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 |
