Intel Core i9-10980XE proves 2.6% slower than Core i9-9980XE

Just yesterday, our colleagues at Lab501 published their review of Intel's new LGA 2066 flagship, the Core i9-10980XE. Unfortunately, they didn't directly compare the new chip to its predecessor, the Core i9-9980XE. However, we can infer a comparison from previous Core i9-9980XE results, and the findings are far from impressive.

According to Intel's specifications, the Core i9-10980XE features the same 18 cores and 36 threads as the Core i9-9980XE. The only difference is clock speeds: a Turbo Boost of 4800MHz compared to 4400MHz (the base frequency remains at 3000MHz). The 165W TDP and LGA2066 socket are also unchanged.

Essentially, we're looking at a slightly overclocked Core i9-9980XE with a few additional PCIe lanes.

⤢ ВІДКРИТИ

Several factors could contribute to the new chip's performance drop, from hardware patches addressing recent vulnerabilities to a more restrictive thermal power budget.

It's also entirely possible that the test motherboard's BIOS is still unoptimized. Either way, here are a couple of benchmarks:

⤢ ВІДКРИТИ

⤢ ВІДКРИТИ

Comparing the Intel Core i9-10980XE against previously obtained Core i9-9980XE results, the new chip is indeed slightly slower: the 10980XE scored 8563 points, while the 9980XE typically hits around 8800. Still, as mentioned, there could be logical explanations for this.

The team at Lab501 also ran a few gaming benchmarks. You can check out their full review and tests on their website via this link.