At what cost ? their 16 core is almost TWICE as much as threadripper, and their top of the line 18 core is somewhere above 3.3x the cost.
I believe the i9 7960x (16cores) is 0.7x more expensive, as opposed to the "3.3x" you're quoting for the i9 7980XE (18cores), which is actually only
2x the price of the 1950x (16cores) top tier Threadripper cpu. The i9 7960x should also be faster than Threadripper since it looks to have both frequency and ipc advantages over the 1950x Threadripper SKU. Platform cost/cooling should be about equal across board. A 16core Threadripper build is going to be about $700 cheaper but in a world where typical Threadripper and Intel top-tier HEDT builds are around $3,000+, $700 may suddenly feel less significant if the 1950x is behind the 7960x 10-20% in performance in single, few threads, and 32 threads scenarios thanks to higher ipc and clocks.
Edit:
@Markfw I think you're confusing the pricing on the xeon-gold 6150 which is the server incarnate of the i9 7980XE which has a msrp of $1,999.