Intel is launching today it’s 9’th generation CPUs. The Event named “Fall Desktop Launch Event” took place at 10AM ET/ 7PM PT today the 8th of October 2018. Intel unveiled in this event the new generation of Core i9, Core i7 and i5 processors that will make the debut of the 9’th generation.
This generation will be more of a refresh though, featuring improvements on the already existing 14nm process node as Intel continues to postpone the production of 10nm Cannon Lake parts until 2019 at some point.
The highlight of the new generation is of course the Core i9-9900K, a chip that offers 8C/16T for the mainstream market for the first time by Intel. The i9 is a direct response to AMD’s Ryzen 2 when it comes to core count. Intel calls the i9-9900K the “world’s best gaming processor” . To fit this processor, Intel showed off a couple of motherboards from Asus, MSI, ASRock and Gigabyte featuring the new Z390 chipset.
The base speed of the 9900K is 3.6GHZ and single-core boost up to 5GHZ. It comes also with 16MB of cache and support for dual-channel DDR4 RAM. The TDP rating is 95W and according to Intel when compared with the i7-8700K the new CPU has more cores with similar frequencies running in the same thermal package.
Intel mentioned that gaming performance is improved by close to 10% if compared to the previous 8 series CPUs. On the productivity front they mentioned that editing videos with Adobe Premiere can be expected to be faster by 34-97% witch is something that must be taken with a grain of salt, as this has not been confirmed by anyone else, except Intel.
Intel demoed a single PC running an i9-9900K running two games in two virtual machines at the same time, but gaming while streaming and encoding is a different scenario. The CPU comes in a new show off box, which makes the product more appealing.
Joining the 9th generation, there are two more CPUs: the Core i7-9700K and the Core i5-9600K. The i7 is an 8 core chip with no hyper-treading and the core i5-9600K is a 6 core chip with no hyper-treading enabled either. The i7-9700K comes with a base clock of 3.6GHZ and a turbo-boost of 4.9GHZ and 12MB of cache. The i5 has 3.7GHZ base and 4.6GHZ turbo and comes with 9MB of cache.
All these CPUs are based on the already existing Coffee Lake architecture, as we already mentioned this launch is a refresh, but it uses an optimized 14nm process node, named 14nm++ by Intel. The chips feature hardware mitigations for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities that affected multiple generations of Intel CPUs, from oldest to newest.
All the chips are multiplier unlocked, as we are already accustomed with the K series from Intel, a TDP of 95W and support for dual-channel DDR4 as well as for Intel Optane Memory. They will be compatible with existing Z370 motherboards, as soon as bios updates are released for those chips by the manufacturers.
Prices will be situated around $488 for the Core i9-9900K, $374 for the i7-9700k and $262 for the i5-9600K. These are the MSRP prices so expect them to be a little higher when available. Pre-orders are already available but there is no mention on a delivery date.
There it is, Intel’s response to AMD Ryzen 2 series. Let’s see what the benchmarks have to say, as things are getting more interesting. The competition is on, and finally we can see some real action in the CPU market.
