The Intel Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X CPU Review Part 1: Workstation
by Ian Cutress on September 25, 2017 3:01 AM ESTIntel Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X Conclusion
In the 2000s, we had the frequency wars. Trying to pump all the MHz into a single core ended up mega-hurting one company in particular, until the push was made to multi-core and efficient systems. Now in the 2010s, we have the Core Wars. You need to have at least 16 cores to play, and be prepared to burn power like never before. With today’s launch, Intel has kicked their high-end desktop offerings up a notch, both in performance and power consumption.
Pun density aside, both Intel and AMD are pursuing a many-core strategy when it comes to the high-end desktop. Both manufacturers have the same story in their pockets: users need more multi-threaded performance, either for intense compute or for a heavy scoop of compute-based multi-tasking, to include streaming, encoding, rendering, and high-intensity minesweeper VR all at the same time. Due to having so many cores, single threaded performance while under load can be lower than usual, so both companies focus on throughput rather than responsiveness.
The Core i9-7980XE is Intel’s new top-of-the-line HEDT processor. Coming in at 18-cores and drawing 165W, this processor can reach 4.4 GHz at top turbo or 3.4 GHz on all-core turbo. At $1999, it becomes the most expensive (?) consumer focused processor on the market. It is priced at this level for two reasons: first such that it doesn’t cannibalize Intel’s enterprise sales which have a higher profit margin, but also due to Intel’s product stack it fills up several price points from $300 all the way to $2000 now, and with it being Intel’s best consumer processor, they are hoping that it will still sell like hot cakes.
Our performance numbers show that Intel’s best multi-core consumer processor is deserving of that title. In most of our multi-core tests, Intel has a clear lead over AMD: a combination of more cores and a higher single threaded performance compensates for any frequency difference. For anyone with hardcore compute, Intel gets you to the finishing line first in almost every scenario. AMD does win on a few benchmarks, which is something we saw when Johan tested the enterprise versions of Intel's and AMD's CPUs in his review, where he cited AMD’s FP unit as being the leading cause of the performance improvement.
There are going to be three cautionary flags to this tale based on our testing today, for anyone looking at Skylake-X, and they all start with the letter P: Power, Platform, and Price.
Power: In our testing, Intel’s cores can consume between 20W and 7.5W per core, which is a large range. When all cores are at load, as well as the mesh and DRAM controllers, the Core i9-7980XE draws over 190W, well above the TDP rating of 165W. This will cause concern for users that take the TDP value as rote for power consumption – and for any users thinking of overclocking it might also be worth investing in custom cooling loops. The processors from AMD consume ~177W at load, which for two cores less is about the same ballpark.
Platform: X299 motherboards are designed to handle Kaby Lake-X, Skylake-X LCC and Skylake-X HCC processors. Almost all the motherboards should be geared towards the high-end processors which makes platform compatibility a bit of a non-issue, however testing by others recommends some form of active cooling on the power delivery. When investing $1999 in a processor, especially if a user is considering overclocking, it is likely that a good motherboard is needed, and not just the bargain basement model. Some users will point to the competition, where AMD's processors offer enough lanes for three x16 GPUs and three PCIe 3.0 x4 storage devices from the processor at the same time, rather than reduced bandwidth for 3-way and requiring storage to go through the chipset.
Price: $1999 is a new record for consumer processors. Intel is charging this much because it can – this processor does take the absolute workstation performance crown. For high performance, that is usually enough – the sort of users that are interested in this level of performance are not overly interested in performance per dollar, especially if a software license is nearer $10k. However for everyone else, unless you can take advantage of TSX or AVX-512, the price is exorbitant, and all arrows point towards AMD instead. Half the price is hard to ignore.
Users looking at the new processors for workstation use should consider the three Ps. It’s not an easy task, and will highly depend on the user specific workflow. The recommendations ultimately come down to three suggestions:
- If a user needs the top best workstation processor without ECC, then get Skylake-X.
- If a user needs ECC or 512GB of DRAM, Xeon-W looks a better bet.
- If a user has a strict budget or wants another GPU for compute workloads, look at Threadripper.
