Intel Core i9 would target the high-end desktop market

May 15, 2017

From self-driving cars to memory products and server chips, Intel themselves have admitted their renewed focus will be on growing markets where they see a ton of untapped potential. However in a PC market where AMD is once again challenging Intel after many years, the company won't be letting go that easily.

We know for a fact Intel's eighth-generation Core CPUs will remain on the 14nm manufacturing node, and with Ryzen selling like hotcakes, we then heard the rumor that Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X products along with their accompanying X299 chipset were expected to arrive ahead of schedule sometime around early June.

A new leak via Anandtech forums brings more goodies. Code-named Basin Falls, the new quad-core Kaby Lake-X CPUs would get the Core i7 branding, while hexa, octa, 10, and 12-core Skylake-X CPUs would receive the Core i9 moniker. The table below shows what Intel would announce in time for Computex later this month:

Core count matters apparently, just ask AMD who is rumored to be coming up with a 16 core chip soon. However i9 chips are said to feature a third clock state called Turbo Clock 3.0, which would allow for even higher clocks in single threaded tasks.

The most potent of Intel upcoming chips, the Core i9-7920X appears to be a Core i7 on steroids offering 12 cores (24 threads), 16.5MB of onboard L3 cache and a toasty 140W TDP (a second leak says 160W).

Now, if Intel intends to keep its high-end CPU pricing scheme of $1,000 or above that, this is bound to be an impractical flagship with others actually competing on the mainstream market against Ryzen. We'll find out soon.

Source: TECHSPOT