Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) Tuesday unveiled the eagerly awaited 18-core, 36-thread monster processor, as well as the full range of Core i9 processors, including the 14-core Core i9-7940X, 16-core Core i9-7960X and the Core-i9 7980XE 18-core during the Taiwan Computex trade show.
The Intel i9-7980XE is priced at $1,999 as the system takes on AMD’s soon-to-debut Rysen 9 Threadripper CPU.
Other members of the Core i9 family range from $999 for 10 cores to $1,699 for 16 cores (12 and 14 cores are also available). The i9 processors have a base clock speed of 3.3 GHz and climb to 4.3 GHz dual-core frequency with Turbo Boost 2.0 and 4.5 GHz with Turbo Boost Max.
Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, California, hasn’t announced shipping dates yet.
Tech observers believe the new Skylake-X lineup will stoke enthusiasm in the gaming/PC enthusiast community for Intel’s high-end desktop processors and platform. Intel had neglected this niche in favor of its cheaper mainstream desktop platform.
Gregory Bryant, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the client computing group, called the new Core X-series processor family “Intel’s most scalable, accessible and powerful desktop platform ever.” Bryant said in an editorial on the Intel website that the processor family includes Intel’s first teraflop desktop CPUs.
Bryant also said i9 processor represented “the highest performance for advanced gaming, VR and content creation.”
Intel shares were up fractionally to $36.36 in early trading Tuesday. Shares are trading in the same neighborhood as at the beginning of the year.
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