(Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp. is seeking buyers for its connected home division, a unit that makes chips used in home internet access gear, according to people familiar with the matter. The chipmaker has hired a financial adviser and is seeking to sell the unit that has annual sales of about $450 million, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. A representative for the Santa Clara, California-based company declined to comment. Intel Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan has said he’s looking at the company’s operations and will explore options for areas where it isn’t competitive. The company sold its smartphone modem business to Apple Inc. in a $1 billion deal in July. Swan has pointed to the money-losing memory business as an area where he might look for a partnership. The connected home business makes semiconductors that provide wireless connections in home routers and gateways. It offers a range of chips that enable WiFi and manage data traffic for consumers. Competitors include Broadcom Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. Throughout its history, Intel has created units that push new enabling technologies as a way to further its central processor unit business. The connected home initiative is part of an attempt to make sure Intel’s computing chips find their way into the increasing number of smart gadgets being used in households. In its most recent quarter Intel’s Internet of Things group had sales of $1 billion, a gain of 9% from the same period a year earlier. To contact the reporters on this story: Liana Baker in New York at [email protected];Ian King in San Francisco at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at [email protected], ;Daniel Hauck at [email protected], Michael Hytha, Andrew Pollack For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com ©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) shares traded higher by 1.6% on Monday despite management confirming last week the company is still dealing with supply problems. Following the frustrating supply news, at least one large option trader seemed to reconsider his or her bullish positions in Intel on Monday. Here’s a look at the trading action in Intel. The TradesOn Monday morning, Benzinga Pro subscribers received 12 option alerts related to unusually large trades of Intel options. Here are the most noteworthy trades:
Of the 12 total large Intel option trades Wednesday morning, just three involved calls purchased at or near the ask — trades typically seen as bullish. The remaining nine trades were calls sold at or near the bid or puts purchases at or near the ask — trades typically seen as bearish. Why It's ImportantEven traders who stick exclusively to stocks often monitor option market activity closely for unusually large trades. Given the relative complexity of the options market, large options traders are typically considered to be more sophisticated than the average stock trader. Many of these large options traders are wealthy individuals or institutions who may have unique information or theses related to the underlying stock. Unfortunately, stock traders often use the options market to hedge against their larger stock positions, and there’s no surefire way to determine if an options trade is a standalone position or a hedge. In this case, given the timing and the sizes of some of the January 2021 Intel option trades on Monday, traders should understand there’s a strong possibility that at least some of them could have represented institutional hedging. More Supply Issues In 2020?The majority of the large option trades in Intel on Monday are bearish in nature, suggesting the large Intel trader may have thrown in the towel on a 2020 bullish thesis following the recent supply issue headlines. After a year of dealing with issues surrounding Intel’s 10nm manufacturing process, the company apologized to investors last week and said market growth has continued to outpace Intel’s production capacity as it works to ramp up its supply. While Monday’s call sales may represent an Intel bull cashing out of a position after the stock gained 31% in the past three months, the fact that the calls sold are dated so far into the future makes it less likely they are related to any near-term momentum trade. Benzinga’s TakeThe lone January 2021 call purchase in the middle of the rest of the call sales likely also represented a sale, even though it took place at the ask price. Given the pattern of selling and the 500-share lot size (the same as many of the other call sales), the trader likely simply got one trade in at the ask price due to fluctuations in the market. Intel's stock traded around 458.44 per share at time of publication. Do you agree with this take? Email [email protected] with your thoughts. Related Links: © 2019 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Read More Large Intel Option Trader Dumps $1.3M In Jan. 2021 Calls - Benzinga : https://ift.tt/2OIbrMb![]() I have been a CPU reviewer for just over 18 years. In that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to observe a handful of truly game-changing launches. Today is one of them. The Threadripper 3960X and 3970X will never be mistaken for inexpensive processors, but AMD just redefined what’s possible in a high-end PC workstation. There’s another reason this launch is unique — it’s the first time AMD and Intel have launched CPUs on exactly the same day. We have combined our reviews of Cascade Lake and the Threadripper 3960X and 3970X into a single document to preserve my sanity. Intel isn’t standing still. The Cascade Lake 10980XE launches today, with a dramatically reduced price compared with the Intel HEDT platforms of old, and a new value proposition for itself at the $1,000 price point. Intel has finally trimmed its prices and it’s targeting the weakest point in AMD’s overall lineup — the gap between the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X and the 24-core Ryzen Threadripper 3960X. The Chips We’re CoveringSince this is a three-way CPU review I should start by introducing the contenders. There are three of them: These two CPUs are built on AMD’s Zen 2 CPU architecture and use the same chiplet design as the Ryzen 3000 7nm APUs Meanwhile, in Intel’s corner, we have the Core i9-10980XE: The 10980XE and its fellow compatriots are built on Intel’s 14nm++ process. These chips have a higher TDP than in the past (165W) and are supposed to offer higher overall performance as a result. The major story with Cascade Lake is the significant price cut — roughly 50 percent compared with previous-generation CPUs. The 10980XE weighs in at about half the price of the Core i9-9980XE — which means it’s also much cheaper than either of the two Threadripper’s we will be reviewing. The primary competition for the Core i9-9980XE is the Ryzen 9 3950X, at $750. The Core i9-9980XE and 10980XE are the most powerful Intel CPUs we have on-site; Intel did not offer a Xeon system for comparison against Threadripper. While we prefer to compare on price, we’ve always compared top-end products against each other, even when there were wide gaps in cost. What Threadripper Makes PossibleThe 3960X and 3970X are extremely expensive processors by desktop standards, weighing in at $1,400 and $2,000 apiece. I won’t blame you for raising an eyebrow when I say the following: The 3960X and 3970X are going to make ultra-high-end workstations much less expensive than they’ve ever been. Not many people play in this space — frankly, not many have reason to — but the ones who do are going to be very happy with what these CPU’s bring to the table. Up until today, AMD’s Threadripper has focused on disrupting Intel’s workstation business by offering excellent overall performance-per-dollar. A 16-core Threadripper 2950X was always faster than the 10-core Core i9-7900X it was priced against, but it fell well behind CPUs like the Core i9-9980XE. The 9980XE wasn’t priced competitively — at nearly $2,000, it was over double the 2950X — but it was the unambiguously faster processor. As of today, AMD and Intel have swapped these positions. Intel’s price cuts have positioned Cascade Lake as a potential price/performance contender, while AMD’s Threadripper 3960X and 3970X are redefining the performance envelope at the new top of the workstation market. Intel has no HEDT part it can position against these CPUs. While it does manufacture a 28-core chip that would conceivably give the 3970X a run for its money (and believe me, we’d love to see the comparison), the Xeon W-3275M (2.5GHz – 4.6GHz) is a $7,453 CPU that would be facing off against a $2,000 CPU, and it’s by no means certain that AMD would lose that battle. AMD’s New Threadripper Platform: TRX40Before we dive into