better than the X99?" posted I was excited to see a [H] comparison of X99 chips (5960X, 6950X, etc) vs X299 chips (7900X, etc). Instead we get an editorial piece that explains details that we could have just read from the spec sheets. With the exception of including some 7900X benches in the Threadrippper review, I've yet to see a proper review from [H] on any X299 motherboard or Intel HEDT chip. Your conclusion states "I can say that X299 is a definite improvement over X99, but where the rubber meets the road it's not a reason to upgrade on it's own" yet, there are no NUMBERS to back up this statement. This would have been immensely useful for users currently running Haswell-E / Broadwell-E looking at the viability of upgrading our combined content creation / gaming rigs.
 
Dan_D When I saw the topic "Is Intel's X299 Platform Better than the X99?" posted I was excited to see a [H] comparison of X99 chips (5960X, 6950X, etc) vs X299 chips (7900X, etc). Instead we get an editorial piece that explains details that we could have just read from the spec sheets. With the exception of including some 7900X benches in the Threadrippper review, I've yet to see a proper review from [H] on any X299 motherboard or Intel HEDT chip. Your conclusion states "I can say that X299 is a definite improvement over X99, but where the rubber meets the road it's not a reason to upgrade on it's own" yet, there are no NUMBERS to back up this statement. This would have been immensely useful for users currently running Haswell-E / Broadwell-E looking at the viability of upgrading our combined content creation / gaming rigs.

X299 reviews are inbound soon as are X399 articles. That said, if you actually look at the numbers in a motherboard review, you miss the point of them. Everything, and I mean everything that has to do with performance comes down to the CPU installed on a motherboard. A Core i7 7740X at the same clock as any 7700K is going to produce the same results. Why? Because the benefits of X299 aren't accessible using a Kaby Lake-X CPU at this time. A CPU review, I can understand but those are Kyle's department.

There are tons of reviews out there on Skylake-X comparing it to Broadwell-E out there. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is another incremental upgrade from Intel. Without significant clock speed increases, you won't get much more from Skylake-X over Broadwell-E. We've seen the same song and dance from Intel now for over 6 years. This was known back when Broadwell and Skylake were released for Z170. The only reason why the Core i9 is remotely compelling is due to the amount of cores it has over its predecessor.

I have given allot of thought to upgrading myself, as an HEDT user. I need more hands on time to make a decision, but ultimately I don't think there will be any significant reasons for upgrading to X299 if gaming is your only goal. As a workstation / content creation platform? There is if you can leverage more than 8-10 cores. That said, Threadripper may be the way to go there. I do not yet know. We didn't have the usual lead time for testing these CPUs and motherboards before launch that we usually do. These launches have been handled badly by AMD and Intel. Ordinarily, we'd have proper reviews ready to go as soon as the embargos are lifted. That simply hasn't been possible for us lately.

This isn't the definitive article on the subject. This was me expressing my thoughts on Intel's X299 platform and the HEDT market at present. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
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I have asked this question a lot, normally to the belligerent fanboys, the sad reality is there is no real worthwhile upgrade from a 4790K which more than holds it's own and doesn't need delidding or never needed Intel to put out a public notice to not overclock it, my ol faithful 4790K is still a great CPU in 2017.

I will get more gains going from a 980ti to 1080ti (~30-40%) than I would from a 4790K to 7700K (~5%) that is out the box gains.
 
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I will as soon as I get more of them on my test bench. I've only had one on my bench so far. It worked well and you'll be reading about that very soon.

The bigger question is this: Is X299 really an upgrade from Z270? From everything I've read on them, they seem identical, except the X299 allows 2 more SATA ports to be enabled in the HSIO ports. So, why is Intel charging $27 more for the X299 chipset?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/200-series-chipset-pch-datasheet-vol-1.html

Granted. Not an revolution, just a evolution But nevertheless, isnt more, more? More sata, usb 2 and 3.0 and faster interconnects. For someone moving to a new HEDT, the extras are selling points along the same lines as faster usually gets a top end buyers cash. Intel has tossed around the idea of optane being limited to only its newest chipsets. If intel out's an pure optane consumer storage capacity ssd restricted to only its newest chipsets, would the x299 platform move into the revolutionary category? It "will" be the HEDT platform from intel for the next 4 or five years, lets see what more comes out of it.
 
Yeah, from the CPU. As far as the chipset itself is concerned, there is no difference between X299 and Z270, even the interface to the CPU is exactly the same, and yet Intel charges $27 more for X299.

