Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware box so we've already covered a fair few of Intel's CPU related announcements from a couple of days ago including the said 390 chipset and motherboard launch to the new 8 core processors and hopefully you all saw Steve's video yesterday covering Intel's ridiculous Commission benchmarks of the 9900 K more than a week before anyone can report independent performance numbers in fact if you happen to miss our update to that video we discovered that the Commission benchmarks were even worse than we first thought if that's even possible because all testing was done with the horizon 720 700 X configured as a quad-core through game mode yep pretty unbelievable stuff really but that's what they did to get such massive margins check our patreon post with the new graphs and all the details links to that are in the description below also intel has responded to us and others with the statement basically doubling down and saying the testing is valid check out gamers Nexus latest video for that statement but Wow seriously Intel anyway let's move on today we're talking about something a little different it's time to talk about the other thing Intel announced their new line of high-end desktop chips in the form of sky like X refresh and the 28 core Xeon w31 75 X remember the 28 core processor yeah that's the one Intel first announced at Computex 2018 it's been capable of 5 gigahertz except only with what was later discovered to be exotic cooling and a ridiculous overkill motherboard at the time you might have seen our video comparing Intel's misleading 28 core demo to Abi's announcement of 32 core thread Ripper an actual product that ended up as the 2990 WX that processor it was a bit disappointing in how it performed in some workloads but it did actually get released as a product that closely matched what AMD announced at Computex so let's take a look at what Intel's 28 core CPU has ended up as after the fiasco at Computex well the company decided to call it the xeon w-30 175 X and is based on their cascade Lake architecture it also in what shouldn't be surprised anyone is compatible only with Intel's LGA 3647 server sockets so those currently using X 299 boards with the LGA 2066 socket can't just drop in this new CPU without a full platform upgrade the thread Ripper 2990 WX was fully compatible with AMD socket TR 4 and X 399 chipset but Intel doesn't have the luxury of socket compatibility with their new high core count CPUs in terms of specifications the xeon Platinum 8180 has 28 cos 38.5 megabytes of level 3 cache 44 PCIe lanes directive CPU and 6 channels of ddr4 2666 memory support either ECC or standard sorry wait did I say the xeon Platinum 8180 before well I meant the of course here on w 3175 x bit of an easy mistake to make there because they're of course totally different CPUs the 3175 X does beef things up a bit compared to the 8180 though especially in terms of clock speeds Intel's totally different and not on all the same server chip is clocked at 2.5 gigahertz with a boost up to 3 point 8 gigahertz whereas the 31 75 X is clocked at 3.1 gigahertz base and 4.3 gigahertz boost this also means a TDP increase from 205 watts to 255 watts not because this is basically an overclocked 80 180 or anything but because of some other reason I don't know it's also fully unlocked like all of Intel's h EDT processes the key thing to note here is Intel's 3175 X is not clocked at 5 gigahertz not as a base clock not as an all core turbo and not even as a single core turbo clock and that's of course because reaching 5 gigahertz on a 28 core CPU is completely ridiculous for typical operating conditions can the 31 75 X hit 5 gigahertz using exotic cooling well probably but again this brings us back to intel's initial reveal of the 28 core 8 EDT chip they showed it running at 5 gigahertz plenty of websites and gobbled that up without even questioning it and yet here we are the actual chip has been officially released and it doesn't clock anywhere near 5 gigahertz I do get that Intel came out and apologized for not mentioning that their demo involved in overclocked CPU but that whole set up left me and many of you guys with a sour taste in your mouth I mean it's not exactly the first time Intel has misled consumers but that 28 core Bell was pretty bad of course the key thing with this product that remains up in the air is the price tag Intel's top-end 18 core skylake extra refresh cpu which we'll get to in a moment costs $2,000 or so while the Zeeland platinum 8180 costs a cool ten thousand dollars considering the xeon w31 75 ex is basically a better higher clocked 8180 who knows what sort of price tag it will command will entail prices above the 8180 i mean they can't make it too cheap or Intel would cannibalize 8180 sales so without a daddy will be a very very expensive product and who knows how competitive it will be against a mb's 32 core offering and then there's the motherboards built to support this process which appear virtually unchanged from what Intel used at Computex the asou ROG Dominus Xtreme has two 24-pin power connectors plus four eight pin connectors and two six pins plus a monstrous vrm solution it's possible all these connectors are just to facilitate overclocking the chip but that still seems like a ridiculous setup when again the 2990 WX works just fine on x3 ninety nine boards and can be overclocked with that needing to 24 pin connectors and while we don't have pricing for the Dominus you can bet it will be very expensive to go along with the 31 75 X so like we predicted at Computex it seems like the 31 75 X is a marketing stunt and Intel's attempt to have the world's fastest single socket CP or something along those lines because it's highly unlikely that it will be a product worth purchasing for the vast majority of bias even among those thinking is spending thousands of dollars just on a workstation CPU this 28 core base will almost certainly be a much much worse value by than either Intel's LG 1866 products or enemies thread Ripper now let's move into talking about Intel skylake X refresh otherwise known as basement falls refresh so what we have here is a selection of CPUs