performance, let’s talk a bit about the chips themselves. The diagram below shows how each Threadripper die connects to the central I/O block. Each die can read 51.2GB/s of data per second and write 25.6GB/s at a 1600MHz fabric clock (equivalent to DDR4-3200, as RAM speed scales with fabric clock). According to AMD, it reduced IFOP (Infinity Fabric On Package) power consumption by 27 percent with Threadripper 3, allowing it to divert that power to the CPU cores. The move to the new TRX40 platform and the lack of backward compatibility for third-gen Threadripper has left a lot of first and second-gen Threadripper customers unhappy, but AMD has stated that the shift was necessary in order to support the increased power draw and long-term scaling needs of the company’s future CPUs. AMD has explicitly not made any additional long-term commitments to TRX40 like it had made to AM4, but the company’s overall history of chipset support is good. One major upgrade to the TRX40 platform is PCIe 4.0 support. There’s a shiny, new PCIe 4.0 x8 lane connecting chipset and CPU, offering 4x the bandwidth of the old PCIe 3.0 x4 link. The new TRX40 supports up to 72 usable PCIe 4.0 lanes and up to 12x USB 3.0 ports. Technically the TRX40 has 88 PCIe 4.0 lanes, but 16 of them are reserved for the system’s use. Threadripper also now supports 256GB of RAM, with ECC support available, if motherboard OEMs choose to provide it. And in the Blue Corner…Since this is a combined review, I want to say a few words about what’s brewing on Intel’s side of the ring. Obviously there’s not as much raw excitement in the air, but Intel’s dramatic price cuts put the Core i9-10980XE Intel’s price cuts will be welcomed by fans of the company and Intel’s share of the workstation and ultra-high-end desktop space dwarfs AMD’s. Threadripper 1 and 2 were both excellent CPUs, in my opinion, but they didn’t exactly seize tons of market share. These price cuts represent a huge price/performance improvement for customers who are dedicated Intel users, and the company has a strong foothold at the $1,000 price point as we head into the performance section of our review. Blender Render Fender BenderNot all memory controllers are created equal, and I’ve historically had more trouble with Intel controllers refusing to run at high RAM clock than AMD CPUs. I’ve found that the Blender standalone benchmark (1.0Beta2) works fairly well as a RAM test and power consumption test both and have started running it for those twin purposes. It’s typically the first test I run on a system. With the 10980XE, I installed Windows 10 and its various drivers, patched up, activated XMP, started the standalone benchmark… and the test crashed at the end of the 4th render scene (there are six, total). Confused, I repeated the test. Same result. Thus began an eight-hour test cycle of activating and de-activating XMP, manually adjusting RAM timing, and testing multiple Windows 10 installations. Part of the reason this took so long is because Blender isn’t a short benchmark. It took ~22 minutes for the application to reach the point where it would crash. It’s reasonable to ask why I didn’t change course and run other tests. The answer is that I was focused on trying to establish a best-in-class configuration for the 10980XE and thought the RAM errors were the result of the controller being pushed above Intel’s spec. I have an Intel 7980XE that will not run at DDR4-3200 and Intel doesn’t formally certify anything above its maximum official clock. Since I knew I didn’t have time to go back and generate a second set of numbers if the first proved to have been built on a bad RAM configuration, I kept testing. And testing. And testing. Finally, I threw a 7900X in the motherboard to see what would happen — and the test completed perfectly. Marco Chiapetta at Hot Hardware was kind enough to run the same test on his own motherboard, confirming that the 10980XE cannot complete the Blender Render standalone benchmark (1.0Beta2). This problem appears limited to the benchmark, other reviewers had no problem with the standalone version of the application and I didn’t observe any systemic crashes throughout my testing. Test SetupTo be added later due to time pressure. Rest assured that i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed. Much like my eyes right now. It’s after 5 AM and I’m going to have to ask your forbearance, Dear Reader. Ditto on the fact that RAM speed isn’t listed for every CPU. Remind me to tell you about my adventures with what I’m calling my Blender Render Fender Bender when I wake up. Non-Game PerformanceCinebench R15AMD wins every position in Cinebench R15, from single-thread (3950X) to multi-thread at 16-core (3950X), to multi-thread at 32-core (the 3970X). The Core i9-10980XE shows some signs of life in single-threaded applications here, with a 6.5 percent uplift over the 9980XE. Multi-threaded performance is essentially flat. Cinebench R20Cinebench R20 repeats the performance pattern of R15. The 3950X again leads single-threaded performance, though the 10980XE picks up about 5 percent compared with the 9980XE. The Threadripper 3970X simply destroys the benchmark, beating the Core i9-10980XE by 1.94x. Scaling between the Ryzen 9 3900X and the Threadripper 3960X is 1.91x — nearly perfect, at least in this test. Dolphin 5.0 EMUDolphin is a Gamecube emulator, its benchmark tends to be sensitive to single-threaded performance and low cache latency. The Core i9-10980XE makes a surprise move here, winning Dolphin over any other CPU. 7zip 19.00 (64-bit)7zip’s compression test is another win for the 10980XE over the 3950X, with the newer Intel CPU beating the 9980XE by an impressive 1.25x. The 3950X still beats both Intel chips on decompression performance, while Threadripper stays true to its name and rips the hell out of the benchmark, nearly hitting 4,000MB/s. Where the 2990WX falls down, the 3970X glides gracefully to a stellar finish. Handbrake 1.22:Handbrake tests encoding in both H.264 and H.265. We encode a 4K video clip using the fast 1080p preset, with the video frame rate set to “Same as Source.” You can definitely see diminishing returns in both encoders as core counts rise, though H.265 benefits more from higher CPU cores than H.264. The Ryzen 9 3950X continues to nimbly dance ahead of the 10980XE, though the latter does improve on its older sibling’s performance. The two Threadrippers aren’t as far ahead of the pack as they’ve been in other tests, but they’re still the fastest chips around. Qt CompileOur Qt compile test is run using Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 on all systems. Antivirus scanners are deactivated for the compile test. The Core i9-9980XE Corona RenderCorona Render is a photorealistic renderer that incorporates Intel’s Embree ray tracing kernels. It can be tested via a standalone benchmark. The Threadripper 2950X manages to edge ahead of the 3900X here, with the 3950X well ahead. The Core i9-9980XE and 10980XE tie things up and would sweep the benchmark… if the Threadripper 3970X and 3960X hadn’t just smashed records. V-Ray Standalone Benchmark:The standalone benchmark for Chaos Group’s V-ray shows that the 2990WX isn’t always the kid at the back of the room eating paste, but it can’t beat the Core i9-9980XE or 10980XE. Neither of those CPUs, meanwhile, were capable of matching either of the Threadripper CPUs. y-cruncher 0.78y-cruncher is a highly optimized application for calculating pi. We used optimized binaries for our Ryzen and Intel CPUs, though the Ryzen binary is actually optimized for Ryzen 1, not the Zen 2 architecture. We specifically used an AVX-512 binary to give the Cascade Lake platform an opportunity to put its best foot forward. The 10980XE picks up about 5 percent over the 9980XE, and both beat the 2990WX. The 3960X and 3970X crush all other competitors, even without an optimized binary. AVX-512 gives Intel a boost, but it’s not enough to overcome the core count hit in and of itself. Vendor-Suggested BenchmarksThe following benchmarks are tests suggested by either Intel or AMD. AMD suggested Keyshot in its Threadripper material, while Intel suggested Matlab and Sony Catalyst. Matlab is a particular pain to authorize — I had to create a new fake email address for every single trial account I wanted to test. This is why there are only Matlab results for three systems — the Core i9-10980XE and the two Threadrippers. KeyshotKeyshot is a 3D rendering application suggested by AMD. It runs extremely well on Threadripper when tested using the built-in Camera_benchmark scene. The uplift from the additional cores is pretty reasonable — 1.2x better performance from a 1.33x core count improvement. Matlab [Updated]I was unaware when I initially ran this benchmark that it made use of a