But those extra 55 pins, 2011 vs 2066, are doing something. I thought it was pci-e lanes, but maybe they are coming from somewhere else. I believe that the new chipset will "support" more lanes no matter here they come from. Not just from the x299, but from additional support. What do you think?
 
But those extra 55 pins, 2011 vs 2066, are doing something. I thought it was pci-e lanes, but maybe they are coming from somewhere else. I believe that the new chipset will "support" more lanes no matter where they come from. Not just from the x299, but from additional support. What do you think?
I haven't seen the LGA2066 Application Guide floating around the web yet, so I can't just sort and diff the pin names.That said, I think:
* mostly power and ground
* less a few to cover the fact that some of the repackaged chips have onboard secondary voltages, while others need those from the motherboard

Don't forget, chips like these dump heat into the power and ground planes, in addition to having the bigger IHS, so extra power/ground pins carry more than just current
 
Granted. Not an revolution, just a evolution But nevertheless, isnt more, more? More sata, usb 2 and 3.0 and faster interconnects. For someone moving to a new HEDT, the extras are selling points along the same lines as faster usually gets a top end buyers cash. Intel has tossed around the idea of optane being limited to only its newest chipsets. If intel out's an pure optane consumer storage capacity ssd restricted to only its newest chipsets, would the x299 platform move into the revolutionary category? It "will" be the HEDT platform from intel for the next 4 or five years, lets see what more comes out of it.

It isn't more SATA ports. X299 supports 2 less than X99 did. Again, this is due to how HSIO and PCIe block allocation works. DMI 3.0 being better is fantastic, although still somewhat anemic. I also don't see X299 lasting 4 or 5 years. X99 didn't even do that.
 
I haven't seen the LGA2066 Application Guide floating around the web yet, so I can't just sort and diff the pin names.That said, I think:
* mostly power and ground
* less a few to cover the fact that some of the repackaged chips have onboard secondary voltages, while others need those from the motherboard

Don't forget, chips like these dump heat into the power and ground planes, in addition to having the bigger IHS, so extra power/ground pins carry more than just current

Yes, but PCIe lanes may have something to do with it as well. I also think Intel changes teh sockets on purpose to make installation of the wrong CPU obvious. It's not a bad thing in my opinion. Sticking with the same socket for too long has its own issues.
 
It isn't more SATA ports. X299 supports 2 less than X99 did. Again, this is due to how HSIO and PCIe block allocation works. DMI 3.0 being better is fantastic, although still somewhat anemic. I also don't see X299 lasting 4 or 5 years. X99 didn't even do that.

Yeah. 2 less than X99, 2 more than Z270. Was makin a comparison to the claim that the 200 series chip sets were close at the top. Its interesting in that except for the support for more rugged cpus with more cores/threads, X299 and Z270 are very close in capabilities. X supports faster memory and all around more pcie lanes and a couple of other X specific abilities, so unless you are a content creator I feel that not only are you correct about X99 vs X299 someone wouldnt lose that much going to a Z270! And X99 has a few advantages over the newer chipset. Should be some sort of law that prevents that kind of decision making. WTF! Time will tell.
 
Yeah. 2 less than X99, 2 more than Z270. Was makin a comparison to the claim that the 200 series chip sets were close at the top. Its interesting in that except for the support for more rugged cpus with more cores/threads, X299 and Z270 are very close in capabilities. X supports faster memory and all around more pcie lanes and a couple of other X specific abilities, so unless you are a content creator I feel that not only are you correct about X99 vs X299 someone wouldnt lose that much going to a Z270! And X99 has a few advantages over the newer chipset. Should be some sort of law that prevents that kind of decision making. WTF! Time will tell.

As I said, many of the changes found in X299 are back end changes. The feature set isn't really much of an improvement over X99. More importantly, X299 as a requirement to get Skylake-X only makes sense when Skylake-X will be an upgrade for you. We already know the IPC improvement over Haswell-E and Broadwell-E is minimal. The core counts offered over Broadwell-E aren't there yet, but in the future they will be substantial. The differences are potentially huge if you can leverage Skylake-X in it's more core / thread heavy variants. Clock speeds on Broadwell-E were worse than they were with Haswell-E so it's IPC "improvement" counts for nothing. Skylake-X is potentially somewhat better for gaming, but the price / performance ratio is shit if you've got Haswell-E or Broadwell-E today.

So as a workstation part, I think X299 itself isn't a big deal but Skylake-X is. As a gaming platform, it's great but it's not a worthwhile upgrade for most people if you are already on X99, Z170 or Z270.
 
