Intel’s Likely Lineup For October 8th Event

Intel Expected to Launch Broad Spectrum of CPUs

In just over 8 hours, Intel will be launching their new desktop CPU lineup. The new 9th Generation of chips is the company’s full answer to the challenge posed by AMD’s Ryzen. So far, we’ve already seen a number of leaks for the top end chips. The company revealed much of the lineup at an earlier event. However, the entire lineup will likely feature a total of 5 new chips. Beyond the Core i7 9900K, i7 9700K and i5 9600K, we have the i5 9500 and 9400 and the i3 9100.

Thanks to Intel, we already know a lot of the details for the Core i7 lineup and the Core i5 9600K. These are 8 core and 6 core chips respectively and only the 9900K has HyperThreading. For the low-end lineup, we do have retailer leaks. The Core i5 9500 and 9400 flesh out the locked low end of the i5 lineup. These clock from 3 GHz to 4.3 GHz and 2.9 GHz and 4.1 GHz respectively with just 65W TDP. The Core i3 9100 is also 65W with 4 cores clocked at 3.7 GHz. Compared to the current generation of Coffee Lake, much of the lineup is just 100 MHz faster where directly comparable as 14nm remains standard.

Intel Lineup Mostly Cuts HyperThreading

The big upgrade compared to Coffee Lake, of course, is the Core i7 9900K, bringing 8 cores to the mainstream. Of course, current rumours point to a significantly higher price than the current mainstream flagship, the i7 8700K. Another noticeable difference is the lack of HyperThreading, with only the highest end 8 core model with HyperThreading. Even the i7 9700k will have to go without. Lastly, only the flagship will get 2MB of L3 cache per core, the rest will make do with just 1.5MB. One good change is the return of soldered IHS which should lower temperatures and ease overclocking without delidding.

From the looks of things, Intel is really shaking up their lineup. While HyperThreading used to be very common, it is now an important commodity and cache as well. With AMD offering SMT from 4 cores and up as the standard, Intel is making an interesting move in the opposite direction. Finally, the TDP numbers for this upcoming generation only apply to base clock. Once TurboBoost is running the TDP numbers will change. With only a few hours to go, we’ll be able to finally get all the details we want from Intel. The only major potential downer is the ongoing 14nm shortage which will hopefully not affect the launch too much.