library that refuses to run AVX code properly on AMD CPUs. I will have more to say about this in an upcoming story. Consider the data below to be incomplete. Matlab’s results are rather interesting. They show a mixture of wins and losses for AMD and Intel. If you add up the final times, they’re 38.83 seconds for the 10980XE, 40.71 seconds for the 3960X, and 31.84 seconds for the 3970X. Again, that’s roughly a 1.2x improvement for a 1.3x core count jump. There are some cases where the 10980XE is significantly ahead, and a few where AMD makes up ground. As an Intel-provided test, I would expect this to favor Chipzilla. The point Intel is making here, however, is a valid one. There are specific applications/calculations or tests where Core CPUs show very strong performance relative to Ryzen. Sony Catalyst 2019Intel’s Sony Catalyst Edit test measures how long it takes to render, export, and encode three audio clips into a single 4K video. This test shows the 10980XE turning in impressive performance, but it’s still outperformed by both of the Threadripper competitors. GamesFor gaming, I’ve left the Core i7-9700K to represent lower-end CPUs in this rarefied air. All of the CPUs we’re going to discuss here can game. None of them are gaming CPUs, specifically. You’ll get just as good or better performance from a chip like the 9700K than you will from an ultra-high-end CPU. All of these games are perfectly playable on all of these chips, though Warhammer II on the 2990WX may take some finagling. Ashes of the Singularity: EscalationFirst off, check the title, not the graph. I’ll fix it when I’m alive again. Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is always a bit of an odd duck, and today is no exception. The 3970X and 2990WX(!) are nipping at the 9700K, while the 10980XE is sharply below the 9980XE for unknown reasons. The 3960X also fell off sharply at 4K for unknown reasons. Deus Ex: Mankind DividedDeus Ex: Mankind Divided cares not for your CPU choice. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has an MSAA implementation that hits the GPU like a sackful of bricks. HitmanThe 10980XE picks up some frames on the 9980XE in Hitman, but the Ryzen 9 3970X is still a hair faster. The 2990WX shows a significant weakness in Hitman, but the 3970X has no such problem. Shadow of WarThe 10980XE again picks up a bit of performance over the 9980XE, but all contenders are closely grouped here. Warhammer IIWarhammer II is not a friend to AMD CPUs, but it isn’t overly fond of high core counts, either. The 9700K wins the test, but the 3700X, 3900X, and 3950X account well for themselves. The 10980XE picks up a few frames above the 9980XE but remains behind the various AMD cores. Shadow of the Tomb RaiderEveryone is closely clustered in this test, at all three resolutions. There’s no dominant winner, though the 2950X can be proud of its performance against the 10980XE and 9980XE. ConclusionWith the launch of the Threadripper 3960X and 3970X, Intel’s dramatic price cuts make Cascade Lake objectively a far better deal than any previous Intel Core X CPU. If you bought into Skylake X with, say, a 7900X for $1,000, a 10980XE for $1,000 may be the best upgrade path for your machine (assuming, of course, that you can use the extra cores). At the same time, however, it’s hard to ignore the fact that AMD’s 16-core is now beating Intel’s 18-core in a number of tests. For now, Cascade Lake’s 50 percent price cut will make plenty of people happy, but the Ryzen 9 3950X is nipping at the heels of Intel’s HEDT product line. If the 3950X represents the dog nipping at the back of Intel’s heels, the 3960X and 3970X are the 24-ton and 32-ton elephants sitting on its head. [That’s quite a scene happening here. -Ed] These chips offer amazing, unbeatable performance that Intel cannot match in the short term. It’s not clear when Chipzilla will field a product that can rival what AMD has dropped in-market today. Last year, the 2990WX had too many flaws and shortcomings to be considered a serious product. The 3970X fixes them. Its gaming performance is excellent. Its application performance is phenomenal. Intel has been driven back to a barricade built on 1080p gaming and lightly threaded workloads that are well-tuned for its CPU cores. Given Intel’s long-standing dominance of the market, that barricade is a good deal stronger than it may look to AMD’s most adoring fans — but the company has been driven backward, make no mistake. Cascade Lake will not be driven from the field. While its performance was a bit odd in places, the Core i9-10980XE delivers some nice additional single-threaded performance. But the excitement and energy in the PC desktop market right now is being driven by AMD. The Threadripper 3970X and 3960X represent one of the largest leaps forward for high-end desktop computing that I’ve ever seen any company deliver. Well done. Now Read: Read More AMD Threadripper 3970X, 3960X, and Intel Core i9-10980XE CPUs Tested: Intel Cuts Prices, AMD Redefines What's Possible - ExtremeTech : https://ift.tt/33nVpwt![]() Intel's 10-nanometer Ice Lake processors Stephen Shankland/CNETYour 2021 PC might have 5G connectivity, thanks to Intel and MediaTek. The two companies are partnering to make cellular-connected computers, they both said Monday. Intel will "define" what a 5G PC should look like, and then MediaTek will develop the cellular chip for those devices. Intel also will help make sure the 5G chip works properly and will help computer makers integrate the processor into their devices. Dell and HP are two partners working on 5G laptops using the technology developed by MediaTek and Intel. The first devices should hit the market in early 2021. The 5G PC chip is based in part on MediaTek's Helio M70 5G modem, introduced earlier this year. The partnership helps MediaTek break into a bigger US market and prevents Intel from being shut out of 5G-connected PCs. It also helps Intel defends one of its most important markets: computers. It has long made the majority of chips that go into PCs, but rival Qualcomm has been gaining attention and ground with its processors originally designed for smartphones. Qualcomm's come with better battery life and connectivity not traditionally found in computers. ![]() Now playing: Watch this: Has the new MacBook Pro finally fixed Apple's keyboard... 9:04 Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, people have started to spend more time on their phones and less time on their PCs. They also hold onto computers longer than their mobile devices. The answer for Microsoft and traditional PC makers has been to turn computers into something more like phones. They've been working with Qualcomm on such devices for a couple of years, and Intel, the world's biggest PC chipmaker, has started to jump into the fray. Intel earlier this year introduced its Project Athena initiative, a multiple-company, multiple-year effort to make PCs more like computers. Devices are meant to wake instantly, sport brighter screens for outdoor use and have battery life that lasts all day. Project Athena laptops also need to be able to complete a biometric login process in a second or less after a laptop lid is opened, and Athena gets an additional second to connect to Wi-Fi. The first devices are due this year, but they're not cellular-enabled. For that, users have to turn to Qualcomm-powered PCs. Always-connected PCsSeven years ago, Qualcomm worked with Microsoft and a handful of computer makers on devices that ran a hobbled version of Windows, called Windows RT. They quickly abandoned those Windows RT devices, but over the past couple of years, they revitalized the efforts to put smartphone chips in computers. Two years ago, Qualcomm unveiled its renewed push. The first two devices announced at its Snapdragon Technology Summit in 2017 -- 2-in-1 laptops from HP and Asus -- promised more than 20 hours of battery life, always-on connectivity and the ability to instantly wake up. And importantly, they ran full Windows and could use ordinary Windows apps. They used the Snapdragon 835 processor and the X16 modem. Last year, Qualcomm unveiled its first processor designed specifically for computers, called the Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform. The chip is powerful but also power efficient, giving users multiple days of battery life on a single charge. Many PC makers have started using Qualcomm chips. That includes the Samsung's Galaxy Book S, which was unveiled in August and runs on the 8cx. The ultrathin, ultralight laptop has a 13.3-inch touchscreen and sports 23 hours of battery life. It also has built-in LTE. Getting into 5GQualcomm has one big advantage over Intel: the ability to build 5G chips. While Intel once had grand ambitions in the modem business, it since has