Intel is finally ready to share full specifications for its higher-end Core i9 (Skylake-X) processors, including its flagship Core i9-7980XE, an Extreme Edition chip with 18 physical cores and 36 threads.
Up until this point, Intel had only revealed speeds and feeds for its Core X-series up through the Core i9-7900X, a $1,000 10-core/20-thread CPU clocked at 3.3GHz to 4.3GHz (4.5GHz via Turbo Max 3.0). Intel listed higher-end processor options as part of its Skylake-X lineup, but only shared core/thread counts and pricing. Now we have details for the entire lineup:
The Core i9-7980XE features a 2.6GHz base clockspeed. That’s not terribly exciting, though we’re not real concerned with base clocks since Intel’s chips do a good job of hitting Turbo clocks as needed. In that regard, the Core i9-7980XE has a Turbo clock of 4.2GHz, and can hit 4.4GHz in single-threaded workloads. Those are both 100MHz lower than the maximum we’ve seen on Skylake-X, which is good to see.
The Core i9-7980XE will also have 24.75MB of L3 cache, the most of any Core X-series chip, along with 44 PCIe lanes and a 165W TDP. Of course, you have to pay to play in the deep end—in this case, the asking price is $1,999.
Moving down the list, Intel also filled in the blanks for its Core i9-7920X, Core i9-7940X, and Core i9-7960X processors. Turbo clocks are pretty consistent throughout the entire Core i9 family, which means that real-world performance will largely depend on how well an application takes advantage of multiple cores and threads.
These are all unlocked processors, meaning buyers will be able to try and push clockspeeds higher than Intel’s official specifications. That said, we don’t anticipate there being a ton of headroom on the Core i9-7980XE, at least compared to the CPUs that sit underneath it.
But the above slide only gives the base and maximum Turbo Boost clockspeeds. The complete official ‘stock’ clocks for various core loads are arguably more important, and Intel provided us with that data as well. Here are the core load Turbo Boost 2.0 clocks for the full line of Skylake-X parts, for reference:
Intel is planning to release the Core i9-7920X on August 28. The Core i9-7940X, Core i9-7960X, and Core i9-7980XE will be available starting September 25.
