Skylake-X And Kaby Lake-X Thread

[SteelCrysis]

The refreshes have been launched: https://www.techpowerup.com/249508/intel...y-launched

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/int...902-8.html

AMD leaves ECC memory support enabled, if that's important to you. Intel disables it in an effort to protect the Xeon family. Intel leaves all of its PCIe connectivity turned on across the refreshed Skylake-X chips, but AMD already does the same thing. Solder-based thermal interface material was a good choice on Intel's part this time around. However, we consider it less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Meanwhile, Ryzen Threadripper 2950X costs half as much as the Core i9-9980XE and serves up competitive performance in a great many workloads. We think that makes it the obvious value choice for high-end desktop enthusiasts who play games, stream video, create content, and crunch code.

If you're not ready to sink thousands of dollars into a HEDT CPU, compatible motherboard, premium power supply, and water-cooling loop, consider a Core i9-9900K instead. It'd give you a taste of the high-end desktop life using a mainstream platform. The Core i9-9900K isn’t going to win any value awards, but it's an attractive option for well-heeled enthusiasts looking for the fastest gaming platform out there.

While we aren’t particularly excited about the Core i9-9980XE's iterative improvements, more aggressive Turbo Boost bins, larger caches, and full access to the PCI Express controller make downstream models more interesting than their previous-gen equivalents. The Core i9-9980XE itself is a powerful piece of hardware for heavy computing. There's a lot to like if you really do need high-end accommodations. We're simply turned off by Intel's unwillingness to budge on pricing versus the competition.

https://techreport.com/review/34253/inte...reviewed/9

The only complaint some may harbor about Intel's refreshed Core X chips is that the company didn't see any cause to cut prices on its high-end chips this time around. The reason, I imagine, is that AMD and Intel are trying to sell high-end desktop buyers two different stories of performance as competition heats up at the top of the CPU heap.

In the $1200-and-up range we're concerned with today, AMD seems plenty willing to make chips that really rip in workloads where sheer core count dominates, like rendering and some varieties of scientific computing. The tradeoff is that Threadripper WX chips can fall far behind in other tasks. That inconsistency leads to Threadripper WX chips' lower-than-might-be-expected standings in our overall value chart, even as they excel in a few particular workloads.
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Ultimately, AMD's X399 platform still offers higher core counts for the dollar and fewer restrictions on RAM capacity or types (including ECC support), but thanks to that renewed competition, fans of the blue team are undoubtedly getting more for their money than they were a year ago, whether in higher clocks, a better process technology, the potential for cooler operation, or more CPU-connected PCIe lanes in lower-end parts.

Whether those improvements are enough to draw buyers back into the Skylake-X fold as excitement builds around AMD's next-generation server CPUs—and the potential Threadrippers derived from them—is a chapter yet to be written. For the moment, though, Intel is doing its best to put a happy ending on this chapter of its highest-end desktop chips, and a Core i9-9980XE ticking away at 4.5 GHz or better will make even the most demanding enthusiasts quite happy indeed.