pared back its efforts. The company struggled to make a 5G chip for Apple's iPhones, and it exited the cellular modem business after Apple and Qualcomm reached a multiyear chip supply agreement in April. In July, Apple and Intel jointly announced that Apple planned to buy Intel's smartphone modem business for $1 billion. The deal likely gives Apple access to some of Intel's work on 5G technology. There are really only four companies in the world making 5G chips: Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and Huawei. Samsung and Huawei largely only use their 5G chips in their own devices (though a new phone from Vivo will use Samsung's Exynos 5G modem). Intel wouldn't partner with Qualcomm, a company it views as its chief rival. Qualcomm has supplied 5G modems for the vast majority of phones this year. MediaTek, for its part, predominantly supplies modems to Asian handset makers. Its first 5G modem won't work on any of the 5G networks that are live in the US. Intel and MediaTek now hope their efforts will be enough to fend off Qualcomm and attract PC makers. "This partnership with MediaTek brings together industry leaders with deep engineering, system integration and connectivity expertise to deliver 5G experiences on the next generation of the world's best PCs," Gregory Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's client computing group, said in a statement. Read More Intel partners with MediaTek to make 5G chips for PCs - CNET : https://ift.tt/2rsjynX![]() Intel’s journey on 5G has been quite an interesting one. The company was it's slated to compete with the likes of Qualcomm, Huawei, and Samsung in 5G. Eventually, after a few stumbles, the company fell short of expectations and ended up spinning off the majority of the company’s efforts in a $1 billion transaction with Apple that put a question mark around Intel’s client 5G strategy. Ever since the announcement back in April that Intel was getting out of the modem business, there has been a cloud hanging over exactly what Intel planned to do for 5G in client devices since it effectively sold off its modem business. I and many others in the industry saw this coming years ago, and I even detailed the scene earlier this year. Intel + MediaTek With all of that behind us, Intel has decided to disclose its first answer to the 5G question for its computing platforms. Intel has announced that the company will be partnering with MediaTek on the development and implementation of 5G for PCs. More specifically, the partnership will take a slightly modified version of MediaTek’s current M70 5G modem and work to integrate it into PC platforms, which includes both the hardware and software engineering that will be necessary to work in a PC. Intel will lend MediaTek its system integration and co-engineering support to help support OEMs, which may help MediaTek ship even more modems than it had ever expected. MediaTek is, without a doubt, a volume player in the market, mostly playing in the mid-tier and low-end of the market but is starting to make moves that break the company out of that shell, including this one. The two companies expect to have products with the fruits of this 5G partnership shipping in early 2021, more than a year from now. The interesting part about this announcement is that because MediaTek is mostly a billion mobile and embedded player, there are very few conflicts between MediaTek and Intel. This partnership makes sense from a competitive angle and makes a statement as far as Intel’s position on Qualcomm’s modems. Qualcomm has shown quite a dominant position in 5G with the vast majority of 5G phones and devices shipping with its X50 modem this year and more launching late this year with the company’s 2nd generation X55 modem. However, Intel made it quite clear that it decided to move forward with MediaTek on the modem side when it comes to laptops, which means that any laptop using the Intel solution with MediaTek will be a Sub-6GHz only solution for the foreseeable future as MediaTek has yet to give a concrete timeframe on mmWave support. Integration Intel will be integrating MediaTek’s 5G modem with its Wi-Fi 6, which will deliver a comprehensive connectivity solution to those wanting to have access to the latest wireless standards. Intel isn’t quite committing to a date and time when 5G will be a requirement for programs like Intel’s Project Athena, but I expect that in 3 or 4 years, we could probably see it become a standard. Intel will also tap Fibocom to develop the M.2 modules optimized for Intel’s platform scene it is unclear who Intel will use for its 5G front-end solution. The front-end will be crucial for supporting enough bands and operators globally, which Intel claims it’s already working with 20 global carriers and will support dozens of, but I would like to see more details on that. MediaTek hasn’t stated what the M70 could do in terms of band support, which is primarily dependent on the RF front-end. More 5G opportunities What’s interesting about this announcement is that by the time devices do launch with this modem, in 2021, we will most likely be on an entirely different generation of modems from the likes of Qualcomm, Huawei and Samsung, MediaTek’s main competitors in the modem space. That said, this announcement plugs a hole in Intel’s long-term PC strategy, as many wondered how it would be able to compete in the future of mobile PCs without a 5G modem solution. What’s also interesting is that Intel hinted at a 5G partnership with Samsung as well, which I thought would have more detail, but may have been waiting for this announcement to happen first. I suspect that Intel may be dual sourcing its modems for 5G from MediaTek and Samsung, with Samsung possibly being for mmWave solutions or just a pure second source. Nonetheless, Intel had quite a prominent presence at Samsung’s developer conference late last month, and part of that was the announcement of its deeper partnership with Samsung, which included a very small mention of 5G. The potential 5G partnership is relevant because there’s very little to no chance that Samsung will ship a MediaTek modem in its PCs since it sees MediaTek as a competitor. Getting back to mobile 5G Intel previously had a complete end-to-end 5G strategy that involved its chips at every single point of the value chain. While Intel no longer has that complete end-to-end answer with its products, it has found a good partner to grow with them on the client side of 5G. I believe that this helps to shore up Intel’s end-to-end 5G strategy and story, but early 2021 is also quite a way away from now, especially in the mobile market. Thankfully for Intel, at this moment, it still as a pretty strong position in the PC market, but it does have challenges coming from AMD and Qualcomm that are proving a challenge. I believe that Intel had to go out and acquire MediaTek’s 5G modem to shield themselves from not having a 5G PC solution while Qualcomm will be shipping 5G PCs next year in 2020. I believe that Intel had to find a 5G modem partner to calm OEM nerves about Intel’s answer to Qualcomm’s 5G challenge. It remains to be seen how much power and performance this Intel + MediaTek solution will have compared to Qualcomm, but I welcome Intel getting back into client 5G, and we will have to wait until 2021 to get that answer. Read More Intel Taps MediaTek For Its 5G Laptop Designs - Forbes : https://ift.tt/35x7OPR![]() Intel’s journey on 5G has been quite an interesting one. The company was it's slated to compete with the likes of Qualcomm, Huawei, and Samsung in 5G. Eventually, after a few stumbles, the company fell short of expectations and ended up spinning off the majority of the company’s efforts in a $1 billion transaction with Apple that put a question mark around Intel’s client 5G strategy. Ever since the announcement back in April that Intel was getting out of the modem business, there has been a cloud hanging over exactly what Intel planned to do for 5G in client devices since it effectively sold off its modem business. I and many others in the industry saw this coming years ago, and I even detailed the scene earlier this year. Intel + MediaTek With all of that behind us, Intel has decided to disclose its first answer to the 5G question for its computing platforms. Intel has announced that the company will be partnering with MediaTek on the development and implementation of 5G for PCs. More specifically, the partnership will take a slightly modified version of MediaTek’s current M70 5G modem and work to integrate it into PC platforms, which includes both the hardware and software engineering that will be necessary to work in a PC. Intel will lend MediaTek its system integration and co-engineering support to help support OEMs, which may help MediaTek