Review Cascade-X Review and Availability Thread

[Hitman928]

Review embargo I believe lifts at 9 am ET so I will update this post as soon as reviews are published. As always, if there is a review you don't see in this post that you would like to have added, please PM me.

Video reviews
Linux Tech Tips

Print reviews
Hothardware
Tweaktown
Anandtech

For Sale
10980xe and 10920x listed on Newegg but both out of stock.

 

[Zucker2k]

Puget sound review. Premier pro:

Premiere Pro CPU performance: Intel Core X-10000 vs AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen

Intel has long been the go-to option for a high end Premiere Pro workstation, and the massive price cuts on the new Intel Core X-10000 series processors make them even more attractive. On the other hand, AMD has made some impressive improvements in raw performance with their new Threadripper 3rd...

www.pugetsystems.com

 

[Markfw]

Puget sound review. Premier pro:

Premiere Pro CPU performance: Intel Core X-10000 vs AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen

Intel has long been the go-to option for a high end Premiere Pro workstation, and the massive price cuts on the new Intel Core X-10000 series processors make them even more attractive. On the other hand, AMD has made some impressive improvements in raw performance with their new Threadripper 3rd...

www.pugetsystems.com

According to that, the only thing the 10980xe is better for is Live playback on one piece of software. If you are getting an HEDT, you probably use more than one piece of software.

Again, Intel looses. Try again

 

[amrnuke]

How are you cooling your 3900x?
What's the recommended cooling for the 3950x by AMD?

AMD doesn't ship the 3950X with ANY cooler.

But you can cool both the 3900X and 3950X with solid tower+fan combos. AMD of course, as you know, recommends water cooling the 3950X.

Of course, if you water cool and o/c both the 3950X and the 10980XE, then the 10980XE may pull ahead in some tasks... the problem is that it costs 30% more and on average, we still don't know whether it's overall any better than 3950X if both are heavily cooled and overclocked.

I'd like to point out, though, that the 10980XE's competition is AMD's HEDT lineup, the lowest of which is the 3960X. And the 3960X kills it in almost everything (47% in multithreaded tasks, 23% if you include single-threaded tasks) and costs 42% more. I do personally wonder how both would do head to head on LN2

 

[Zucker2k]

According to that, the only thing the 10980xe is better for is Live playback on one piece of software. If you are getting an HEDT, you probably use more than one piece of software.

Again, Intel looses. Try again

Are you serious? Here you go:

Starting off with what is likely the most obvious conclusion - the AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen CPUs are really, really good for Premiere Pro. The only real caveat is that they are only better than the new Intel X-series CPUs when it comes to exporting. For live playback, all of the Threadripper 3rd Gen and Intel X-1000 series processors (with the exception of the Core i9 10900X) performed about the same on average. There are a ton of nuances with individual CPUs being better for specific codecs (or even the same codec but at different framerates), but overall you can consider the Threadripper 3rd Gen and Intel X-10000 series as being equal for live playback.
This isn't all that exciting from an AMD vs Intel perspective, but it is worth noting that both the new Intel and AMD processors saw a pretty decent gain in performance over the previous generation. While the Intel X-10000 series is only about 7% faster than the X-9000 series models for live playback, the AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen is about 20% faster than the previous generation Threadripper 2970WX/2990WX.
Like we mentioned earlier, exporting is where things get interesting. Here, the AMD Threadripper 3960X and 3970X are a huge 35-40% faster than the Core i9 10980XE! It is worth repeating that with the X-series price drop, this isn't a perfect 1:1 comparison since the 10980XE has an MSRP of $979 while the 3960X and 3970X which have an MSRP of $1,399 and $1,999, but it is comparing the top model from both Intel and AMD which in and of itself is a completely reasonable comparison to make.
Even factoring in the MSRP, however, Intel only barely comes ahead - and even that is completely subjective on what is most important to you. Compared to the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, the Core i9 10940X is about $35 more expensive, but about 3% slower overall. On the plus side, the 10940X is 7% faster for live playback (which most users value higher than export performance), supports 256GB of RAM, has more PCIE lanes, and has the option for Thunderbolt on supported motherboards. It comes up often, so it is worth repeating that no AMD platform has a certified Thunderbolt solution at this time - ASRock has a few Ryzen boards that have un-certified implementations, but trust us, you definitely don't want to risk it when it comes to something as finicky as Thunderbolt is on PC.