For those weighing up the Core i9-7960X compared to the Core i9-7980XE, part of me wants to say ‘if you’re going for cores and prepared to spend this much, then go all the way’. If the main purpose is throughput, for the benchmarks that matter, the 7980XE is likely to provide benefit. For multi-taskers, the benefits are less clear, and it would be interesting to get the Core i9-7940X and Core i9-7920X in for testing.
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Spunjji - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Super relevant, because they indicate how badly thermally limited the CPU is - which is hella good info to have if you're, say, considering delidding a $1999 processor because the manufacturer used toothpaste under the IHS.tricomp - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Poor AMD...No chance they are going to supply (even more) cpu's demand after posting this article..
I am trying to purchase at list 7 systems for my customers in my country but there's nowhere I can find them beasts here..
iwod - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I wish someone could do an article on that too. GF doesn't seems to be the limitation here. GF, should in theory more then enough capacity in their Fab 8 for AMD. Unless GF have some other big customers, otherwise AMD should really be bumping out as much unit as possible.Atom11 - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Can we please see one test (!), if you could possible manage, that shows the advantage of AVX-512 in compare to AVX2 when doing:1.) matrix multiply
2.) FFT
3.) convolution
ZeDestructor - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Give us a comparison to AVX1 and SSE4 too!Gothmoth - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
threadripper delivers 80+% of the perfromance for less than 50% of the price.... you don´t have to be a genius to see what the better deal is (price germany: TR 1950x = 950 euro, 7890xe =2300 euro)Spunjji - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Don't let that stop them equivocating about how companies who need that power yet somehow have no need for ECC don't care about cost because something something software TCO blah blah.spdragoo - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I'm trying really, really hard to think of a company that, at some point or another, doesn't say, "Equipment X may outperform Equipment Y, but the extra cost to buy Equipment X is too much, we'll just make-do with Y instead." Especially since 100% of companies have a limit on their budgets.What's that, you say? Multi-billion dollar corporations don't have to worry about the money they spend? Someone apparently didn't pay attention in their Econ 200 class, or their Introduction to Accounting coursework.
By definition, every business has a *finite* amount of money they can spend, based on a) how much money they collect from their customers, b) how much they can recoup on the sale of assets (tangible or intangible), & c) how much they can get from "other sources" (mostly bank loans or by selling stock shares, or sometimes government grants, but you might find the occasional situation where a generous benefactor just bequeaths money to a company...but I doubt you'll even see that happen to 1% of the companies out there -- & no, venture capitalists pouring money into a company is *not* a situation where they "give the money away", they're getting something for their money, usually stock shares or guarantees of repayment of the loans). Of that money, some of it is earmarked for employee compensation (not just the executives, but the office drones & lower-level employees that do 99% of the actual work), some of it goes towards taxes, some of it pays for rental payments, some for loan payments, some for utilities (telephone, Internet, electricity, gas, water, etc.), some of it may get set aside for "emergencies", some gets earmarked for dividends to the shareholders, etc. That means that a (relatively) small portion is set aside for "equipment replacement". Now, if the company is lucky, the lion's share of that budget is for IT-related equipment...but that covers more than just the office drones' machines, that covers everything: server racks, storage services, cloud vendor payments, etc.
And that is where the price comes into play. For probably 90% of office users out there, not only is Threadripper an overpowered product, so are these products. Heck, we're in the middle of an upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, & they're taking the opportunity to replace our old Sandy Bridge i5 machines with Skylake i7 machines. Sure, they're running faster now...but the main reason they're running faster is because we went from 32-bit Windows to 64-bit Windows, so our PCs now have 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB. That helps with our workload...which primarily revolves around MS Office & using browsers to access & modify a number of massive databases. Having an 8C/16T CPU, let alone a 16C/32T CPU, wouldn't provide any boost for us, since the primary slowdown is on the server side.
These are going to be expensive systems for specialized purposes...& those individual companies are going to look at their budgets very closely, as well as the performance benchmarks, before deciding to purchase these systems. Sure, they may hold the performance crown...but not by that big of a margin, & especially when compared to the margin that gives them the "most expensive price" crown.
BrokenCrayons - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Human labor is more expensive than hardware. The 20% additional performance for $1000 more can be earned back quickly by the increased productivity of your workforce (assuming your management staff is effective enough to keep the employees gainfully employed of course and that's certainly not always the case).vladx - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Indeed the difference in price is pretty much negligible in a professional setting.