ship even more modems than it had ever expected. MediaTek is, without a doubt, a volume player in the market, mostly playing in the mid-tier and low-end of the market but is starting to make moves that break the company out of that shell, including this one. The two companies expect to have products with the fruits of this 5G partnership shipping in early 2021, more than a year from now. The interesting part about this announcement is that because MediaTek is mostly a billion mobile and embedded player, there are very few conflicts between MediaTek and Intel. This partnership makes sense from a competitive angle and makes a statement as far as Intel’s position on Qualcomm’s modems. Qualcomm has shown quite a dominant position in 5G with the vast majority of 5G phones and devices shipping with its X50 modem this year and more launching late this year with the company’s 2nd generation X55 modem. However, Intel made it quite clear that it decided to move forward with MediaTek on the modem side when it comes to laptops, which means that any laptop using the Intel solution with MediaTek will be a Sub-6GHz only solution for the foreseeable future as MediaTek has yet to give a concrete timeframe on mmWave support. Integration Intel will be integrating MediaTek’s 5G modem with its Wi-Fi 6, which will deliver a comprehensive connectivity solution to those wanting to have access to the latest wireless standards. Intel isn’t quite committing to a date and time when 5G will be a requirement for programs like Intel’s Project Athena, but I expect that in 3 or 4 years, we could probably see it become a standard. Intel will also tap Fibocom to develop the M.2 modules optimized for Intel’s platform scene it is unclear who Intel will use for its 5G front-end solution. The front-end will be crucial for supporting enough bands and operators globally, which Intel claims it’s already working with 20 global carriers and will support dozens of, but I would like to see more details on that. MediaTek hasn’t stated what the M70 could do in terms of band support, which is primarily dependent on the RF front-end. More 5G opportunities What’s interesting about this announcement is that by the time devices do launch with this modem, in 2021, we will most likely be on an entirely different generation of modems from the likes of Qualcomm, Huawei and Samsung, MediaTek’s main competitors in the modem space. That said, this announcement plugs a hole in Intel’s long-term PC strategy, as many wondered how it would be able to compete in the future of mobile PCs without a 5G modem solution. What’s also interesting is that Intel hinted at a 5G partnership with Samsung as well, which I thought would have more detail, but may have been waiting for this announcement to happen first. I suspect that Intel may be dual sourcing its modems for 5G from MediaTek and Samsung, with Samsung possibly being for mmWave solutions or just a pure second source. Nonetheless, Intel had quite a prominent presence at Samsung’s developer conference late last month, and part of that was the announcement of its deeper partnership with Samsung, which included a very small mention of 5G. The potential 5G partnership is relevant because there’s very little to no chance that Samsung will ship a MediaTek modem in its PCs since it sees MediaTek as a competitor. Getting back to mobile 5G Intel previously had a complete end-to-end 5G strategy that involved its chips at every single point of the value chain. While Intel no longer has that complete end-to-end answer with its products, it has found a good partner to grow with them on the client side of 5G. I believe that this helps to shore up Intel’s end-to-end 5G strategy and story, but early 2021 is also quite a way away from now, especially in the mobile market. Thankfully for Intel, at this moment, it still as a pretty strong position in the PC market, but it does have challenges coming from AMD and Qualcomm that are proving a challenge. I believe that Intel had to go out and acquire MediaTek’s 5G modem to shield themselves from not having a 5G PC solution while Qualcomm will be shipping 5G PCs next year in 2020. I believe that Intel had to find a 5G modem partner to calm OEM nerves about Intel’s answer to Qualcomm’s 5G challenge. It remains to be seen how much power and performance this Intel + MediaTek solution will have compared to Qualcomm, but I welcome Intel getting back into client 5G, and we will have to wait until 2021 to get that answer. Read More Intel Taps MediaTek For Its 5G Laptop Designs - Forbes : https://ift.tt/2XLuGsv![]() An Bord Pleanála has given the green light to plans by Intel for its proposed new $4 billion (€3.63bn) manufacturing fabrication (FAB) facility at its Leixlip plant. The appeals board has given the chip giant the go-ahead for the project after finding that the plan would constitute a reasonable and orderly expansion of the existing manufacturing use at the location. The proposal was opposed by local farmer, Thomas Reid who last June appealed the Kildare County Council decision to grant to An Bord Pleanala. The planning permission follows three years on after Intel secured planning permission for the first phase of the ‘fab’ facility valued at $4 billion. In total, the two planning permissions represent a $8 billion (€7.26 billion) investment which will employ 6,000 construction workers at peak and 1,600 full time jobs on completion. The projects represent the largest single private investment in the history of the State on one project if given the go-ahead by Intel globally. Consultants for Intel told Kildare Co Council that the firm has already invested $12.5 billion on its site at Leixlip. The appeals board gave the plan the go-ahead after concluding that the proposal accords with national, regional and local planning policy and would not be injurious to amenities of the area or property in the vicinity. The board order upheld the recommendation to grant by Senior Planning inspector, Paul Caprani at the end of his 83 page report. The application is the eighth Intel Leixlip application Mr Reid has objected to since 2012 with six previous applications brought before An Bord Pleanála by Mr Reid. Mr Reid unsuccessfully opposed the $4 billion first phase of the ‘fab’ plan in 2017 when lodging an objection against the application and then appealing the Council decision to An Bord Pleanála. Read More Intel gets green light for new $4bn facility in Leixlip - The Irish Times : https://ift.tt/2Oiq0af![]() Most everyone knew, or at least expected, that Intel had plans to integrate 5G into its standard PC platforms at some point in the future. But until today, no one knew for sure exactly how it might do so or who might be Intel’s potential partner in this endeavor. There had been speculation that Intel would create a 5G modem itself, because the much-publicized sale of its modem business to Apple only consisted of assets and technologies related to smartphones. As a result, there was a theoretical possibility that Intel could make modems designed specifically for PCs and, eventually, even build them into future versions of CPUs or larger SOCs (system on chips—integrated chips that incorporate multiple discrete elements, such as CPUs, graphics-oriented GPUs, etc.) Instead, in a move that caught many off-guard, Intel has announced that it is partnering with Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek for 5G modems and will be using MediaTek-branded modems in future PC systems, starting in early 2021. While it’s great to finally hear Intel make a definitive announcement about its vision for 5G in PCs, there’s no denying the announcement was a bit surprising on several fronts, including the choice of partner and the later-than-expected timing. Since Qualcomm is the biggest player in 5G modems, some people are probably surprised that Intel—after deciding not to move forward with its own 5G modem (at least for now)—didn’t choose to work with Qualcomm on future 5G PC reference designs.
