Intel Flagship Core i9-9990XE has only 14 activated cores (and not 18)
It isn't exactly a secret that Intel is having issues keeping many cores at a high clock frequency under control. For that reason you often see one or two threads at say 4.5 GHz, then when four are used something 4.2 GHz and all cores say 3.9 GHz.
Last year there has been a many-core race, thanks to AMD. To date Intel has a hard time ranking high in the benchmarks, as as-soon-as all cores kick in, the base clock lowers itself as the procs fight heat and energy consumption.
So what do you do when you release a new flagship proc? Well, you design it in such a manner that you can reach high rankings in the reviews of course, and that is with high clock frequencies on as many cores as possible without hitting your thermal and TDP limit.
Why this story you wonder? Well, Intel has done something extremely weird. As you know they are releasing a new flagship Core i9-9990XE processor. The previous flagship was the i9-9980XE with 18 cores/36 threads.
Guess what? Intel is trading in cores for frequency as the new Core i9-9990XE processor has only 14 cores and thus 28 threads. This menas they have disabled four cores to trade in towards a higher clock frequency and manage the TDP. Mind you that the TDP for this part still is a whopping 255 Watts. Pudget system has had their hands on the proc and tested it. We expect this to be a 2000 USD part. Honestly guys, just get yourself a 9900K and save yourself 1500 bucks?
Cores / Threads |
Base / Boost (GHz) |
L3 Cache (MB) |
PCIe 3.0 | DRAM | TDP | MSRP/RCP | Price Per Core |
|
Core i9-9990XE | 14 / 28 | 4.0 / 5.1 | 19.25 | 44 | Quad DDR4-2666 |
255W | NA | NA |
Core i9-9980XE | 18 / 36 | 3.0 / 4.5 | 24.75 | 44 | Quad DDR4-2666 | 165W | $1979 | $109 |
Core i9-9940X | 14 / 28 | 3.3 / 4.5 | 19.25 | 44 | Quad DDR4-266 | 165W | $1387 | $99 |
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Dat is for sure intel new technology.
Intel supa 4/18 core boost

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WOW. Still sticking with them 44 on chip PCI-e lanes eh. I'll still stick with my 3930k/3970X for now. Until either AMD or intel get it together. Really its intel who needs to do so....
Just wish these prices would get gouged in our favor as consumers. This is truly ridiculous as I've never seen prices like this in my life of building......ever.
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It's becoming ever more certain that the only reasonable choice is AMD (Yeah, I know, that sounds like an ad...

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I bought a Threadripper 2920X along with a Asrock X399 Taichi motherboard. I got nothing but high DPC latency. It caused games to micro stutter and audio to snap/crackle/pop. In the end I RMA’d both.
I replaced them with Intel’s i7-9800X and a EVGA Dark X299 motherboard. System runs perfectly fine and gives great performance when gaming.
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I just wait for x499 or something once u used to quad channel u never look back again