Intel promises that its next generation of Core-X “Cascade Lake-X” processors will deliver better performance per dollar than its competitor AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper chips.
The announcement was made at the IFA in Berlin. The interesting thing is that it implies that the pricing policy of these high-end desktop CPUs will be competitive. It has to be said that AMD has hit the HEDT market very hard with powerful threadrippers due to an exponential increase in the number of physical cores.
What we know is that Intel is working on new Core-X 14 nm ++ processors. These Cascade Lake-X will be compatible with existing and updated LGA 2066 motherboards. We should not expect a revolution, but a smooth development with more supported PCIe lines and frequencies.
Cascade Lake-X and the Performance to Dollar Ratio
These small improvements are accompanied by radical change. According to an Intel document, Cascade Lake-X will offer up to twice the return per dollar as the previous generation (Skylake-X). We also have confirmation that these chips will be available next month, in October.
This document “EMPOWERING CREATORS” contains a diagram or an Intel Skylake X chip for reference. It is not the total performance, but the performance indicator per dollar. By definition, it is 100.
Lake-X Waterfall and performance ratio per dollar
Cascade Lake-X is revealed with a much higher ratio between 174 and 209, which also exceeds that of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX (32 cores) estimated at 130, or a Threadripper 2950X with 16 cores.
We don’t have any information about the test protocol used by Intel to measure the performance of these different processors. This could be its most recent exposure to real testing.
Till now, this significant improvement in dollar performance could be the result of aggressive price repositioning. For many, it is difficult to see another way to achieve this result. With an ultra-controlled 14 nm, Intel has little room for maneuver in terms of frequency and core count.
The current Core i9-9980XE is positioned at 2000 dollars compared to 1800 dollars for the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX with 32 cores.