INTEL CORE
I9-7980XE
http://www.intel.com £1,800
The highest echelon of AMD’s Ryzen architecture, the Threadripper 1950X, is a beast,
although certainly not designed for gaming. What it did do, however, is demand a response
from Intel, and, oh boy, a response is what we got.This is not a cheap processor; you could build two
competitive 1080p systems for the price of this
CPU. However, it’s a part designed for those who
profit from more cores in a working environment.
That said, it’s impressive at gaming. It’s hard to
deny just how good Intel’s core Skylake-X
architecture is. Its single-core prowess is second
only to the latest Coffee Lake parts. Yes, really.
In-game it dominates all. There’s no gaming
mode, just pure brute force powering all of
those cores.As far as rendering goes, it’s only 300 points off
of AMD’s Threadripper part in CineBench, despite
the excessive price difference. However, unlike TR,
it’s only after you overclock it that the 7980XE
becomes unhinged. Power draw may sail through
the roof, but we saw a 15% boost in CineBench
going from 3.4 GHz to 4.4 GHz. That’s the
equivalent of adding six cores to the part.
BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 2.7 GHZ/3.4 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 18/36 /
LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 24.75MB /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 128GB DDR4 @ 2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 44CPU1
PRICE
£1,800 is a huge
amount of money. Even
given its extensive
performance, the price
point has contributed to
the 71% verdict.2
GAMING
PROWESS
The i9-798OXE is one of
the highest scoring
processors we’ve ever
reviewed for gaming.3
POWER DRAW
At stock, power
draw is concrete at
258W under load.
However if you start
cranking it higher, you
can easily see 500W
under load.4
OVERCLOCK
SUPERIORITY
We saw scores of 4,289
points in CineBench R15
at 4.4 GHz, only limited
by the integrity of the
board’s VRM.71 %
Hardware
REVIEWS