CPU I - PiFast, Cinebench, HandBrake, Blender
Intel still holds a decent advantage in the light-load PiFast test. Having some extra frequency over the two-year-old Core i9-7980XE helps, but there's no touching the 5.0GHz Core i9-9900KS.
That said, AMD has improved its game in this respect, with the three 3000-series chips all performing very closely to one another.
HEDT tends to be more about all-core muscle. The latest Core i9 returns a 13.7 per cent improvement over the 7980XE. However, it's painful for Intel that AMD's best mainstream chip, Ryzen 9 3950X, is faster.
It's not lost on us that the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X is almost 2x as fast.
HandBrake doesn't scale so well as more cores and threads are added to the mix. Again, the Core i9-10980XE is slower than the Ryzen 9 3950X - remember it has two fewer cores and costs less.
The intensive Gooseberry benchmark renders an entire frame and loves as many cores and threads as you can chuck at it. The Core i9-9900KS is hardly a slow chip for day-to-day work, but it takes over 17 minutes to complete the task.
Core i9-10980XE is much faster, at just over 10 minutes, and is generally on a par with the Ryzen 9 3950X. Stepping up to true HEDT performance brings the 3rd Gen Threadrippers into play... and they are much, much quicker.