With the relative specifications, all laid out, the changes between the Intel Core i9-7980XE and i9-9980XE seem few and far between. With the move to the revised 14nm++ process technology that we first saw introduced on the desktop with the 6-core Intel i7-8700K last year, it seems Intel has been able to breathe a bit of additional life into what is the same Skylake-X architecture. This improvement comes in the form of clock speed increases. The i9-9980XE manages a sizeable 400 MHz boost for the base clock, and a 200 MHz increase on the Turbo Boost 2.0 clock. The Turbo Boost 3.0 clock also sees a smaller 100 MHz increase.