
Intel Core I9-9990XE: Up to 5.0 GHz, Auction Only - tomstokes
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13804/intel-core-i9-9990xe-up-to-5-ghz-auction-only
======
jandrese
What this says to me is don't bother trying to super overclock a i9-9940X,
Intel has already skimmed off the cream from that chip run.

It seems kind of scummy, but I guess otherwise your rare stable overclock chip
might end up in some boring business server where it will always run at stock
clocks. I do note that Intel still wants nothing to do with overclocked chips
in their warranty department, even when they did the overclocking themselves.

~~~
gruez
>It seems kind of scummy

how is it scummy? is because intel's efficiently allocating those CPUs (via
auction market), rather than randomly giving them out?

~~~
samplatt
It's (a little bit) scummy, because they're selling them on auction, which has
a decent chance of flogging them for orders of magnitude more than they'd
ordinarily sell them for, with the added bonus that they don't have to honor
any warranty stuff since they're going to be clocked to hell.

~~~
geezerjay
> It's (a little bit) scummy, because they're selling them on auction, which
> has a decent chance of flogging them for orders of magnitude more than
> they'd ordinarily sell them for,

It seems to me that demand is far higher than supply, thus the auction ensures
that those who really want them will have a realistic shot of getting one.
That's far better than having to resort to buying them from price-gouging
scalpers.

~~~
Nullabillity
Buying it at inflated prices _from Intel_ effectively rewards them for their
inability to produce more. That seems like the wrong incentive to set.

~~~
artemonster
you have no idea how chip manufacturing works, do you? :) its a gamble for
them to get such chips

~~~
Nullabillity
> its a gamble for them to get such chips

Hardly, since the "rejects" will just be sold as the regular model(s).

In the old "lottery" system the rejects would end up on the secondary market,
making Intel's final revenue effectively the same as if extreme overclocking
wasn't a thing.

------
blattimwind
Also notable for a huge increase in TDP from the next-slower model (255 W vs
165 W) - and it has four fewer cores.

> Other details about the chip that we have learned include that it will have
> a listed TDP of 255W, which means the peak power will be higher. Motherboard
> vendors will have to support 420 amps on the power delivery for the chip
> (which at 1.3 volts would be 546 watts), and up to 30 amps per core.

~~~
sandworm101
550+ watts is insane. That is spaceheater territory. Residential outlets start
tripping at 1500-2000 watts. How soon we will have to run even basic gaming
machines off multiple outlets.

~~~
Arn_Thor
I've never tripped an outlet on less than 2500 watts, and that was an old
electrical network... Did I get lucky or do standards vary in different
countries?

~~~
klodolph
Most circuits trip on current, because I^2R heating is what causes fires in
house wiring, 15A is relatively common, to get power you multiply by voltage
which varies by country, in US that gives you 1800W and UK it’s 3600W. There
are a _ton_ of circuits which aren’t 15A though.

If you live in UK, you might note that electric tea kettles work fine, but in
the US they do not (they’re too slow). That’s the biggest practical difference
to my mind, very few other portable appliances need that kind of juice, except
the biggest space heaters. Big, fixed appliances get wired differently.

~~~
Arn_Thor
It never occurred to me that the voltage difference between America and
Europe/Asia would cause a corresponding differences in watt output given the
same amps... But yes indeed, US kettles boil much slower.

Other appliances that require a lot of juice include vacuum cleaners, electric
hobs, space heaters, portable ACs/dehumidifiers. So having something trip a
living room circuit pulling just 2000 watts would drive me nuts in the long
run

~~~
kalleboo
I live in Japan where we have a paltry 100V. In our apartment it's made by for
by having lots of (20A) circuits - 3 for the (small) kitchen alone [which uses
gas for the stove anyway]. Total of 14 breakers for a small 3 bedroom + living
+ kitchen apartment.

In 3 years we've only tripped a breaker once - running a microwave, toaster
oven and dishwasher all off the same outlet at once.

~~~
Arn_Thor
sounds like more amps would fix it, yeah

------
tareqak
Quote from the end: "perhaps importantly, there is no warranty from Intel.
This means that system builders will not be able to recoup costs on dead
silicon, but they might give their own warranty to end users."

~~~
doesnt_know
This would be a pretty significant liability for builders in countries that
have automatic consumer protections (eg: Consumer Guarantees Act in NZ). The
builders would have to eat the costs of faulty units.

~~~
vondur
That means they probably won’t be sold there.

~~~
xupybd
True, if that’s the cost of our consumer protections I’m okay with that. It’s
actually really nice to live under. That said I’ve never been on the retailers
end.

------
ec109685
This article helps with understanding how the binning process works:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning)

I wonder though how anandtech esitmates that only 100’s of these chips will be
produced.

------
walrus01
255W TDP for a single socket, holy shit, that pretty much demands a 280mm
radiator size water cooling loop setup (2 x 140mm fans).

~~~
JustAPerson
I kind of like this trend of power-hungry beastly CPUs. The AMD 2990WX is also
rated 250W (but for 32c/64t@3GHz). I have one with a 280mm AIO, and it sees
high 60C under load at stock frequencies. I can only overclock to 3.4GHz while
sustaining heavy compute 24/7 and that's probably drawing close to 400W and
heats up to mid 80C (in a room with 20C ambient). It's a pleasant space heater
for the winter.

Hoping to see AMD continue to push the HEDT threshold. Let the server market
have their underclocked power-efficient processors. Though to be honest if
things go much further I'm going to need a custom waterloop next generation.

~~~
chx
Tom's Hardware has been doing excellent power consumption analysis for years
and they measured the 2990WX with PBO (factory overclocking) enabled to
consume 500W in torture loop. [https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-
threadripper-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-
threadripper-2-2990wx-2950x,5725-13.html)

------
noahl
Who needs these chips? I'm honestly curious. I've never worked on something
that needed as much single-thread performance as possible and couldn't be
parallelized; I'd love to know what industry will use them (and what industry
would buy a small number of chips at auction prices).

~~~
pr0zac
My assumption is they're meant for gaming PCs and will likely all be sold to
gaming PC system builders.

~~~
ben-schaaf
Considering no games are built to support 24 threads, most don't even scale
past 8 yet, any gamer would be much better off with a 9900k. I don't know who
they're targeting with this, but with the 9980xe already being so expensive if
someone truly wanted maximum single core performance for games and lots of
cores for other things why not buy a 9900k and a 2990wx. More performance for
likely a whole lot less.

------
jerkstate
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

~~~
drcode
Huh, what ever happened to Beowulf clusters... I guess they were superseded by
the whole Hadoop and mapreduce stuff...

~~~
chrisseaton
Beowulf was about the hardware and the interconnect - both being commodity.
Not about the software. Most Hadoop etc runs on Beowulf I’d imagine.

Clusters used to use more custom hardware and interconnects - that’s now the
exception rather than the norm. You still find that in some HPC situations but
most people manage with commodity cloud.

~~~
walshemj
Depends on cluster design and size big ones use exotic interconnects not your
traditional network design

------
Latteland
The Intel i9-9999.999999 is what I am going to wait for. Until I can get my
hands on it I will get along with a thread ripper v3.

------
zozbot123
Meh. I'm holding out for the i9-9999.999Xtreme

~~~
blattimwind
i9-9999xXxE

~~~
wmf
Is that the processor endorsed by Vin Diesel? Is it "obscenely" expensive?

