It’s a Cascade of 14nm CPUs: AnandTech’s Intel Core i9-10980XE Review
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 25, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |
| Intel Cascade Lake | Core i9-10980XE |
| Motherboard | ASRock X299 OC Formula (BIOS P1.80) |
| CPU Cooler | TRUE Copper + Silverstone Fan |
| DRAM | Corsair Vengeance RGB 4x8 GB DDR4-2933 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
| PSU | Corsair AX860i |
| SSD | Crucial MX500 2TB |
| OS | Windows 10 1909 |
For our motherboard, we are using the latest firmware. I do not believe that ASRock has updated its BIOSes to provide fixes for the latest Intel security updates, as these take time.
The latest AMD TR3 benchmarks were run by Gavin Bonshor, while I attended Supercomputing in Denver last week. Unfortunately both Intel and AMD decided to sample processors before the annual trade show conference, with launches only a couple of days after the show finished. As a result, our testing has been split between Gavin and myself, and we have endevoured to ensure parity through my automated testing suite.
Also, our compile test seems to have broken itself when we used Windows 10 1909, and due to travel we have not had time to debug why it is no longer working. We hope to get this test up and running in the new year, along with an updated test suite.
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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Korguz - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
yep.. i knew gondalf wouldnt answer my question...0ldman79 - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
That is ignorant.Adding L3 cannot increase processing. The L3 can only improve feeding of data, further the L3 is a victim cache, the data has to be expelled from the L2 first.
It doesn't matter how big the fuel line is on your 4 cylinder, it's only going to burn so much gas. Same for the L2 and L3. If the size of the cache increases the IPC that is *only* because the cache was too small for the design in the first place.
Korguz - Sunday, December 8, 2019 - link
keep in mind, the comment is from gondalf, he will say any thing to make his beloved intel look better, as you can see, he DIDN'T answer my question to him as well...airdrifting - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
You are delusional. 2011 is the year for 2500K/2600K release, and since then Intel has been charging 300+ for quad core till 2017 Ryzen release. It was also the six darkest years in CPU history where we see like 5% increase in IPC every year, I kept my 4.5GHz overclocked 2600K for 6 years because there was no reason to upgrade.eek2121 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Yeah that was part of the issue. Sandy Bridge had so much overclocking headroom, you could put a good AiO on it, crank it up to 4.8-5.0 GHz, and generations later the competition would just barely catch up. The percentage of difference between the two was very small, and Bulldozer was chasing Core i3s.rahvin - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
You're not alone buddy. I've held on to my Icy Bridge 3700K until Ryzen 39**X because Intel was offering no innnovation to the market.I distinctly remember the Anandtech article for IIRC the Kaby Lake Intel processors where they basically said this was the first generation to be 20% better than Sandy Bridge/Icy Bridge which made is worth upgrading. That was 6 years without any performance increases.
Make no mistake, without AMD competition we wouldn't have moved beyond 8 cores on the desktop or 12 cores in the HEDT. Intel was happy to sit on their fingers and rake in the money with 2-5% improvement per year. In fact 3 solid years of AMD competition have doubled core counts on both the desktop and server and at the same time lowered prices across the board. Without AMD there is no innovation at Intel because they don't have competition. Thank god for Lisa Su.
Santoval - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Bollocks. Pulling arbitrary dollar values of nameless CPUs out of your behinds and linking even more arbitrarily 2011 CPUs to 2019 CPUs is an extremely poor tactic. Your suck at this (-->Intel apologetics). Be better so we can have meaningful arguments :)milkywayer - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Read the article your posting spam at. The author mentions the 1900 and 900 numbers. I'll let you guess which page. You might actual read the review then.milkywayer - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Whups. Meant it for RegsEx.milkywayer - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Out of the kindness of their heart. How generous and kind of them./s