Intel Core i9-7980XE and i9-7960X CPU Review

HandBrake isn't all about having more cores, in fact, I haven't been able to saturate either a ThreadRipper CPU or an HCC Intel CPU with the program. Instead, it spreads the load among cores, and it tends to like frequency over core count. It also depends on how you use the program. The 1950X beats out the 7980XE and 7950X when reducing a 4K video to 1080P, but loses against all Skylake-X CPUs when transcoding a 720P movie from one codec to another.

HandBrake likes frequency among other things, and that is why the 7960X beats the 7980XE when downgrading the 4K video to 1080P and when transcoding a 720P video from one codec to another.

ScienceMark also enjoys frequency, and it doesn't recognize more than 32 cores (it's more of a legacy benchmark), so the 7980XE is a bit gimped by the benchmark. The 7980XE and 7960X have the same 4.4GHz two core boost, so they should have the same single performance results, but the 7980XE has more cache.