So as a workstation part, I think X299 itself isn't a big deal but Skylake-X is. As a gaming platform, it's great but it's not a worthwhile upgrade for most people if you are already on X99, Z170 or Z270.

Thanks for the clarity. Incremental it is until Skylake-x comes out with more cores.
 
I felt it was a great upgrade from Z68 and my Sandy. New I/O, additional feature, and same stable Intel reliability which I didnt get from x370. Memory wasn't the only issue with x370, I had a myriad of random bugs that I could never solve which immediately dissapeared as soon as I went x299. So yeah it runs hot and it was an incremental upgrade over x99 but for someone on a much older platform its worthwhile IMO.
 
Thanks for the clarity. Incremental it is until Skylake-x comes out with more cores.

This was a known quantity before it was even released. The fact is, we knew Skylake-X was nothing more than the HEDT version of Skylake. It's got more PCIe lanes and more cores, but that's it. The only question that we had prior to launch was precise frequencies. Now that this has been answered, we know its better than Broadwell-E in the clock speed department, but the IPC remains very much incremental. It's probably the smallest jump we've seen since Ivy Bridge replaced Sandy Bridge.

I felt it was a great upgrade from Z68 and my Sandy. New I/O, additional feature, and same stable Intel reliability which I didnt get from x370. Memory wasn't the only issue with x370, I had a myriad of random bugs that I could never solve which immediately dissapeared as soon as I went x299. So yeah it runs hot and it was an incremental upgrade over x99 but for someone on a much older platform its worthwhile IMO.

X299 is definitely an upgrade from what you had. Unfortunately, it's not a massive upgrade in the gaming performance department. At least, not processor wise. Well, depending on how far your CPU was overclocked.
 
X299 is definitely an upgrade from what you had. Unfortunately, it's not a massive upgrade in the gaming performance department. At least, not processor wise. Well, depending on how far your CPU was overclocked.

Agreed. My 2600k was clocked to 4.7 Ghz and so I don't think I saw much improvement from that standpoint, if any which is a bit sad. However my 1080ti though not exactly throttling to a massive degree did show a real (albeit small) improvement from the platform upgrade. This was the same as x370. So it was more about getting to a modern platform than anything else.

If I wasn't trying to squeeze every frame out (I'm waiting for an opportunity to snag a G-Sync UW monitor very soon). I wouldn't have cared as much because of that same reason.
 
A bit off topic but what about x299 vs the z270/z370? Why go with a hedt chipset
 
A bit off topic but what about x299 vs the z270/z370? Why go with a hedt chipset

I'm fairly certain I've covered this topic before at numerous times. That said, the X299 and Z270 have very similar feature sets. I'll see if I can condense things a bit in this post. You have to look at the platform, including the CPU and not just the chipset. That's how close the feature sets are between the three at a brief glance.

X299
Quad-Channel Memory
24 PCIe lanes
44 (via Skylake-X CPU)
14 USB (mix of 2.0 and 3.1 Gen 1 ports)
2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (via optional Alpine Ridge controller)
DMI 3.0 (PCIe x4 dedicated link)
8x SATA ports (Alternatively, 4x SATA Express)
RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256k stripe sizes supported)
Intel Optane Support

Z270
Dual-Channel Memory
24 PCIe lanes
16 (via Skylake or Kaby Lake CPU)
14 USB (mix of 2.0 and 3.1 Gen 1 ports)
2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (via optional Alpine Ridge controller)
DMI 3.0 (PCIe x4 dedicated link)
6x SATA ports
RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256k stripe sizes supported)
Intel Optane Support

X370
Dual-Channel Memory
8 PCIe Gen 2.0 lanes (plus x2 PCIe Gen3 when no x4 NVMe)
24 PCIe lanes (via Ryzen CPU)
2x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 10x USB 3.0 Gen 1, 6x USB 2.0
Dedicated PCIe x4 link to the CPU
6 SATA + PCIe x2 Gen 3.0 NVMe or 4x SATA + PCIe x4 Gen 3.0 NVMe
RAID 0, 1, 10 (Stripe sizes are limited to 64k or 128k sizes.)

Shit changes when you use CPU's other than Skylake-X on X299 or Ryzen on X370. I won't get into all that, but you gimp your platform with those CPUs. An HEDT chipset provides users with the ability to use more devices. This is especially important with regard to storage. HEDT platforms also allow you to go beyond 4 cores and 4 threads (Intel) and 8 cores and 8 threads (AMD). Those are the reasons. If you want some 10+ core monster, HEDT is where you have to go for that.
 
