Intel cuts X-series prices in half to compete against AMD with upcoming Cascade Lake-X CPUs

Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition will come in at half the price of last year's top-of-the-range HEDT processor from Intel

Intel has released details of its 10th-generation Cascade Lake-X high-end desktop (HEDT) CPUs, which are intended to compete with AMD's own third-generation Threadripper line-up expected in November.

The four chip line-up is topped by the Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition, a 14nm part that offers 18 cores and 36 threads, a base clock speed of 3GHz, but is capable of an all-core turbo up to 3.8GHz. The Core i9-10980XE is priced at $979, which will equate to around £980, including VAT.

That compares to a price of $1,980 for last year's top-of-the-range Core i9 9980XE Extreme Edition, based on the Skylake-X refresh. That is currently listed at £1,899.98 with Scan.

The base part is the Core i9-10900X listed at $590. It offers 10 cores and 20 threads running at a base clock speed of 3.7GHz, boosting up to 4.3GHz on all cores; $689 buys the Core i9-10920X, a 12 core, 24 thread part running at 3.5GHz or boosting to 4.3GHz on all cores; while the 14 core, 28 thread Core i9-10940X costs $784 and offers a base clock speed of 3.3GHz, boosting to a max' of 4.1GHz on all cores.

All the new Cascade Lake-X parts are built on Intel's 14nm process architecture. They run at a TDP of 165 watts and support up to 256GB of four-channel DDR4-2933 memory. The parts will go on sale in November, to coincide with AMD's delayed release of the 16 core, 32 thread Ryzen 9 3950X and the anticipated launch of the third-generation AMD Threadripper line.

Table (bordered)
Core i9-10980XE
3.0
3.8GHz
18/36
24.75MB
Up to 72
165W
$979
Core i9-10940X
3.3
4.1GHz
14/28
19.25MB
Up to 72
165W
$784
Core i9-10920X
3.5
4.3GHz
12/24
19.25MB
Up to 72
165W
$689
Core i9-10900X
3.7
4.3GHz
10/20
19.25MB
Up to 72
165W
$590

On top of that, AMD is known to be preparing a 24-core Zen 2-based desktop CPU, and there are also strong rumours that a 32-core, 64-thread Threadripper, codenamed Sharkstooth, is in the works.

At the same time as releasing details of Cascade Lake-X, Intel also released details of the related Xeon W workstation processors. These range from the four core, eight thread Xeon W-2223, running at a base speed of 3.6GHz, supporting 1TB of DDR4-2666 memory for $294, to the 18 core, 36 thread Xeon W-2295 running at a base speed of 3.0GHz.