Intel’s upcoming Cascade Lake-X processors are expected to provide stiff competition, at least to the existing 2nd Gen Threadripper CPUs. The flagship HEDT chip namely the Core i9-10980XE has been leaked and it seems to indicate just that. Comparing it to the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, it manages to come out on top at a decent price point.
Intel has already announced that it will be launching the Cascade Lake-X lineup for enthusiasts and creators in October with a much better performance per dollar ratio than their predecessors. The product stack was leaked yesterday and is as follows:
- Intel Core i9-10900X
- Intel Core i9-10920X
- Intel Core i9-10940X
- Intel Core i9-10980XE
The 10900X is a 10 core part, with the two higher-end chips gaining two additional chips and the top-end Core i9-10980XE packing 18 cores and 36 threads.
The Geekbench score of the Core i9-10900X was leaked yesterday, and today the same database has revealed the benchmarks of the Cascade Lake-X flagship, the Core i9-10980XE. The latter boasts 18 cores and 36 threads running at a base clock of 2.46GHz and a boost of 4.70GHz. The L3 cache is pegged at 24.75MB and L2 at 18MB (1MB per core).
Seeing that the chip ran on an X299 board, the upcoming Cascade Lake-X processors will use the same chipset as their predecessors. The Core i9-10980XE scores 51.5K in the multi-threaded bench and 5,381 in the single-threaded test. This is faster than all the 2nd Gen Threadrippers as well as the Skylake-X CPUs. However, I’d suggest not considering the 32-Core 2990WX as Geekbench doesn’t scale well with higher core counts. The TR 2950X being a 16 core part gives a good indication of overall performance in this test.
The last unknown aspect of Intel’s HEDT lineup is the price. Intel recently claimed a relative performance per dollar gain of up to 2x over Skylake X, and if that really pans out then we can expect a price tag of approximately $1,000 for the flagship Core i9-10980XE. If that happens, it’s almost certain that AMD will have something even faster at the same price point (64 Core Zen 2 based Ryzen Threadripper?)
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