Review: Intel Core i9-7980XE (14nm Skylake-X)

Conclusion

The high-end desktop CPU space has become far more interesting this year. AMD has brought massive multi-core processing to the table in the form of the Ryzen Threadripper trio of CPUs, headlined by a 16-core, 32-thread part known as the 1950X.

Intel's response has been in the form of a two-pronged release of Core i9 X-series processors. The 10-core, 20-thread 7900X gave us a glimpse of what to expect, but now, Intel brings out the really big guns to play.

The latest slew of X-series CPUs run from 12 cores up to 18, with the Core i9-7980XE at the helm of this performance ship. Offering more cores and threads than AMD yet clocked in lower when evaluated on an all-core basis, Intel's better IPC enables the 7980XE to take back the performance crown that was snatched by Threadripper. When things go well, the best Core i9 is about 10 per cent faster, but showing just what is possible, Intel's finest silicon offers far more frequency headroom than AMD. An all-core 4.5GHz on air, anyone?

Business as usual, then? Not quite, because the $1,999 asking price of the premier Core i9 is painful. Yes, it's a leading-edge Xeon in LGA2066 disguise, though there's no getting around the fact that it costs twice as much as the best AMD chip whilst, at stock speeds, being only marginally quicker.

Make no mistake, the Intel Core i9-7980XE is the fastest consumer processor ever launched. A dose of overclocking makes it untouchable for heavily-threaded applications. Having said that, all of its considerable horsepower doesn't count for much when gaming.

Our advice is simple enough. Digital content creators and users coming from older workstations who genuinely need supreme single-socket performance and have the means to pay for it need to look no further. For everyone else, far better value can be had elsewhere in the Intel and AMD CPU stacks of 2017.

Intel Core i9-7980XE

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The Intel Core i9-7980XE is available to order from Scan Computers.*

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