Intel Confirms Full Skylake-X Family Specs, 2.6GHz Core i9-7980XE 18-Core Beast Ships September 25th
The three remaining pieces to the Skylake-X puzzle are the Core i9-7940X, Core i9-7960X and Core i9-7980XE, which are 14-, 16- and 18-core processors respectively. While Intel had revealed pricing for all three processors when the Core X-Series was officially announced in May, final specs weren’t available at the time.
Intel today confirmed that the Core i9-7940X will have a base clock of 3.1GHz, Turbo Boost of 4.3GHz and Turbo Boost Max 3.0 of 4.4GHz. The Core i9-7960X gets a big cut in base frequency, dropping to 2.8GHz. The top-of-the-line $1,999 Core i9-7980XE’s base clock is even lower, coming in at 2.6GHz. Given that it has 18-cores to keep cool, it was expected that the Core i9-7980XE would come up with the short straw with regards to clock speeds. Turbo Boost and Turbo Boost Max 3.0 of frequencies for this top-end chip come in at 4.2GHz and 4.4GHz respectively.
All three chips have 44 PCIe lanes, support for DDR4-2666 memory and a TDP of 165W. The Core i9-7940X, Core i9-7960X and Core i9-7980XE are also confirmed to have 19.25MB, 22MB and 24.75MB of L3 cache respectively.
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In addition to officially revealing specifications for the full Core X-Series processor family, Intel announced that the Core i9-7920X (12 cores) will be available starting August 28th. The 14-, 16- and 18-core Core-X processors will be available on September 25th.
While Intel is expecting for all eyes to be on Core-X in the HEDT market, AMD is hoping to steal some attention with its competing Ryzen Threadripper family of processors. Available in 8-, 12-, and 16-core SKUs, Ryzen Threadripper promises to deliver comparable (or superior performance) while undercutting the Core X-Series.
These are the officially confirmed members of the Ryzen Threadripper family:
- Ryzen Threadripper 1900X: 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3.8/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost)
- Ryzen Threadripper 1920X: 12 Cores, 24 Threads, 3.5/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost)
- Ryzen Threadripper 1950X: 16 Cores, 32 Threads, 3.4/4.0 GHz (Base Clock/Precision Boost)
As we’ve already shown with our performance preview, the $999 Ryzen Threadripper 1950X offers a lot of bang for the buck compared to the 10-core Core i9-7900X. It’s definitely a great time to be a PC gaming enthusiast, and we have both Intel and AMD to thank for the healthy competition that is now brewing.
