Intel Corporation took the stage at Computex 2017 in Taipei last Tuesday to unveil its new series of processors: the Intel Core X-Series. The lineup offers chips in the i5 and i7 realms, while also debuting the Core i9 bracket for top performance.
The new processor family was leaked last month, and it signaled the coming of the long-awaited i9 category. Intel loyalists hailed its arrival, as AMD’s Threadripper was set to dethrone the company as the most powerful consumer chip out there upon launch.
Still, major tech companies and PC enthusiasts have praised AMD’s Ryzen lineup for its capable specs and affordable prices. The first few rigs powered by this technology were also launched this week, including news of gaming laptops and desktops by ASUS and Dell.
Intel Core X-Series: Specs and features
According to PC-Tablet, Intel welcomed nine new CPUs to its ever-growing product family, and they are all based on the 6th generation Skylake architecture except for the entry-level Intel Core i5-7640X, which is a Kaby Lake-X chip.
That processor is a quad-core model with four threads and 6 MB of L3 cache. The base clock on the i5-7640X is of 4.0 GHz, and it can go up to 4.2 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0. It also has 16 PCI Express lanes and two channels available for DDR4-2666 memory.
The next one in line, the i7-7740X, starts the Skylake-X lineup. Its clock starts at 4.3 GHz, and it can reach 4.5 GHz frequencies when boosted. It has four cores and eight threads, as well as 8 MB of cache and the same amount of lanes and memory channels as the i5.
Intel’s Core i7-7800X scales things up a bit with six cores, twelve threads, and 8.25 MB of L3 cache. Clock speeds start at 3.5 GHz, however, but they make a 0.5 GHz jump in Turbo Boost 2.0. There are 28 PCIe lanes and four DDR4-2400 memory channels on the chip.
The core count keeps going up in the last i7 chip of the family, the i7-7820X. Intel pushes an octa-core processor with sixteen threads and 11 MB of cache while stepping on the turbo takes speeds from 3.6 to 4.3 GHz. Turbo Boost Max technology is available on this model, meaning you can get extra power at 4.5 GHz.
This last processor and the first i9 of the lineup share the same amount of memory channels, but they differ in PCIe lanes count. The first one has 28 like its predecessor, while the new i9-7900X has 44.
That is not the only field in which the new i9 category elevates the numbers, as the chip has ten cores, twenty threads, and 13.75 MB of L3 cache. Base clock speeds start low at 3.3 GHz, but they go up with Turbo Boost 2.0 and Max to 4.3 and 4.5 GHz respectively.
Other members of the i9 lineup include the i9-7920X, the i9-7940X, the i9-7960X, and the i9-7980XE which tops the list with a monstrous 18 cores and 36 threads. The specs for these models are not available just yet.
Intel Core X-Series Price
From the Intel Core i9-7900X downwards, all of the new X-Series processors will be available in the coming weeks. In decreasing order, their prices are: $999, $599, $389, $339, and $242.
There is no official release date for the remaining members of the i9 family, but their prices have been announced. Again, in decreasing order, the price tags will read: $1,999, $1,699, $1,399, and $1,199.
Source: Intel