I see you've abandoned your "price to performance" and "value" arguments all of a sudden. Everyone knows these cascade lake x chips are 4+ year old techs on an aged process and still holding their own, core for core. They overclock very well too, and that's a plus for those who want to squeeze out maximum performance for their money.

 

[Zucker2k]

AMD doesn't ship the 3950X with ANY cooler.

But you can cool both the 3900X and 3950X with solid tower+fan combos. AMD of course, as you know, recommends water cooling the 3950X.

Of course, if you water cool and o/c both the 3950X and the 10980XE, then the 10980XE may pull ahead in some tasks... the problem is that it costs 30% more and on average, we still don't know whether it's overall any better than 3950X if both are heavily cooled and overclocked.

I'd like to point out, though, that the 10980XE's competition is AMD's HEDT lineup, the lowest of which is the 3960X. And the 3960X kills it in almost everything (47% in multithreaded tasks, 23% if you include single-threaded tasks) and costs 42% more. I do personally wonder how both would do head to head on LN2

Huge over-simplification and best case scenarios. HEDT DOES NOT START at 24 cores. Chew on that. The 10980XE does not need ln2 to stretch its legs

 

[inf64]

Cascade Lake 10980XE is on a dead end platform and is overall slower than 3950X (check Anandtech conclusion page with weighted results). Next year we will have IPC boosted Ryzen 4950X (pure guess on the model name), with likely higher clock on the same AM4 platform. Intel really needs an Icelake on their mainstream desktop to be able to begin to compete. This is really sad how uncompetitive they become, it reminds me of AMD from 4 years ago.

 

[Zucker2k]

Cascade Lake 10980XE is on a dead end platform and is overall slower than 3950X (check Anandtech conclusion page with weighted results). Next year we will have IPC boosted Ryzen 4950X (pure guess on the model name), with likely higher clock on the same AM4 platform. Intel really needs an Icelake on their mainstream desktop to be able to begin to compete. This is really sad how uncompetitive they become, it reminds me of AMD from 4 years ago.

They are competitive, price-wise, though.

 

[inf64]

They are competitive, price-wise, though.

Well that is correct to an extent - 10980XE still costs noticeably more than 3950X and the platform is more expensive without an upgrade path (UNLESS intel offers some sort of Icelake based upgrade path). I hope they bring Icelake to desktop next year as I want cheaper Ryzen 4000 series.

 

[Abwx]

CL-X review at Computerbase, updated with TR3XXX scores :

Intel Core i9-10980XE „Cascade Lake-X“ im Test

Intel Cascade Lake-X bietet doppelt so viel Leistung pro Euro wie der Vorgänger. Doch der Startzeitpunkt ist der mit Abstand schlechteste.

www.computerbase.de

 

[LikeLinus]

According to that, the only thing the 10980xe is better for is Live playback on one piece of software. If you are getting an HEDT, you probably use more than one piece of software.

Again, Intel looses. Try again

This is a very ignorant statement. If you're a editor or work in post, this is a huge benefit.The article even mentions that Live playback is what most are going to care about.

You're going to use Premiere Pro and After Effects mainly. The Intel CPU is going to be faster in AE as well. Sure, you are also going to use Office, Illustrator, Photoshop and/or Lightroom, but you're acting like the Intel CPU can't handle those task as well.

This is the #1 reason why I run Intel in my editing machines. As does everyone else I work with.

 

[jpiniero]

This is a very ignorant statement. If you're a editor or work in post, this is a huge benefit.The article even mentions that Live playback is what most are going to care about.

