new I9 line price/spec, upto 36 core

[firejuggler]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017...-threads-2000/

[ixfd64]

It's actually 18 physical cores and 36 threads.

[firejuggler]

yeah, my bad.

[VictordeHolland]

Intel's answer to Threadripper:

Intel i9-7980XE 18 cores, 36T
Yes, it is the new performance king on desktop, but it costs $2000
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11839...9-7960x-review

[Mysticial]

Originally Posted by VictordeHolland

Intel's answer to Threadripper:

Intel i9-7980XE 18 cores, 36T
Yes, it is the new performance king on desktop, but it costs $2000
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11839...9-7960x-review

Even at $2000, I've lost track of how many people on OCN are already lining up and pre-ordering that chip. Some are even lined up waiting to buy the binned ones at 10 - 50% premium with a reduced warranty.

The entire > $1000 chip idea started with the 6950X as an experiment to see how much the high-end market is willing to pay for the best. Intel reported that it sold better than expected. So now they up it to $2000.

This basically proves that the demand for the absolute best (while tiny) is completely price insensitive. If Intel starts selling overclockable 28-core chips for $5000 USD unsoldered and $6000 soldered, I won't be surprised if the latter flies off the shelves like crazy.

Admittedly, the 7980XE isn't terrible in terms of price/performance (as was the case for the 6950X). So it is a reasonable chip from a business standpoint if you need the computing power. But it does show that people are willing to pay unlimited amounts of money for unlimited performance.

[ATH]

Seems like you still need a custom built water cooling system to use these processors fully or even decently.

For $2000 they could have added 6-channel (hexa channel?) RAM support like the Xeon models

[VictordeHolland]

Originally Posted by Mysticial

This basically proves that the demand for the absolute best (while tiny) is completely price insensitive. If Intel starts selling overclockable 28-core chips for $5000 USD unsoldered and $6000 soldered, I won't be surprised if the latter flies off the shelves like crazy.

The cheapest 28 core Xeons cost $8700 and the top of the line (best bin) 10k, so 6k would be a bargain ;)

[Mysticial]

Originally Posted by ATH

Seems like you still need a custom built water cooling system to use these processors fully or even decently.

For $2000 they could have added 6-channel (hexa channel?) RAM support like the Xeon models

From what I'm seeing, I don't think it's quite as bad as it looks. The 7900X overheats from just pulling 300W. But the reviews that I'm seeing of the 7980XE seem to have it pulling up to 500W before hitting the same limits.

The reason is likely that the cooling bottleneck isn't so much the cooler, but it's the contact between the die and IHS due to the pigeon poop. On my 7900X, the air coming out of the 360 radiator isn't even hot even though the CPU is hitting 100C. On the 7980XE, the die, the # of cores, and the contact surface area with the IHS are all proportionally higher. So the bottleneck of getting heat from the die to the IHS should be about the same.

Originally Posted by VictordeHolland

The cheapest 28 core Xeons cost $8700 and the top of the line (best bin) 10k, so 6k would be a bargain ;)

The same can be said about the 7980XE vs. the Xeon Gold 6150. ($2000 vs. $3358)

The server variants have 6-channel memory, ECC, and multi-processor support. That's what you get for the premium that they cost. (Whether it's worth that premium depends on the customer.)

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Mysticial

The reason is likely that the cooling bottleneck isn't so much the cooler, but it's the contact between the die and IHS due to the pigeon poop. On my 7900X, the air coming out of the 360 radiator isn't even hot even though the CPU is hitting 100C. On the 7980XE, the die, the # of cores, and the contact surface area with the IHS are all proportionally higher. So the bottleneck of getting heat from the die to the IHS should be about the same.

Until Intel offers a liquid-metal die-to-IHS version, I wouldn't even consider one of these were it being offered at a blue-light-special half-price sale. Ridiculous of Intel to lose most of the performance gain by cheaping out on the inside-the-lid cooling. That's worse than using a crap stock cooler, because the latter is something the user can swap out easily or (as I recently did on my old Haswell CPU) replace the crap default TIM with something better, as opposed to delidding the $%@#^ CPU, which is the only way to improve the die cooling on the i9.

[Mysticial]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Until Intel offers a liquid-metal die-to-IHS version, I wouldn't even consider one of these were it being offered at a blue-light-special half-price sale. Ridiculous of Intel to lose most of the performance gain by cheaping out on the inside-the-lid cooling. That's worse than using a crap stock cooler, because the latter is something the user can swap out easily or (as I recently did on my old Haswell CPU) replace the crap default TIM with something better, as opposed to delidding the $%@#^ CPU, which is the only way to improve the die cooling on the i9.

To Intel, the pigeon poop is good enough. They don't sell any high TDP chips. The desktop parts top out at 165W and the server parts top out at 220W.

Pigeon poop TIM, as bad as it is, is enough to dissipate up to around 250 - 300W on the LCC die size. I can run all 10 of my cores at 4.5 GHz non-AVX with the temps topping out at 95C. Dropping to 4.3 GHz keeps things below 85C. I currently run non-AVX all-cores at 4.5 GHz, but I drop Tj.Max to 85C so that it simply throttles on anything that really pushes it.

IOW, the crappy TIM is more than sufficient for stock settings - which is really all Intel cares about.

I posted a half-serious compiracy theory over on OCN: http://www.overclock.net/t/1635932/i...#post_26271644

In reality, Intel doesn't care. The enthusiast population is negligibly small compared to everything else. So every penny they save in manufacturing translates into an increase in profit - regardless of how many enthusiasts they piss off in the process.

[ATH]

Originally Posted by Mysticial

Pigeon poop TIM, as bad as it is, is enough to dissipate up to around 250 - 300W on the LCC die size. I can run all 10 of my cores at 4.5 GHz non-AVX with the temps topping out at 95C. Dropping to 4.3 GHz keeps things below 85C. I currently run non-AVX all-cores at 4.5 GHz, but I drop Tj.Max to 85C so that it simply throttles on anything that really pushes it.

Is that air cooled, standard water cooling or custom water cooling?