Once you scratch through the strategic surface, however, the decision to go with MediaTek as a 5G partner starts to make more sense. First, Intel sees Qualcomm as a competitor in its core CPU business because of Qualcomm’s ongoing Arm-powered PC CPU offerings (such as the current 8CX). These Qualcomm CPUs are in all of the Always Connected PCs (ACPCs), including the new Microsoft Surface Pro X, Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Book 2, as well as existing offerings from HP, Lenovo, and others. While none of the ACPCs have sold in large quantities to date, many of the early performance issues are being overcome, and the possibility that ACPCs could have a noticeable impact on Intel’s PC CPU business is starting to grow. Second, Intel likely wants to strengthen competition against Qualcomm’s modems and choosing MediaTek definitely gives more presence and brand value to the Taiwanese company. Of course, even though it isn’t as well-known as Qualcomm, the truth is that MediaTek is a strong player in modems, as well as many other areas, such as smart TVs, smart speakers, and many other categories. The challenge for MediaTek to date has been that its modems are primarily used in mid-range and lower-end smartphones that aren’t widely sold in the US (but are sold in huge quantities in China, India, and many other countries around the world). Technologically speaking, MediaTek’s 5G modems only currently support sub-6 GHz frequencies (see the 5G Landscape, Part 2: Spectrum and Devices for more on different 5G frequencies and what they mean), and the announced project with Intel will also only support sub-6. Again, this could raise questions about the decision not to go with Qualcomm, whose 5G modems support both sub-6 and millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies. (Though to MediaTek’s technical credit, all of its 5G modems are multi-mode, meaning that a single modem supports everything from 2G to 5G, whereas Qualcomm’s current 5G modems are only for 5G and require another modem chip for 4G and below.) At first glance, it would seem PCs would be a great technology match for the ultrafast speeds offered by mmWave, especially because PCs aren’t as mobile as smartphones and often do stay at certain locations for longer periods of time. However, the big downside to mmWave is that the range of the frequency is very limited and, most importantly, doesn’t pass through walls or windows to the indoors, where PCs are more likely to be used. As a result, realistically speaking, sub-6-based 5G service will likely be a better match for PCs for the next several years. One additional consideration in the modem decision is that AMD—Intel’s primary PC CPU competitor—has already started partnering with Qualcomm for 5G (a partnership that will likely grow stronger because of Intel’s announcement). So once again, competitively speaking, the most realistic partner for Intel was MediaTek. From Qualcomm’s perspective, the 2021 timeframe of the announcement means that the company has more than a year to work with PC partners—even those using Intel CPUs—to put 5G modems into PCs. In fact, quite a few PC vendors are planning to bring 5G-equipped PCs to market in 2020, and virtually all of them are going to be using Qualcomm’s 5G modems. The reality is that it’s still very early for 5G. Plus, as long-time PC industry watchers know, cellular modem penetration into notebook PCs has never garnered more than a few single digital percentage points. There are some who might say that this is much ado about nothing. However, the perceived value of an always connected PC—whether it’s running an x86-based CPU or an Arm-based one—is definitely starting to grow. Plus, the telco carriers are starting to show more interest in getting PCs and other devices onto their networks. In particular, they’re getting more rational about their pricing for extra device data plans, which had been a huge detractor for cellular-equipped PCs in the past. Now that the smartphone market has stalled, and even started to shrink, in some markets, telcos are hungry to keep their businesses growing, and connected PCs look like an intriguing option. Toss in the potential for increased speed (in most cases—see Real World 5G Speeds Are Slower Than Expected) and new capabilities that 5G will eventually offer, and there’s little doubt that 5G-equipped PCs will start to become mainstream in the not-too-distant future. When that starts to happen, all of this will start to matter a whole lot more. Forbes columnist Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. Read More Intel Makes Surprise Pick for 5G PC Modem Partner - Forbes : https://ift.tt/2Dfu3OiToday, Intel is lifting the embargo on reviews for its new flagship desktop processor range, known as Cascade Lake-X. At the top of the stack is the 18-core, 36-thread Core i9-10980XE, which I'll be putting through its paces in detail today and you can see the results and my conclusion below versus the latest competition from AMD, specifically the Ryzen 9 3950X. However, we need to set the scene as a lot has changed this year and is set to change again in the very, very near future courtesy of AMD's 3rd Gen Threadripper CPUs, which may or may not rain on Intel's parade. ![]() The predecessor to the Core i9-10980XE is the Core i9-9980XE. Both are 18-core 36-thread processors and like the older CPU the new kid on the block is compatible with current X299 chipset motherboards too. This will potentially give it an advantage over AMD's 3rd Gen Threadripper CPUs, which require new motherboards. Not only this, but X299 motherboards are cheaper than I expect their TRX40 chipset counterparts to be. The biggest talking point of Cascade Lake-X, though, is the pricing. In the wake of AMD's fantastic Ryzen 9 3950X, which offers up similar performance to Intel's Core i9-9980XE, Intel had no choice but to slash prices. With Cascade Lake-X, it isn't introducing a dramatically improved architecture nor a smaller manufacturing process. This is a 14nm CPU just like the Core i9-9980XE and 7980XE before it. Thankfully for us, it cut those prices in a big way. The new CPUs are a huge amount cheaper than their predecessors, with the Core i9-9980XE retailing for close to $2000. The Core i9-10980XE's price? Closer to $1000 when it hits shelves. That is dramatic to say the least and it changes the landscape dramatically. It's now just a couple of hundred dollars more than the Ryzen 9 3950X, but offers more system bandwidth by way of extra PCI-E lanes and memory channels - it's a high-end desktop platform. I think Intel has made quite a cunning move here. Not only does it mean that those after more bandwidth than AMD's X570 platform offers now have a viable option for just a couple of hundred dollars more (there are cheaper options than the 10980XE too), but it also means its new CPUs are significantly cheaper than AMD's 3rd Gen Threadripper CPUs, which are slated to retail for $1,399 and $1,999 respectively. What we have here, then, are three very different options at very different price points aiming at largely different customers. The most interesting battle today will be between the Ryzen 9 3950X and Core i9-10980XE. Intel's 18-core CPUs have been a better bet for all-round performance than AMD's previous Threadripper CPUs, but the new 16-core Zen 2 contender is a massive leap from any 2nd Gen Ryzen CPU. This maybe paints a worrying picture for Intel as far as 3rd Gen Threadripper is concerned too, but we'll have to wait for those numbers. Intel is also increasing the number of usable PCI-E lanes from 44 to 48, although AMD still has far more with its Threadripper platforms. However, it's also far more than either Intel or AMD's mainstream platforms, helping to justify the slightly higher prices of Cascade Lake-X CPUs, at least to some extent. CPU test system I've rebuilt my test systems so they use cutting-edge components and also fully up to date versions of Windows 10 with the May 1903 update along with all the various security patches - both from motherboard manufacturers and Microsoft as these are known to have impacted on performance making any data obtained prior to these updates incomparable and unrepresentative. ![]() I should also point out that I've used 3466MHz memory with all my systems now as this worked with older AMD CPUs as well as new ones, painting them in their best light, especially given memory prices are so low at the moment. You may see slightly better performance using faster memory, but you'll be unlikely to get that working on 1st Gen Ryzen CPUs. Overclocking the Core i9-10980XE This one really surprised me. Both the Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-9980XE hit walls at 4.5GHz, at least with my samples, but I managed to overclock the Core i9-10980XE to a massive 4.7GHz across all cores with a vcore of 1.165V. Temperatures were the limit here, tipping the scales in the mid 80's, but this is absolutely monstrous and while I may have just struck lucky with this sample, if this is any indication of better overclocking further down the range then you could see even higher frequencies from CPUs with fewer cores. Other CPU overclocks I've included in the graphs include: Ryzen 9 3950X to 4.35GHz, Ryzen 7 3800X: 4.4GHz, Ryzen 5 3600: 4.25GHz, Ryzen 5 3600X: 4.25GHz, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X: 4.3GHz, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: 4.3GHz, AMD Ryzen 7 1800X: 4GHz, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X: 4.2GHz, AMD Threadripper 2920X: 4.2GHz, Core