You're going to use Premiere Pro and After Effects mainly. The Intel CPU is going to be faster in AE as well. Sure, you are also going to use Office, Illustrator, Photoshop and/or Lightroom, but you're acting like the Intel CPU can't handle those task as well.

This is the #1 reason why I run Intel in my editing machines. As does everyone else I work with.

Would be better off with the 9900KS if it's only somewhat threaded though.

 

[Zstream]

This is a very ignorant statement. If you're a editor or work in post, this is a huge benefit.The article even mentions that Live playback is what most are going to care about.

You're going to use Premiere Pro and After Effects mainly. The Intel CPU is going to be faster in AE as well. Sure, you are also going to use Office, Illustrator, Photoshop and/or Lightroom, but you're acting like the Intel CPU can't handle those task as well.

This is the #1 reason why I run Intel in my editing machines. As does everyone else I work with.

The issue with this statement, time and time again, is that you're going to be doing multiple things at once. Show me a benchmark that does this, and I'll look for your reply.

 

[Markfw]

But the AMD recommended cooling solution for the 3950x is a 280mm AIO or better.


So you put a 3900x under a MO-RA3 with two D5 pumps! Well, I just wanted to show how far some would go to cool their desktop chips, and then make it sound like keeping an hedt adequately cool is an outlandish proposition.

Here's a 10980XE overclocked to 5.1GHz on water:

GN got 4.9 GHz, so these chips will respond to good cooling.

That review shows a 9980xe@4.9 at least up to 29 minutes.... I don;t have an hour to waste on this

 

[LikeLinus]

The issue with this statement, time and time again, is that you're going to be doing multiple things at once. Show me a benchmark that does this, and I'll look for your reply.

You don't have to look. The article says as much. But, let's hear your editing workflow on how you're editing and watching a live preview video and working in another program.

 

[tamz_msc]

Who in their right mind will overclock a 10980xe and draw 500+ watts on the CPU alone in order to even get close to the TR chips? You throw efficiency out of the window by doing so. It's a pretty dumb thing to do.

 

[jpiniero]

I've mentioned this before, but I expect this to be Intel's last HEDT processor until 7 nm, and I think even Cascade Lake-X was only released because of OEM obligations. They might still continue to do Xeon W parts.

 

[amrnuke]

Huge over-simplification and best case scenarios. HEDT DOES NOT START at 24 cores. Chew on that. The 10980XE does not need ln2 to stretch its legs

Perhaps it starts at 16 cores, where the 3950X beats the 10980XE in most tasks at 77% of the price?

As for "stretch its legs", sure. Can we get some head to head benchmarks?

 

[tamz_msc]

This is a very ignorant statement. If you're a editor or work in post, this is a huge benefit.The article even mentions that Live playback is what most are going to care about.

You're going to use Premiere Pro and After Effects mainly. The Intel CPU is going to be faster in AE as well. Sure, you are also going to use Office, Illustrator, Photoshop and/or Lightroom, but you're acting like the Intel CPU can't handle those task as well.

This is the #1 reason why I run Intel in my editing machines. As does everyone else I work with.

News flash: the AMD CPUs are overall fastest in After Effects and Photoshop too. On the other hand these Threadrippers smoke everything else when it comes to exports and smart previews in Lightroom as well. The only thing Intel has going for it is its iGPU that can be leveraged in Premiere, but the HEDT chips don't have it so it doesn't matter. The days of Intel being best for an editing rig are rightfully over.

 

[tamz_msc]

Intel HEDT chips are now good at essentially only one thing - stuff making heavy use of Intel MKL. For everything else AMD is simply much better.

 

[LikeLinus]

News flash: the AMD CPUs are overall fastest in After Effects and Photoshop too. On the other hand these Threadrippers smoke everything else when it comes to exports and smart previews in Lightroom as well. The only thing Intel has going for it is its iGPU that can be leveraged in Premiere, but the HEDT chips don't have it so it doesn't matter. The days of Intel being best for an editing rig are rightfully over.