ranging from 8 cores and 16 threads up to 18 cores and 36 threads essentially replacing Skylark acts with equivalent parts the six core i7 7800 X doesn't have a direct replacement with this refreshed lineup instead the i7 1900 X is an 8 core chip and then it goes up from there so there's a couple of interesting things to note here spec wise nearly every part has receive a clock speed boost both to the bass and boost clock the 18 core I 999 80 XE jumps up from 2.5 gigahertz base and 4.4 gigahertz boost to 3.0 gigahertz pace and 4.5 gigahertz boost within the same 165 watt TDP some chips have smaller bumps but generally we're seeing gains from 100 to 400 megahertz while the TDP isn't a good metric for power consumption the fact that the chips have a higher base clocks under the same TDP could suggest better efficiency possibly from manufacturing them on 40 nanometer + + rather than 40 nanometer + we'll have to test them to find out for sure of course other interesting things are all chips now have a 165 watt TDP previously the 12 quart and lower were 140 watts but now everything is the full 165 Watts l3 caches also been improved for the 12 quart and lower CPU jumping from as low as 11 megabytes in the 8 core 78 20 X - 16 point 5 megabytes in the i7 98 20x the 8 core also gets a full 40 for PCIe lanes previously it was restricted to just 28 lanes and guessing this was done to give people a reason to buy it over the eight core I $9.99 hundred K of course on platforms like I said 390 the other somewhat unusual thing is the introduction of a second 10 core processor it looks like this was done to keep the line up at 7 SKUs but with Intel ditching the 6 core that had to double up one SKU in some way so in the base model 9800 X is now 8 cores the 98 20 X is 10 cores and the 9900 X world that resumes normal proceedings at 10 cores as well considering all skylight extra fresh chips are unlocked do you think the higher-end 9900 X wouldn't be worth buying as it's a hunt dolls more expensive and only gives you clock speed boost so you could definitely achieve on the 98 20x with overclocking however the 9900 X does feature more level through a cache which could come in handy depending on the workload it won't be a big deal for a lot of users who would likely be better off with the 98 20 X Bears at least one reason to go for the 9900 X instead now that all that's out of the way the most interesting thing by far here is that Intel hasn't been aggressive on pricing whatsoever they've basically completely ignored ambe's thread Ripper platform and gone with the exact same pricing they're used for previous skylake x parts the I $9.99 80 XE is the same 1979 dollar US of course trade price as the i9 79 80 XE for example and that holds true for the rest of the line the only potentially better value product here is the 889 dollar ten core iron 998 20x which offers a $100 say beyond the ten core higher nine seventy nine hundred x but otherwise is just a bit strange that nothing else has become more competitive for example ambi is currently selling the 16 core thread Ripper 29 50 X for nine hundred dots which is a great buy as a versatile workstation CPU capable of handling most multi-core workloads with these Intel's direct competitor is still just a 10 core CPU which the 2950 X will handle the smoke inverse workloads where it's the 14 and 16 core chips there will be much more competitive yet the 14 core is still priced at around $1400 500 dollars more than the 29 50 X while the 16 core sets you back a huge $1,700 it just seems a little bizarre to me that Intel hasn't even bothered to make skylake X more competitive it's almost like they are straight up handing aim to your win in this market to ensure they don't eat any of their Zeeland sales sure when you compare this new generation solid Intel's last generation of h EDT chips you are getting slight clock speed bumps and more cash for the same price but Intel was quite far behind thread Ripper in terms of value and after this launch well they remained so and I haven't even mentioned ambe's 32 core 2990 WX in this part of the video yet which retails for $1,800 and will remain in competition with Intel's 18 core I $9.99 ATX C at $2,000 neither of these chips are great value buyers but again it's interesting that in the workloads where AMD's multi die design excel like 3d modeling and rendering thread Ripper will still be offering much more performance at a lower cost so a bit of a strange launching from Intel we have new skylake extra fresh processes that don't seem any more competitive against the red ripper than the previous generation with only minor clock speed bumps at the same price alongside a 28 chord ship that will likely cost a sweet fortune requires a ridiculous motherboard with loads of power connectors and doesn't clock anywhere near five gigahertz I'm not really sure what the point of this lineup is in many ways I think Intel would have been better off simply keeping the original Skylark X on the market and giving it a price cut that way they'd save engineering resources and would be more competitive with AMD instead what we've got is a pretty disappointing refreshed lineup that really doesn't look like offering anything intel didn't already provide perhaps their struggles with ten nanometer have led to this they can't transition actually to really any chips to ten nanometers yet to make use of their long-awaited new architecture and all the benefits of a node shrink and they also can't add any more callers without redoing the entire design which would be pointless on 14 nanometers or of course they could shift to a new platform and they did the ladder with the Xeon w31 75 X they can't simply bump up a six core CPU up to eight core and call it a day which is pretty much what they did with the 9700 K and 9900 K let me know what you guys think about this new lineup in the comments below interested to hear your thoughts and whether you think any of these CPUs will be competitive with thread Ripper as always subscribe for more content like this give it a like if you enjoyed it consider supporting us on our patreon to gain access to our exclusive discord chat now I'll catch you in the next one you