Intel Core i9-10980XE—a step forward for AI, a step back for everything else

Intel's new i9-10980XE, debuting on the same day as AMD's new Threadripper line, occupies a strange market segment: the "budget high-end desktop." Its 18 cores and 36 threads sound pretty exciting compared to Intel's top-end gaming CPU, the i9-9900KS—but they pale in comparison to Threadripper 3970x's 32 cores and 64 threads. Making things worse, despite having more than double the cores, i9-10980XE has trouble differentiating itself even from the much less expensive i9-9900KS in many benchmarks.

This leaves the new part falling back on what it does have going for it—cost, both initial and operational. If you can't use the full performance output of a Threadripper, the i9-10980XE will give you roughly half the performance for roughly half of the cost, and it extends that savings into ongoing electrical costs as well.