Intel might not be quite ready to take the lid off its Cascade Lake-X (CSL-X) processors, but test results of the upcoming 14nm core-heavy chips have already started to show up at different parts of the Internet.
The first Cascade Lake-X leak dates back to April where we got the first glimpse of a 10-core chip which, in all likelihood, could be the direct replacement for the Intel Core i9-9900X, although it is noteworthy that this is likely pre-production silicon. That means these chips could be subject to change before they come to market, though they are obviously coming close.
Today, an unknown 18-core part going by the codename Intel 0000 has shown up in the Geekbench 4 database. Both the Skylake and Cascade Lake families fall under the Intel Family 6 Model 85 identifier. However, the Skylake carries the Stepping 4, and the leaked processor has the Stepping 7 identifier, which means it's a Cascade Lake chip.
Row 0 - Cell 0 | Cores /Threads | Base /Boost (GHz) | L3 Cache(MB) | PCIe 3.0 | DRAM | TDP |
Intel 0000* | 18 / 36 | 2.19 / 3.28 | 24.8 | ? | ? | ? |
Core i9-9980XE | 18 / 36 | 3.00 / 4.40 | 24.75 | 44 | Quad DDR4-2666 | 165W |
Core i9-7980XE | 18 / 36 | 2.60 / 4.20 | 24.75 | 44 | Quad DDR4-2666 | 165W |
*Specifications in the table are unconfirmed
The Intel 0000 processor comes equipped with 18 cores, 36 threads and 24.8MB of L3 cache. By the specifications alone, we can deduce that it's most likely the successor for Intel's current flagship Core i9-9980XE processor. Geekbench 4 registered the 18-core Cascade Lake part with a 2.19 GHz base clock and a 3.28 GHz maximum boost clock. The low operating clocks will surely raise many eyebrows but let's not forget that this Cascade Lake chip is probably a very early sample, and there's a big possibility that Geekbench 4 simply didn't identify the operating clocks correctly, or that the chip could still be being tuned. The detection error is evident when you look at the motherboard as Geekbench 4 seems to think that the Cascade Lake chip was housed on an LGA 1151 motherboard.
The 18-core Cascade Lake processor purportedly outperforms the Core i9-9980XE by 3.36% in single-core workloads and around 7.4% in multi-core workloads. This alone tells us that the previously detected operating clocks are inaccurate. Although the performance difference between the two generations of chips looks plausible, you should still take the results with a grain of salt. Being early silicon and all, there is still room for future improvement and tweakings.
Intel has already pushed out its Cascade Lake Xeon parts, however, there is no official release date for the Cascade Lake-X chips yet. Perhaps Intel is playing a waiting game with its rival AMD to see who launches its HEDT (High-End Desktop) processors first.