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 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.
Buy cheap, buy twice :p
My 1950x is for F@H and rendering only, no gaming. X399 fatality pro MB.
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At first I was going to ask "why don't they just call this the 9940XE?" but perhaps Intel is marketing this based on it's overall performance rather than the theoretical performance if you had LN2. But that gets to be more confusing, because it seems like Intel is basically shooting themselves in the foot by saying "eh, you don't need to spend extra with all those cores, this cheaper model at a higher clock will do just fine". As Hilbert pointed out, you could just get the 9940X and overclock it (or really, the 7940X). Meanwhile, it doesn't look good on their Xeons, which are much more expensive and have much lower clock speeds.
Sticking with the 44 lanes is no surprise. Intel isn't going to restructure the entire socket to fit in a few more. Whenever Intel hurries up and makes a new architecture, that's when I expect more lanes.
Also, I'd say AMD is already "getting it together". They have a lot of room for improvement but if the rumors about Zen2 are true, it looks like those improvements are just around the corner.
These are a bargain compared to their Xeons.
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Most of us are of same opinion. But Ryzen 3k series specifications are not confirmed, yet. That leaves a lot of uncertainty. Only thing which is certain is performance per Watt which is not bad at all.
I wonder if 7nm AM4 will be here before 7nm TR4 refresh.
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I would assume so. First, aren't the leaked photos of Zen2 all of AM4 stuff so far? But also, I'm sure AM4 brings in more money than TR4, or at the very least, will give AMD more attention (and as long as that attention is good, that currently matters the most for them right now). Considering AMD's roadmap for AM4, I think it'd be smart of them to get those parts out ASAP while Intel isn't able to respond to them.
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Epic fail from Intel. Who´s going to buy a CPU like this???
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2000$ for this crippled chip? No thanks. Ryzen 3000 cant come soon enough.
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255W TDP?!? With that many cores clocked so high, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It just feels like I'm looking at a GPU instead of a CPU.
The 12v rails will be working hard if paired with a decent graphics card.
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255W TDP?!? With that many cores clocked so high, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It just feels like I'm looking at a GPU instead of a CPU.
The 12v rails will be working hard if paired with a decent graphics card.
255w is nothing in OC world :p We have had power usage on cpu's over 250w overclocked in over 10 years

My old delidded 4core 3770k @ 5,2ghz on EK water used more than 250w

Old AMD FX cpu's was almost stock 150 w LOL
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The 9990XE was originally reported as a high-clocking 14 core CPU. Way to find a reason to further bash Intel, I guess.
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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.
I'm running 3 different Threadripper systems at home 1950x, 2950x and 2990WX, on the asus zenith extreme with no high DPC latency issues on either of them. the 2990WX System runs some very high end audio equipment that would be very sensitive to any latency issues. that's unfortunate you experience this issue but I can only imagine it has something to do with the Asrock x399.
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I just wait for x499 or something once u used to quad channel u never look back again