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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rolfaalto - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
For me the most important CPU features are AVX512, very high Ghz, and lots of fast memory. Plenty of PCI lanes are a significant plus, because they feed all the Volta GPUs ... which of course are PCIe-3. I don't care much about high core counts because that's the point of the GPUs. Mainly I need a few very fast cores to handle all the stuff that can't be massively parallelized. So, this chip checks all the boxes, especially at half the price! :-)blobcat - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Looking at the retailers today, the price landed at about $60 higher than prices listed here (and everywhere else leading up to release). 10900x is $649, 10920x is $749, etcIrata - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
That's because the price given was a price when buying 1,000 units. I think the article even stated that.Holliday75 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
It says the following at the bottom of page 1."*Intel quotes OEM/tray pricing. Retail pricing will sometimes be $20-$50 higher."
blobcat - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Yes I saw that, but thought it might be helpful to some to know actual retail pricing. Also worth noting that the markup landed at the high end of the range given and then some.Dorkaman - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
How about some overclocking prime95 non avx stable. I'd love to see it against an overclocked 9900KS in games and rendering tests.Dionysos1234 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Why no discussion of (lack of) ecc memory support?Jorgp2 - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
That's probably baked into the chipset, and couldn't be added in if they wanted to.That's just Intel's idiotic product segmentation from the original launch biting them in the ass.
SBKch - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Could you add Ryzen 3950X to web benchmarks as I've noticed that it's missing?Sychonut - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Awesome! Looking forward to next generation on 14+++++++.