The Intel Core i9-9980XE CPU Review: Refresh Until it Hertz
by Ian Cutress on November 13, 2018 9:00 AM ESTHEDT Performance: SYSMark 2018
You either love it or hate it. BAPCo’s SYSMark suite of tests is both an interesting combination of benchmarks but also clouded in a substantial amount of ire. The altruistic original goal was to develop an industry standard suite of real-world tests. AMD (and NVIDIA) left BAPCo several years ago citing that workloads were being chosen on purpose that favoured Intel processors, and didn’t include enough several emerging computing paradigms for the industry. Intel disagrees with that statement, and here we are today.
We run this disclaimer on our SYSMark testing primarily to emphasise that this benchmark suite, while some consider it more than relevant and encompassing a lot of modern professional software, others feel is engineered with specific goals in mind.
We haven’t run SYSMark on every processor, as it requires a fresh OS image compared to our automated suite, and requires refreshing that image every seven days. As a result we are trying to do sets of processors at a time where it makes sense and when time is available.
It’s clear from the Intel comparisons that the i9-9980XE takes a lead here, with a nice bump over the 7980XE of around 7% in the overall test. Given that the 7900X is the best of the Skylake-X processors, it will be interesting to see what the 9900X scores here.
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nexuspie - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
You're so ghetto you're using a 2500k from 2011? Stop posting and get a job so you can afford an upgrade. I guess it proves that Intel makes good chips though if you can wait this long to upgrade.LordanSS - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
Still rocking a 3770k. Not going to pay "Intel price" for 4-cores and just 20% more IPC than I have.Zen2, that'll be my swap.
Spunjji - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
I seriously don't understand people who are so insecure about their choices that they need to mock random people on the internet for not overspending on their computer equipment. If your use case enables you to spend on the absolute best way past the point of diminishing returns, that's great for you! Be happy and maybe lay off the comment sections..?Kilnk - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
No... all it really means is that for the first time in the history of computing, software demands have allowed computing power to reach the level of "good enough" for a lot of users. Also things are a lot more GPU dependant than they used to be. CPUs are less relevant.duploxxx - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
It is quite obvious. From a general performance/price/power perspective the TR2 2950x is the one to get. Forget all the uber expensive Intel junk.qap - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
I guess it depends on i9-9820X. And I have a feeling it would be similar story to 2990WX vs i9-9980XE - AMD scoring in some benchmarks while intel keeping victory in other.Those who matter (actual buyers) will look at bench that matters to them while fans would be squealing that this or that benchmark is more important and therefore their favorite CPU is the best.
eva02langley - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
I would honestly get an EPYC platform over the TR 32 cores. However, at this point, you have a really particular workload that requires such capabilities.It all depends on your needs, but true, Intel is not competitive at their price tags.
nexuspie - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
These benchmarks show that the 9980's 18 cores often BEAT the 2990wx's 32 cores. AMD cores are garbage.Targon - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
In what world are AMD cores garbage when they are more than competitive enough to push Intel into releasing the first significant changes in six years? Zen2 cores are also here(with the new Epyc chips), and Ryzen 3rd generation will be launching within the next five months or so, which WILL have a higher IPC than Intel at that point.twtech - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
The upgrade AMD really needs at this point is a software one - from Microsoft. The 2990WX performs pretty well when using Linux, but it struggles with most workloads in Windows. I hope that Zen 2's chiplets will do a little better in terms of memory access.