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Intel and AMD have been locked in combat always since Ryzen 7 debuted and put AMD back in the CPU race for the outset time in six years. Both companies are prepping to release college cadre count processors, but Intel is playing this game fairly conservatively, if recent rumors can be believed.

According to VideoCardz leaked presentation, Intel's upcoming Core i9-7920X volition be a 12-cadre / 24-thread CPU with 16.5MB of cache. That works out to the same 1.375MB of L3 that other Skylake-SP processors have. But the reported base core clock is rather low, at only 2.9GHz. That's 400MHz lower than Intel's 10-core Core i9-7900X, which means the Cadre i9-7920X trades a ~13 pct base clock drop for a 20 percent increase in core count. That's not a huge gain, and while we don't know the boost clock speed, we practise know that Intel'south thermal paste solution isn't working well for the Cadre i9-7900X. Adding more cores will only make the trouble worse. Intel can thwart this marketing hit by setting a high boost clock for i-2 cores, only under full load the flake may very well throttle, based on the beliefs of the 7900X.

Intel-Core-X-series-pricing-July-2017

Image by Videocardz

The estimated price of Intel'southward 12-core flake is $1,199. AMD'south 12-core Threadripper will sell for $799, while the xvi-core version volition be $999. While Intel still has an edge over AMD in single-threaded performance, how these chips compare will come downward to how well they can maintain their base of operations and heave clocks nether load. AMD's 12-core CPU has a three.5GHz base of operations and a 4GHz boost, while its 16-core version has a 3.4GHz base and a 4GHz boost. That's a one.21x clock speed advantage for AMD (on paper). But we'll have to run into what clocks these chips tin can actually hold earlier we can say much about how well they'll match up against one another.

We're yet hoping Intel will shift course on using thermal paste instead of solder on its high core-count CPUs, and that the initial issues reported with early X299 boards will be resolved by hereafter editions of these products. It seems clear, based on the bear witness nosotros've seen to date, that the Core i9 family unit wasn't quite ready for launch when Intel debuted it. That's not to say that Skylake-SP is a bad design (information technology isn't), just estrus and thermal issues seem to be holding the scrap back from striking its full potential. That may not be a trouble if you don't overclock, but the frequency offset on the Core i9-7920X (if this rumor proves true) takes a pregnant chunk out of the functioning increase you'd expect when moving from a 10-core to a 12-cadre flake.

In brusk: There's an opportunity for AMD and Threadripper here, but we'll have to wait and see if AMD can seize it.