New specs have recently been leaked about the i9-9900K, i7-9700K, and the i5-9600K Processors. Based off rumors, the 9th Generation of Intel’s i7 processors will NOT have hyper-threading. These new processors will be based on Intel’s previous generation of processors with the Coffee Lake architecture. Coolaler.com was the original source of the leak but its rumored informational post has since been removed. Nonetheless, multiple websites have know picked up the leak and started making their own premonitions about Intel’s next-gen lineup.
As rumored, the most notable difference between the i7-8700K and the i7-9700K is that it hsa 6 cores 12 threads vs 8 cores without hyper-threading. Furthermore, the clockspeed on the i7-9700K is reduced from 3.7Ghz to 3.6Ghz while the i5-9600k currently has a 3.7Ghz clockspeed – higher than its predecessors. The leak also revealed that the processors have a TDP of 95W – this is actually quite interesting because both the i5 and the i9 seem worlds apart, i5 with 6 cores at 3.7Ghz and the i9 with 8 cores 16 threads at 3.6Ghz.
If the rumors are revealed to be true, this will be an interesting match up against AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700x which already has 8 cores and hyper threading. The second generation of Ryzen 7 processors was just released in April 2018 priced at $199 while the i7-8700K is currently priced at $349. In single threaded applications 8700K’s boost clock of 4.7Ghz demolishes the 2700x’s 4.3Ghz. With the addition of the i9-9900K – which was leaked as well, revealed that it will have 8 cores with 16 threads, taking over the i7’s place in the consumer market. Premonitions suggest that Intel may aim to position the i7 pricing between the Ryzen 7 2700x and the i9.
The i7 has always been Intel’s high end consumer based CPU and has been priced accordingly. This move might also mean that Intel is either trying to push the i3 into the mobile market or is phasing out the i3 completely and basing the i5 as the low tier desktop CPU.
It seems that Ryzen has lit the flames under Intel, they are finally putting more cores into their CPU’s to benefit the consumer. The i9-9900K will be a perfect CPU for content producers, gamers, and power users. Comparing the Ryzen 7 2700x and the 8700k in multithreaded workloads, the 2700x outperforms the 8700k. In addition to multithreaded workloads, live streaming or game streaming has become much popular and having more cores helps to render and stream on a single machine rather than having a secondary machine. As more gamers and content producers are crossing paths, more powerful CPUs are needed. Live streaming puts a big hit on the CPU and as a result gaming experience suffers; with more cores there’s more power to multi-task.
Intel has yet to respond to rumors about the 9th generation processors and it is nearing the last time it released new processors back in August of 2017. As of now we’re excited to see a new direction for Intel’s consumer processors and hopefully we get something new in the coming months.