After AMD gave us the 16-core and 32-threads “world’s most powerful consumer processor” recently, Intel has responded guns blazing in spectacular fashion. It’s X-series range describes their next generation of ultra-performance processors, which include the new i9 core chips- that’s two more cores and 4 more threads than the Ryzen, in case you lost count.
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From the looks of things, Intel is introducing workstation CPUs with a new name that forms the very top end of Intel’s X-series of processors, previously topped to a load of different Core i7s. So any thoughts on the name or the specs of subsequent releases are anyone's guess at this point. There are five new Intel Core i9 chips, all of which feature ten or more cores, with the top end i9-7980XE offering a staggering and unprecedented 18-cores. Intel is also releasing three new i7 chips along with an i5 processor joining the new i9 chips, including the quad-core i5-7640X and i7 models in 4, 6 or 8 cores. Here’s a full chart with their new processor:
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The lower end of the price range is undoubtedly set to directly rival AMD’s top-end Ryzen processors, which have support for a larger number of PCIe lanes and higher clock speeds. There’s no questioning that either of these features is important for high-end PCs which include powerful components like multiple graphics cards and high-speed storage arrays under their hoods.
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The higher range, however, seems on paper to be in a class of their own. Core i9-7980XE will set you back a $1 999 (that’s R26 000 in English). It’s Intel’s first consumer processor that includes a teraflop of computing power! Alongside the 7980XE, there will be 10, 12, 14 and 16-core i9 alternatives, with 10 core i9-7900X costing $999 (ZAR13 000). No launch date has been set as yet for the Extreme i9.
The full range of the new i9 chips reportedly come with clock speeds basing at 3.3GHz with the infrastructure to reach all the way up to 4.3GHz dual-core speeds with Turbo Boost 2.0 pushing that all the way up to 4.5GHz That’s significantly higher core counts than their Skylake or Kaby Lake counterparts.Skylake-X includes support for Optane SSDs allowing systems to increase the speed of hard drive storage by using a fast SSD cache.
What do you think? Has Intel put up enough of a good fight to negate the previous excitement that came with AMD’s release of the Ryzen? Are you going to wait a bit or have you made up your mind about all this?
There’s the comments section below, let’s discuss. As always, thank you for visiting Base64!