For a while now, we have grown accustomed to Intel offering us consumer grade processors that range from the budget Celeron processors to the mid range Core i3 and i5 processors and at the top, the Core i7.
However, the blue company has had stiff competition this year since their competitors over there at the red team (AMD) launched their powerful Ryzen processors. These multicore processors targeted their high end consumer offerings but at at a lower pricepoint and Intel had to fight back.
Well, Intel is showing their might thanks to their announcement of their high end consumer offerings which they are calling it the X-series processor family and they are impressive on paper.)
The new X-series processor family have processors that have 4,6,8,10,12,14,16 and 18 cores. 4 cores have become the norm on desktops (on some Core i5s and all Core i7s) but enthusiasts could get Core i7s that had ranged between 6 and 10 cores.
Intel says that this processor family has up to 10% faster multi-threaded performance and 15% faster single threaded performance over previous generation. They also come with updates on Intel;s Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 which will identify the two top performing cores and direct critical workloads on those cores for faster performers.
The new processors range from the Core i5 7640X with 4 cores and 4 threads which is $242 all the way up to the flagship processor, the $1999 Core i9-7980XE which has 18 cores and 36 threads. The Core i9 chips will have a base clockspeed of 3.3ghz and some turbo boosting to as high as 4.5ghz with Turbo Boost 3.0. They also run hot too well thanks to their 140W power draw from the wall.
The cheapest Core i9 (7900K) has 10 cores and 20 threads and it costs $999, which is significantly cheaper than the 10 core Core i7 6950X that was launched last year with a $1743 price tag (now it is down to $1499).
This means that we will start seeing really powerful PC builds in the next few months so YouTube channels will go crazy with this builds very soon.