After Effects CPU performance: Intel Core X-10000 vs AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen

Both Intel and AMD are launching a new set of HEDT processors, and while performance is always going to be a main topic of discussion, what makes them immediately interesting for After Effects is the fact that both the Intel X-10000 and AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen support up to 256GB of RAM. This...

www.pugetsystems.com

You mean the Threadripper CPUs that are $450 - $1000 higher than the price of the Intel CPU?

Yeah, the days of Intel being the best for video editing are certainly not over. Look through the actual benchmarks. The 9900K is in the top 5 CPUs in every test.

 

[amrnuke]

After Effects CPU performance: Intel Core X-10000 vs AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen

Both Intel and AMD are launching a new set of HEDT processors, and while performance is always going to be a main topic of discussion, what makes them immediately interesting for After Effects is the fact that both the Intel X-10000 and AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen support up to 256GB of RAM. This...

www.pugetsystems.com

You mean the Threadripper CPUs that are $450 - $1000 higher than the price of the Intel CPU?

Yeah, the days of Intel being the best for video editing are certainly not over.

This is true.

As for all chips, much like athletes, they are good at some things and not good at others. But Zen2 TR are like Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson. Incredible performers only beaten when you drill down to the details and specific use-cases.

 

[LikeLinus]

This is true.

As for all chips, much like athletes, they are good at some things and not good at others. But Zen2 TR are like Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson. Incredible performers only beaten when you drill down to the details and specific use-cases.

Agreed. I didn't post the link. You can make an intelligent argument without resulting to all the immature crap like that. People just toss out immature comments without even having any experience or data to support it. It's not fact just because you say something stupid.

 

[tamz_msc]

After Effects CPU performance: Intel Core X-10000 vs AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen

Both Intel and AMD are launching a new set of HEDT processors, and while performance is always going to be a main topic of discussion, what makes them immediately interesting for After Effects is the fact that both the Intel X-10000 and AMD Threadripper 3rd Gen support up to 256GB of RAM. This...

www.pugetsystems.com

You mean the Threadripper CPUs that are $450 - $1000 higher than the price of the Intel CPU?

Yeah, the days of Intel being the best for video editing are certainly not over. Look through the actual benchmarks. The 9900K is in the top 5 CPUs in every test.

They say that AE doesn't leverage more than a few cores, and yet Intel's fastest ST CPU, the 9900K, doesn't top the list. You don't need a Threadripper to beat 9900K performance though, a 3900X matches it at $500.

 

[LikeLinus]

They say that AE doesn't leverage more than a few cores, and yet Intel's fastest ST CPU, the 9900K, doesn't top the list. You don't need a Threadripper to beat 9900K performance though, a 3900X matches it at $500.

It's true that AE has a fault that it doesn't utilize all cores. No one really knows why Adobe has done this. There has been a big push in the community to get them to change this, but it hasn't happened. That said, you can buy a 3rd party plugin (RenderGarden) that will utilize all cores available.

Until they fix this issue, the CPU with the highest core speed is going to win out. The 9900K is cheaper than the 3900X. At the same time, Intel has an upgrade path that is cheaper than the Threadripper for editing. This doesn't even take into account the cost of the platform and such.

 

[tamz_msc]

It's true that AE has a fault that it doesn't utilize all cores. No one really knows why Adobe has done this. There has been a big push in the community to get them to change this, but it hasn't happened. That said, you can buy a 3rd party plugin (RenderGarden) that will utilize all cores available.

Until they fix this issue, the CPU with the highest core speed is going to win out. The 9900K is cheaper than the 3900X. At the same time, Intel has an upgrade path that is cheaper than the Threadripper for editing. This doesn't even take into account the cost of the platform and such.

You're not making any sense - if there is a plug-in that utilizes all cores then surely a 3900X is going to win out over a 9900K. The 3900X is currently not much more expensive than a 9900K taking the overall platform cost into account, and offers a real upgrade path to Zen 3.