Intel announces the Cascade Lake-X CPUs — up to 50% more affordable than last-gen!

Just when you thought Intel has given up on fighting the bang-for-buck battle, in comes the Cascade Lake-X processors. The new Intel Cascade Lake-X HEDT processors are cheaper by up to 50% as compared to the 9th Gen Intel Skylake-X chips.

In addition to the more affordable prices, Intel also threw in support for faster DDR4-2933 RAM, higher clocks and also more PCIe lanes across the board. All the new Intel HEDT processors tout 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes. That’s four more than their respective predecessors, although it is still a far cry from AMD’s Threadripper class-leading 64 PCIe lanes.

Intel Cascade Lake X Series Specs

	Cores/Threads	Base/Boost clocks	Cache	CPU PCIe 3.0 lanes	TDP	Price
Core i9 10980XE	18C/36T	3.0 / 4.8 GHz	24.75MB	48	165W	$979 (~RM4102)
Core i9 9980XE	18C/36T	3.0 / 4.5 GHz	24.75MB	44	165W	$1979 (~RM8292)
Core i9 9960X	16C/32T	3.1 / 4.5 GHz	22MB	44	165W	$1684 (~RM7056)
Core i9 10940X	14C/28T	3.3 / 4.8 GHz	19.25MB	48	165W	$784 (~RM3285)
Core i9 9940X	14C/28T	3.3 / 4.5 GHz	19.25MB	44	165W	$1387 (~RM5812)
Core i9 10920X	12C/24T	3.5 / 4.8 GHz	19.25MB	48	165W	$689 (~RM2887)
Core i9 9920X	12C/24T	3.5 / 4.5 GHz	19.25MB	44	165W	$1189 (~RM4982)
Core i9 10900X	10C/20T	3.7 / 4.7 GHz	19.25MB	48	165W	$590 (~RM2472)
Core i9 9900X	10C/20T	3.5 / 4.5 GHz	19.25MB	44	165W	$989 (~RM4144)
Core i9 9820X	10C/20T	3.3 / 4.2 GHz	16.5MB	44	165W	$889 (~RM3725)
Core i7 9800X	8C/16T	3.8 / 4.5 GHz	16.5MB	44	165W	$589 (~RM2468)

*italicized SKUs are 9th Gen Core X-series offerings

Intel will still be making the Cascade Lake-X chips based on the Skylake architecture, which also means an older 14nm manufacturing process. However thanks to the optimizations over time, most of the 10th Gen Intel Core X-series processors can boost up to 4.8 GHz with Turbo Boost 3.0.

Intel also implemented Deep Learning Boost on the new HEDT processors, promising up to 2x faster performance in AI-related tasks like image tagging. There’s also support for Intel’s Performance Maximizer, making overclocking them as painless an affair as possible.

I think the biggest improvement with Cascade Lake-X is definitely the value proposition. For the same amount of money you would have to fork out to get the 8C/16T Core i7 9800X last year, you can now afford the 10C/20T Core i9 10900X. A more drastic comparison would be the flagship 18C/36T Core i9 10980XE being more affordable than the 10C/20T Core i9 9900X.

With that said, I believe those who are considering the new Intel Core HEDT processors would definitely be taking their time to compare them to the upcoming 3rd Gen AMD Threadripper processors as well. With both giants expected to launch their latest HEDT processors in November 2019, we can expect for some serious competition going on.

Pokdepinion: Seems like a nice deal, especially if you are upgrading within the X299 platform.