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Intel announces its latest 9th Gen chips, including its ‘best gaming processor’ Core i9

Intel announces its latest 9th Gen chips, including its ‘best gaming processor’ Core i9

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Along with updated Core X chips and a new 28 Core Xeon processor

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Intel’s next generation of desktop processors are here with the company announcing its new 9th Gen Core chips today at its fall hardware event.

To that end, Intel revealed its new Core i9-9900K, which Intel says is “the best gaming processor in the world. Period.” The i9-9900K offers eight cores and 16 threads, clocked at base frequency of 3.6 GHz, which can be boosted up to 5.0 GHz.

Along with the new Core i9 processor, Intel is also announcing new 9th Gen Core i5 and Core i7 models, too: the i7-9700K with eight cores and eight threads, and base 3.6 GHz clock speed (which can be boosted to 4.9 GHz); and the i5-9600K, which offers six cores and six threads at a base 3.7 GHz speed (which can be boosted up to 4.6 GHz).

The new chips are still based on Intel’s 14nm process

Despite Intel jumping ahead to its 9th Gen moniker, the new chips are still based off Intel’s existing 14nm process, which the company has been using as far back as the 5th Gen Broadwell chips back in 2014. The 9th Gen chips are specifically using Intel’s 14nm++ process that it introduced last year with its 8th Gen Coffee Lake chips, with Intel continuing to delay production of its truly next-gen 10nm Cannon Lake chips until 2019.

Intel also notes that these are its first desktop processors to have hardware fixes for the Meltdown Variant 3 and L1 Terminal Fault issues, with the remaining protections done through software.

Preorders for the 9th Gen chips open today, with the processors set to ship on October 19th. The chips are priced far more modestly than Intel’s pricier Core X, too: the Core i9-9900K is set to cost $488, the i7-9700K will cost $373, and the i5-9600K will set you back $262.

But Intel isn’t leaving out its high-end users, either: the company also announced an updated lineup of its Core X-Series processors (first announced in 2017), with new Core i7 X-Series, Core i9 X-Series, and Core i9 Extreme processors that are built on Intel’s 14nm++ process (but still based on the Skylake X design.) And like the first-generation Core i9 Extreme, the new model continues to offer 18 cores and 36 threads — remaining at the top of Intel’s consumer range.

Intel announced seven new Core X chips today, set to release sometime in November. Those include the Core i9-9980XE — the aforementioned 18 cores / 36 threads Core i9 Extreme model — which has a maximum turbo-boosted clock speed of 4.5GHz and will cost $1,979. There also five regular Core i9 X-Series chips, ranging from the 16 core / 32 thread $1,684 Core i9-9960X, to the 10 core / 20 thread $889 Core i9-9820X, and a base Core i7-9800X model with eight cores and 16 threads for $589.

And for professional users who need even more firepower, Intel announced a new 28 core and 56 thread unlocked Intel Xeon W-3175X processor. Base clock speed is 3.1 GHz, boosted up to 4.3GHz and it’s set to ship later this year in December. No price has been announced yet, but it likely won’t be cheap when it does hit stores.