The 9th Gen chips are available for pre-order in the US from today and set to ship on October 19th. The Core i9-9900K is slated to cost US$488, the i7-9700K will cost US$373, and the i5-9600K will cost US$262. The Core X-Series processors will be significantly more expensive and the Intel Xeon prices have yet to be announced. No news regarding Australian pricing and availability yet.
Intel unveiled its next generation of desktop processors with the announcement of its 9th Gen CPUs optimised for gaming, content creation, and productivity at its Fall Desktop Launch Event. It announced their gaming processor ‘Core i9’, the updated Core X-Series range, and 28 core and 56 thread unlocked Intel Xeon w-3175X.
Intel revealed its new Core i9-9900K, that offers eight cores and 16 threads, which Intel claims is the “best gaming processor in the world”. It features a 16 MB Intel Smart Cache and a base speed of 3.6 GHz that can boost to 5.0 GHz.
Intel also announced the new Core i5 and Core i7. The i7-9700K offers eight cores and eight threads, at a base 3.6 GHz clock speed with the capacity to boost to 4.9 GHz and the i5-9600K, which offers six cores and six threads at a base 3.7 GHz speed which can boost to 4.6 GHz.
Although touted as 9th Generation, the new chips are actually based on Intel’s existing 14nm++ process, which the company has been using as far back as 2014.
Intel revealed that these are its first desktop processors to have hardware fixes for the L1 Terminal Fault and Meltdown Variant 3 issues, with other protections provided through software.
Intel also released an updated range of the Core X-Series processors, offering 18 cores and 36 threads, the new Core i7 X-Series, Core i9 X-Series, and Core i9 Extreme processors. Also built on Intel’s 14nm++ process.
For users who require more power, new 28 core and 56 thread unlocked Intel Xeon W-3175X processor was also announced with a base clock speed of 3.1 GHz, which can boost up to 4.3GHz.