X299 is definitely an upgrade from what you had. Unfortunately, it's not a massive upgrade in the gaming performance department. At least, not processor wise. Well, depending on how far your CPU was overclocked.

Cool, more cores make Skylake-X a worthwhile upgrade. Not really if its a core to core upgrade.

Was wondering, if you were on the next gen development board at intel, and constrained to the technology that is confirmed and seen working out of the labs, what would you want Skylake-X to look like?

X299?

What technology did intel miss when outting this HEDT chip and its companion chipset? What would look like an appreciable ugprade to what was already available?

Is the only market to the guys that have a setup that goes back many generations?
 
I'm fairly certain I've covered this topic before at numerous times. That said, the X299 and Z270 have very similar feature sets. I'll see if I can condense things a bit in this post. You have to look at the platform, including the CPU and not just the chipset. That's how close the feature sets are between the three at a brief glance.

....but thanks for placing it nice and neat all on one page (y)
 
Cool, more cores make Skylake-X a worthwhile upgrade. Not really if its a core to core upgrade.

Was wondering, if you were on the next gen development board at intel, and constrained to the technology that is confirmed and seen working out of the labs, what would you want Skylake-X to look like?

X299?

What technology did intel miss when outting this HEDT chip and its companion chipset? What would look like an appreciable ugprade to what was already available?

Is the only market to the guys that have a setup that goes back many generations?

These are good questions. You are absolutely right in that Skylake-X is a worthwhile upgrade when you can leverage the cores it offers over Broadwell-E and even Haswell-E. Skylake-X only clocks marginally better than Haswell-E does but sigificantly better than Broadwell-E, although again we are talking about a window of 300 or 400MHz from Broadwell-E's 10-core, to Skylake-X's upper limit for 10-core+ CPUs. Ideally, I'd like to see Skylake-X clock 100MHz or 200MHz than it seems to on a 10 core part, I'd like to see 16 cores and 32 threads available today, and I'd like to see the top tier offering remain at a price point below $1,500. As much as I'd love for Extreme Editions to remain $1,000 or $1,100 parts, I don't see it being a reality. $2,000 insanity for 18 core CPU is ridiculous. I know there are some people here that will buy them, but Skylake-X availability announcements for processors we don't have in hand were a knee jerk reaction to Threadripper. Nothing more, nothing less. Trying to be realistic, and answer your question: I'd want to see Skylake-X available today, with 18 cores and a price point that doesn't exceed $1,599. I'd also like that part to reach 4.4GHz or better. Honestly, I'm ok with the $1,000 7900X if it can reliably hit 4.8GHz. I don't know how the hit rate on that is. I think we've only seen them at 4.6GHz, but I'd have to ask Kyle about that. I haven't played with one yet. But, for the money, with the IPC it offers, I think it's probably the best option for someone like me who skipped Broadwell-E.

As for X299, the platform is good, but I feel like the increase is marginal at best over X99. Personally, I'd prefer it to look a little more like X399 on paper to be honest. I'd like to see more lanes out of the chipset or Skylake-X, or both. I'd like to see a larger interconnect between the PCH and the CPU. DMI 3.0 is anemic, although in actual testing its rarely an issue unless you saturate DMI 3.0 in some non-real world scenario. There are very few cases where you can truly leverage more bandwidth than DMI 3.0 has. On paper X399 has an advantage of offering more throughput for M.2 devices. I'd like to see the USB controllers unfucked. I want to do away with 2.0 ports entirely, and just leave them with a solid 14 USB 3.0 Gen 1 ports and integrate two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports into the chipset and drop Alpine Ridge. I would like to see X299 boards with better MOSFET cooling and dual 8-pin power connectors being more common, but that's a board design / implementation issue not a chipset issue.

As for your last point, I don't think that's the case. Intel wants you to upgrade every generation. It wants to sell us on features like Optane and moar cores being worth the cost of admission. Intel is wrong, but that's what they'd like you to believe. The problem is that Intel wants you to upgrade, but they haven't delivered enough improvement over older CPUs to warrant that for anyone outside of content creators or corporate customers who may have fixed product life cycles for tax purposes or whatever. If Intel could drop a product that was clearly worth the money and get all of us off Sandy Bridge, and up through Broadwell-E, it would.
 
If Intel could drop a product that was clearly worth the money and get all of us off Sandy Bridge, and up through Broadwell-E, it would.