i9-9900KS: 5.1GHz, Intel Core i9-9900K: 5GHz, Intel Core i7-9700K: 5.1GHz, Intel Core i5-9600K: 5GHz, Intel Core i7-8700K: 5GHz. Common components: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3466MHz memory, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super, Samsung 970 Evo 2TB M.2 SSD, EK Waterblocks EK-MLC Phoenix 240 liquid cooler, Corsair RM850i PSU AMD systems Socket AM4: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master (2nd and 3rd Gen Ryzen), MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC (Ryzen 7 1800X), Socket TR4: MSI MEG X399 Creation (2nd Gen Threadripper) Intel systems: LGA1151: MSI MEG Z390 Ace LGA2066: MSI MEG X299 Creation Gaming Benchmarks When dealing with frame rates and frame times I take readings using OCAT to record the 99th percentiles in either a built-in benchmark or one I've created myself and the graphs below show the average frame rate and 99th percentile frame time reported as a minimum frame rate - that's not the same as your typical minimum frame rate, which can be highly misleading and only record a momentary blip. You can read more on that here. The only exception is Shadow of the Tomb Raider where I report the games detailed built-in benchmark reading. Far Cry 5 At stock speed both the Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 9 3950X are quicker in Far Cry 5 with a higher 99th percentile minimum frame rate. However, that massive 4.7GHz all-core overclock saw the frame rates rocket to close to Core i9-9900KS levels. The Ryzen 9 3950X was 1fps qucker on the 99th percentile minimum, but noticeably slower on the average, with the Core i9-9900KS taking the crown. Only minimal gains over the Core i9-9980XE here too. Dota 2 Intel still enjoys a lead in easy-to-play high frame rate games such as DotA 2 and even with an RTX 2070 Super, there's some clear CPU scaling at 1080p, with Intel having higher average frame rates than AMD overall. The Ryzen 9 3950X wasn't far behind, though, but the massive overclock for the Intel CPU helped edge out a significant lead. Shadow of the Tomb Raider We were approaching high GPU-bound results in this test with the most powerful processors according to the built-in benchmark, but plenty of good scaling in the CPU-related results Shadow of the Tomb Raider provides. The game seems to love both high frequencies and core counts so it wasn't surprising to see Intel's 18-core CPUs sitting at the top of the graph. It's also a result where the Ryzen 9 3950X lagged behind the most. Content creation benchmarks Adobe Premiere Pro Intel has always been strong in Premiere Pro and the Core i9-10980XE built on the lead already gained by its predecessor with the overclock nearly dipping below 100 seconds in my benchmark. While the Ryzen 9 3950X was quick for a mainstream CPU, it was no match here for the extra cores, threads and quad-channel memory of the Intel CPU, in addition to any software optimizations Intel enjoys. The Core i9-10980XE is a Premiere Pro monster. PC Mark 10 Image Editing The non-accelerated image editing test in the PC Mark 10 suite always seems to favor AMD CPUs and despite its massive overclock, the Core i9-10980XE was still not able to dismiss the Ryzen 9 3950X. These results aren't indicative of all image editing software though. HandBrake The Ryzen 9 3950X is king at stock speed but once again, the 4.7GHz all-core overclock I applied to the Core i9-10980XE saw it leapfrog the AMD CPU in a massive stride, posting by far the best result. So it's a win for AMD at stock speed and a win for Intel if you're overclocking. Cinebench R20 AMD's darling benchmark is arguably one of the clearest when it comes to revealing the downside to Intel's ageing 14nm manufacturing process with AMD grabbing the top spots in the single-threaded tests. The Core i9-10980XE is quicker than its predecessor but lags behind the best in terms of single-threaded performance. Switch to the multi-threaded tests and things are once again dominated by AMD at stock speed, with a victory for the Ryzen 9 3950X, but the Core i9-10980XE's massive overclocking potential sees it beat the AMD chip if you're prepared to tinker with those BIOS settings. Blender If you deal with 3D pipelines and rendering then Blender is another test that's highly relevant to CPUs of this calibre. The winner is the Threadripper 2990WX, but it's a fantastic result for the Ryzen 9 3950X. Once again, overclocking the Core i9-10980XE sees it better all but the flagship Threadripper CPU, but it's a win for AMD at stock speed. Power Consumption The downside to that massive all-core overclock that wins Intel plenty of benchmarks is that power consumption goes through the roof. The Ryzen 9 3950X drew just 242W at stock speed and 340W once overclocked. The Intel CPU sat at 376W and 595W, so it's plain to see just how much more efficient the AMD CPU is here. Conclusions Intel has done the right thing in cutting prices and the reality is that even though the Ryzen 9 3950X is a stunning processor, the Core i9-10980XE still beats it in plenty of tests and it's huge overclocking headroom means it leapfrogs the otherwise dominant AMD CPU in areas it's weak in at stock speed. This is assuming your average retail sample overclocks better than your typcial Core i9-9980XE as mine did - that's something only time will tell and is something to bare in mind. ![]() If you spend most of your time in Adobe Premiere Pro and exporting 4K content, for example, the Intel CPU is a much better bet, plus it was quicker in two out of the three games too, especially once overclocked. It's not a top to bottom win for Intel, though, and the AMD CPU is a much better option in a range of tests. It's also cheaper and requires a fraction of the cooling as well as having no need for quad-channel memory to dish out that performance. However, Intel's X299 platform offers more PCI-E lanes and is more mature, with plenty of affordable motherboards around. So even though it loses to the cheaper AMD CPU in a few areas, the fact that the Intel CPU offers more options when it comes to storage arrays and multiple graphics cards means that it retains an appeal that AMD's X570 platform cannot match. In this light, the two CPUs are more different than they are alike and aren't particularly comparable in terms of platforms. Sure, if you need maximum performance for the lowest heat and power consumption, AMD is best. If you need maximum performance in key areas such as gaming and Premiere Pro the Intel Core i9-10980XE is a great buy. AMD has undoubtedly stolen a few customers from Intel with its Ryzen 9 3950X, but hefty price cuts mean that the number of defectors are far less than they would have been. Plus, the X299 platform is just as much about bandwidth and I/O as it is about powerful CPUs. It will be interesting to see how Intel fares further down the Cascade Lake-X range, but overall, while not worth an upgrade from its predecessor, the Core i9-10980XE is part of a growing mix of CPUs where there are very few bad choices. There are plenty of areas where it's a great or even spectacular performer and those that need more PCI-E lanes than mainstream platforms offer, but have a budget of around $1,000 for a CPU will certainly not be disappointed. AMD still has one more trick up its sleeve, though, in 3rd Gen Threadripper and I'll be taking a look at it very soon indeed. Read More Intel Core i9-10980XE Review: Better Than AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X? - Forbes : https://ift.tt/2OH7IOVIntel’s new 18-core Core i9-10980XE isn’t reaching for the stars. It’s reaching for the middle. Squeezed by AMD’s consumer 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X on one end, and the 32-core Ryzen Threadripper 3970X on the other, it can’t win on raw performance. But with Intel’s aggressive pricing at $1,000, it actually competes well on bang for buck, a tempting deal for the content creators who are the prime market for this chip. Why the Core i9-10980XE is almost a dealThe Core i9-10980XE takes Intel pricing in a new direction—down. While the two previous 18-core CPUs were released at $1,999, Intel will be shipping this new generation at $1,000. For Intel, which has been loath to chase AMD on price wars, this fat discount could potentially change the fortunes for the new CPU. In the craziest turn of events, Intel is actually less per core than AMD’s upcoming Threadripper 3000-series of CPUs (see chart below). Who’da thunk we could put “Intel” and “deal” in the same sentence. but here we are. Believe it or not: Intel is actually charging less per core than AMD’s new Threadripper CPUs. Why Core i9-10980XE isn’t exactly a 10th-gen chipBefore we get to performance, we’re going to try to explain where the Core i9-10980XE falls among Intel’s chip