Intel Core i9-10980XE "Cascade Lake-X" in the test

tl; dr: Intel Cascade Lake-X with the top model Core i9-10980XE is very late in the race. The 18-core processor offers significantly more performance than its predecessor at half the price, but there is no real technical progress. This is how AMD moves with Zen 2 and away, is faster, cheaper and more efficient on the go.

Note: After Intel communicated a simultaneous launch of Cascade Lake-X and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 to the press for weeks, the company decided almost at the last minute to drop the curtain a few hours earlier – in order to avoid the direct duel ,

But even if this article on the case of the NDA now has to do without test results of the 24- and 32-core CPUs with Zen 2: With the case of the NDA for Threadripper, the diagrams in this article are brought up to the exact same level and additional statements are added. This will be done completely transparently with appropriate instructions.

Intel is slated to launch the Cascade Lake-X processor family this fall. The processors intended for the well-known LGA 2066 socket again offer up to 18 cores and are only a more or less incremental update to Skylake-X (Refresh) on paper, which have been available in their original form for 26 months. Adjustments promise interesting details, but there are no more cores or new cores.

Big announcement with reference to value for money

Intel's ever-repeated real-world performance workshop since Computex 2019 at the end of May had at least one real novelty in its program at IFA 2019: Cascade Lake-X should be better positioned by a factor of 1.74 to 2.09 in terms of price-performance ratio be than the predecessor. Given that it was already clear at the time that Cascade Lake-X would not make any changes to the processor cores in terms of the maximum quantity or large clock jumps in the 14 nm production that was still used, the only thing that remained was that the price would drop drastically,

And so it came to the presentation on paper in early October 2019. The price of Cascade Lake-X was halved compared to the predecessor Skylake-X Refresh, especially for the larger models. The previous representatives were also significantly cheaper in the trade to get one, but recently it was almost impossible, the CPUs no longer existed. It is not yet clear whether this was a quiet sell-off that started very early, or whether Cascade Lake-X will also have a similar problem. But the trade groans at least about the first deliveries: they come late, very late. Some system integrators will only get CPUs in the new year.

Comparison of predecessors and successors

Another 14 nm is the order of the Intel HEDT segment – as almost everywhere in the portfolio with one very small exception: Ice Lake in the notebook. The year-long delay at 10 nm has messed up all plans in this market, Skylake should be replaced by a 10 nm product. But this will also not happen with the server offshoots for the desktop before the end of 2020, then at least Ice Lake-SP is planned as Xeon. But Intel's timetables have hardly been worth anything in the past five years, as is well known, 10 nm chips should originally have been available as early as 2016.

In addition to the slightly increased clock rates, an additional four PCIe lanes and the faster memory, the lower price is striking in the overview. But the lack of a 16-core also stands out. This is due to the currently missing price gap. Placing a model there with a price difference of less than $ 100 does not make sense. Intel also circumvents a direct duel with AMD in which 16 cores would meet 16 cores. AMD does not have 14 or 18 cores like Intel. But whether it is needed is another matter, because even against AMD's 16-core Intel's new flagship is very difficult, as the test shows.

New features in the desktop hardly relevant

The new functions of Cascade Lake, which have been added for AVX-512 and Int8 for deep learning, are not immediately recognizable. If the application or software is tailored to exactly these instructions, large increases in performance are possible. Ideally, the performance not only doubles, but also increases significantly, even compared to its direct predecessor. But this is still almost irrelevant on the desktop PC, since Skylake-X has done almost nothing to support AVX-512. The feature can only be verified with special tools such as Intel's own Open Image Denoise or the theory benchmark tool AIXPRT.

The bottom line is that the relevant differences to the predecessor are minimal in the desktop environment, the clock speed and fast storage remain, possibly using the additional PCIe lanes. The cache and memory test shows that all latencies remain the same, only everything that benefits from a higher clock rate changes. With an overclocked predecessor, the results would be identical.

Security holes only partially patched

Intel originally attributed the highest level of hardware patches to Cascade Lake, until almost two weeks ago they were considered almost secure. The whole barrage of new problems now also affects the flagship series and may reduce performance, but this is usually not the case on the desktop. Microcode updates with the BIOS are supposed to close these gaps, Windows also helps with suitable patches, but these are not yet available.

A mainboard "refresh" in your luggage

At first it was said that a completely new X499 chipset (or similar) was coming, and then later that it should become an X299G. But now things turn out quite differently: The bottom line is that the "X299 Refresh" is even less impressive, so it doesn't really deserve the name. Because in the end it is the same X299 chipset as before, motherboard manufacturers are now only using the favor of the hour to put on some new boards again. Because one or the other mainboard has already been under its belt for two years because the first Skylake-X was launched. But you shouldn't be blinded by the glow of the new boards, there are no real new features: The X299 corresponds to the version of the Z270, which in turn was only a minimally adapted Z170, which dates back to 2015.

The new solutions could therefore be relatively unspectacular in retail – exceptions will, as usual, confirm the rule. The Asus ROG Strix X299-E Gaming that has been and will continue to be used by BitcoinMinersHashrate will receive a successor alias Asus ROG Strix X299-E Gaming II. According to the manufacturer, the most important difference is a revised VRM, in addition there are adjustments to the connections and additions such as 2.5 gigabit LAN.

It looks very similar for the other well-known mainboard manufacturers. ASRock sent the new X299 Taichi CLX to the editorial team. This also relies on new VRMs, many additional connections including 2.5 gigabit LAN as well as many apertures and RGB and thus gets the most out of the combination of Intel's HEDT CPU and the X299 chipset. However, that costs: 420 euros for the ASRock solution are currently on the market. The cheapest boards for the new CPUs without "refresh" cost only half.

On the next page: benchmarks in applications and games