I am still rocking a sandy bridge system. X299 might be the reason to upgrade.
 
These are good questions. You are absolutely right in that Skylake-X is a worthwhile upgrade when you can leverage the cores it offers over Broadwell-E and even Haswell-E. Skylake-X only clocks marginally better than Haswell-E does but sigificantly better than Broadwell-E, although again we are talking about a window of 300 or 400MHz from Broadwell-E's 10-core, to Skylake-X's upper limit for 10-core+ CPUs. Ideally, I'd like to see Skylake-X clock 100MHz or 200MHz than it seems to on a 10 core part, I'd like to see 16 cores and 32 threads available today, and I'd like to see the top tier offering remain at a price point below $1,500. As much as I'd love for Extreme Editions to remain $1,000 or $1,100 parts, I don't see it being a reality. $2,000 insanity for 18 core CPU is ridiculous. I know there are some people here that will buy them, but Skylake-X availability announcements for processors we don't have in hand were a knee jerk reaction to Threadripper. Nothing more, nothing less. Trying to be realistic, and answer your question: I'd want to see Skylake-X available today, with 18 cores and a price point that doesn't exceed $1,599. I'd also like that part to reach 4.4GHz or better. Honestly, I'm ok with the $1,000 7900X if it can reliably hit 4.8GHz. I don't know how the hit rate on that is. I think we've only seen them at 4.6GHz, but I'd have to ask Kyle about that. I haven't played with one yet. But, for the money, with the IPC it offers, I think it's probably the best option for someone like me who skipped Broadwell-E.

As for X299, the platform is good, but I feel like the increase is marginal at best over X99. Personally, I'd prefer it to look a little more like X399 on paper to be honest. I'd like to see more lanes out of the chipset or Skylake-X, or both. I'd like to see a larger interconnect between the PCH and the CPU. DMI 3.0 is anemic, although in actual testing its rarely an issue unless you saturate DMI 3.0 in some non-real world scenario. There are very few cases where you can truly leverage more bandwidth than DMI 3.0 has. On paper X399 has an advantage of offering more throughput for M.2 devices. I'd like to see the USB controllers unfucked. I want to do away with 2.0 ports entirely, and just leave them with a solid 14 USB 3.0 Gen 1 ports and integrate two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports into the chipset and drop Alpine Ridge. I would like to see X299 boards with better MOSFET cooling and dual 8-pin power connectors being more common, but that's a board design / implementation issue not a chipset issue.

As for your last point, I don't think that's the case. Intel wants you to upgrade every generation. It wants to sell us on features like Optane and moar cores being worth the cost of admission. Intel is wrong, but that's what they'd like you to believe. The problem is that Intel wants you to upgrade, but they haven't delivered enough improvement over older CPUs to warrant that for anyone outside of content creators or corporate customers who may have fixed product life cycles for tax purposes or whatever. If Intel could drop a product that was clearly worth the money and get all of us off Sandy Bridge, and up through Broadwell-E, it would.
Have you thought about upgrading the 5960x to anything? Or is most out there right now a side grade/small upgrade?
 
Well, given that a Core i7 2600K is still decent with a modern GPU and I'm rocking GeForce GTX 1080Ti's, I probably wouldn't get much out of an upgrade. That said, I'm always looking to upgrade to the next best thing. Unfortunately, I don't think anything other than the i9 7900X would be worth having. I like Threadripper, but that would be a downgrade in gaming. I could do that as that's not all I do, but until we actually get bootable NVMe M.2 RAID, I'm not interested in X399.
 
Do Inuograde from
As a software developer those are both very big concerns for me. If X299 had ECC I would easily take a 10C i9 over the 16C TR (even though the X399 platform is better than the X299 platform) however it does not so I am going to purchase the TR sometime in the future (most likely winter since I really don't have the time now).
if you want ECC why not just get c422?
 
Well, given that a Core i7 2600K is still decent with a modern GPU and I'm rocking GeForce GTX 1080Ti's, I probably wouldn't get much out of an upgrade. That said, I'm always looking to upgrade to the next best thing. Unfortunately, I don't think anything other than the i9 7900X would be worth having. I like Threadripper, but that would be a downgrade in gaming. I could do that as that's not all I do, but until we actually get bootable NVMe M.2 RAID, I'm not interested in X399.
Not going threadrippe either (this is the intel forum after all ). But I'm curious: Why do you need nvme raid? Isnt it fast enough?
 
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