generations, because... it’s confusing. Obviously, the new Intel Core i9-10980XE is a 10th-gen part because of the ‘10’ in its name right? Well, not exactly. It bears no relation to the 10th-gen Ice Lake CPUs based on the new 10nm process. Nor is it related to the 10th-gen Comet Lake U CPUs, which are basically upgraded versions of the 8th-gen Whiskey Lake U. The Core i9-10980XE actually doesn’t look all that different from Intel’s previous two 18-core chips, the Core i9-7780XE and the Core i9-9980XE. If you look at all three 18-core Core i9 chips on Intel’s ARK, they’re all 14nm chips, with marginal clock speed improvements every generation. Intel’s last three 18-core Core i9’s compared Core i9-10980XE presents one major change over its predecessors. Intel uses its newer Cascade Lake X cores, introduced in its Xeon line earlier this year. Cascade Lake increases validated memory to DDR4/2933 and officially supports up to 256GB of RAM. The chip also supports Intel’s DL Boost instructions, which accelerate deep learning and inference performance. The CPU should technically work with Intel’s Optane Persistent Memory DIMMs, too (although there are no announced plans to support it yet). And In a move certain to give some AMD fans jealous rage, Core i9-10980XE will fit into existing X299-based motherboards. Some of performance promises of Cascade Lake X are still a little hard to quantify, though. You’ll see as we delve into the benchmarks, coming up next. How we testedA good price isn't a deal unless good performance comes with it. Can the new Core i9 keep up with its Ryzen rivals? For this showdown, we installed the Core i9-10980XE in an Asus X299 Prime Series 30 motherboard with a Founders Edition GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU, a 512GB M.2 Samsung 960 Pro SSD, and 32GB of DDR4/3200 CL15. The CPU was cooled with a Corsair Hydro H115i with its fans manually set to 100 percent and iCue software unloaded. The latest BIOS was used in the X299 Prime Series 30, and the graphics card driver was the same among all the systems. And yes, we left MCE on. We’ve lately decided not to turn off Multi-Core Enhancement manually, as we feel that no consumers actually do that. While that can induce slight variances as motherboard makers use MCE slightly differently, the results a consumer will see are closer with MCE on, rather than off. 3D Modelling performanceWe’ll kick this off in the area that an 18-core CPU lives for: 3D modelling and rendering. Among the tasks run on the PC, 3D modelling and visualization typically offers the biggest return on investment for multi-core CPUs. First up is Maxon’s Cinebench R20 benchmark. This updated benchmark uses the same engine you’ll find in newer versions of the company’s Cinema 4D application and now supports AVX2 and AVX512 as part of its workload. Intel has typically done fairly well on the older Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R20, but as you can see from the results below, Ryzen 3000-chips have flipped that on its head. Despite having two more cores than the Ryzen 9 3950X, the Core i9-10980XE still loses. The only answer that explains this surprise is that Ryzen 9’s Zen 2 cores are simply faster in Maxon’s rendering engine. The 18-core Core i9-10980XE loses to the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X. To try to gauge the performance of a single core, we also run Cinebench R20 using a single thread. The 18-core Core i9-10980XE is nudged aside by the 5GHz Core i9 consumer chips, as well as both the 16-core and 12-core Ryzen 9 CPUs. Oof. The single-core performance puts the 18-core Core i9-10980XE behind the nimbler Core i9-9900KS, as well as both Ryzen CPUs. The visualization world isn’t totally focused on Cinema4D performance, though, so we also run the “proudly CPU-based” Corona renderer. It’s an unbiased photorealistic renderer (“unbiased” basically means it doesn’t take any shortcuts in work). Here, the 18-core Core i9-10980XE rallies and lands in front of the other CPUs we tested. In fact, it’s about 8 percent in front of the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X. The 18-core Core i9-10980XE finally pulls ahead of the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X in Corona. Up next is the Persistence of Vision Ray tracer that got its start on the Amiga. Luckily, it’s been updated along the years for more modern hardware. Like all 3D modelling apps, more cores means more performance—normally. But as with Cinebench R15, we see the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X slightly outpace the 18-core Core i9 10980XE chip. POV-Ray says Ryzen is faster All is not lost as we get to the Chaos Group’s V-Ray Next renderer, which was used in such movies as Avengers: Endgame. The Core i9-10980XE slightly pulls ahead of the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X. V-Ray Next was used to to make Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. It’s clear to us that 3D modelling is mostly a give-and-take between the Ryzen 9 and the Core i9-10980XE, with certain rendering engines favoring Ryzen and others favoring Core. Overall, it feels like a tie in 3D modelling—which, if you’re AMD, isn’t bad, because its top Ryzen 9 has two fewer cores and costs about 25 percent less. Encoding PerformanceMoving on to video encoding performance, we want to point out that video encoding usually doesn’t scale with core count as efficiently as 3D rendering. A platform’s memory bandwidth, cache performance, special instructions, and microarchitecture can easily affect the outcome. Our first test tasks the free and popular HandBrake 1.2 to convert a 4K video using the HEVC encoding to 1080p resolution. The results put the Ryzen 9 firmly in front—but we have to say—we wonder if we didn’t misrecord this performance run, as we expected it to be closer to the Core i9. We’ll rerun our test and update this section as needed. Even so, if you look at the performance of the 18-core Core i9-10980XE against the 8-core Core i9-9900KS, it’s a win, but not exactly what you might expect with the core count. We’re in the process of retesting the Ryzen 9 as its performance, while good, may not be quite this good. Besides encoding our 4K file to 1080p HEVC, we also did runs at 2160p with a 60-fps frame rate. We’ve found this workload seems to scale better with core count, as the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X is now handily in front of the Core i9-9900KS. We also see the scores of the Core i9-10980XE and Ryzen 9 3950X close up nicely. The win, however, still handily goes to the Ryzen 9 3950X. With two tests in a row going to Ryzen 9, we’re wondering if maybe Ryzen 9 is actually faster after all. Ryzen 9 has and edge over Core in our Handbrake encodes Up next is Cinegy’s Cinescore 10.4 test. This is a free benchmark intended to let broadcast professionals gauge performance of commercial off-the-shelf hardware (that’s the PC, folks) at handling broadcast-focused codecs. You’ll notice that we again don’t see that huge a leap as we go from 8 to 12 to 16 and 18 cores. While it doesn’t outright lead, the Ryzen 9 3950X has a slight edge over the Core i9-10980XE. Cinescore lets the broadcast industry easily gauge off-the-shelf PC hardware performance. Our next test shifts gears from the broadcast industry to Adobe’s immensely popular Premiere Pro 13.5. For this test we take a short 4K video shot on Sony Alpha cameras and output it using the Blu-ray preset in Premiere, with the Maximum Render option checked. We also direct Premiere to use the CPU for its encoding rather than the default of the GPU. Such a test is useful because despite the encoding performance of GPUs, some video nerds will turn their nose up at anything except CPU-based encoding for the utmost in quality. The result? It’s essentially a tie between the Core i9-10980XE and the Ryzen 9 3950X. Our Premiere export says it’s a dead tie between the Ryzen 9 and 18-core Core i9 We wanted to dial it up a notch though, so we took the same workload and exported it using HEVC to 2160p, using the High Profile. The result finally gives the 18-core Core i9 some breathing room, as we see it finish the encode about 15 percent faster. Using HEVC in Premiere Pro, the 18-core Core i9 finally opens up a performance gap. Just like the 3D rendering section, the good news for Core i9-10980XE is it can be faster. The bad news is it can be slower too. Depending on how you look at it, it’s not that bad, or it’s a disaster, because the Ryzen has fewer cores and costs less, too. Keep reading for gaming performance and more. Read More Intel Core i9-10980XE Review: Winning the middle - PCWorld : https://ift.tt/2OK6gv1 |
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January 2020
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