Intel revealed its new generation of processors, PCs, and more at its annual 2018 Intel Desktop Launch event, which was held Oct. 8 in New York City. Anand Srivatsa, vice president and general manager in client computing group, delivered the keynote at the event. As at every year’s Intel Desktop Launch event, most of us expected the company to showcase their latest 9th Gen Intel Core processors with enhanced features. However, Intel delivered a lot more than just that.
During the event, Intel focused on the growing trends in the PC and laptop segments. Intel has anticipated that gaming is one of the most important segments in the desktop PC market. The company also focused on two other growing segments: video content creation and the growing need for the unlocked Xeon CPUs.
Here are all the major announcements and launches made during the Intel Desktop Launch event.
9th Gen Intel Core desktop processors
Intel unveiled what it calls the “World’s Best Gaming Processor” in the form of the latest Intel Core i9-9900K. The processor comes with a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, which can be boosted to 5.0GHz using the company’s proprietary turbo-boost technology 2.0. The Intel Core i9-9900K, or the 9th Gen Intel Core i9, sports eight cores and 16 threads and comes with 16MB of cache memory and is priced at $488
The company also launched its latest 9th Generation of processors for the existing Intel Core i7 and i5 processors. The 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9700K has eight cores along with eight threads and operates at a base frequency of 3.6GHz. The processor can be turbo-boosted up to 4.9GHz under full throttle and comes with 12MB smart cache memory. The 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9500K is the smallest in the segment. It comes with six cores and six threads and operates at 3.7GHz. While the i7-9700K is priced at $374, the i5-9500K will be available at $262.
All three of the latest 9th Gen processors offer up to 40 platform PCIe lanes and support two-channel DDR4 memory support.
Processor
Xeon W3175X is the company’s first 28-core processor meant for heavy workstation usage. The company teased this powerful unlocked Xeon processor back in June and has finally unveiled it at the Fall Desktop Launch event. This new chipset comes with an unlocked multiplier and runs at 3.1 GHz, but it can throttle up to 4.3GHz in burst mode.
The processor features a six-channel DDR4 memory controller and can handle up to 512GB of RAM and 38.5MB of cache memory. The chipset comes with the microarchitecture that is based on the Skylake processors and features an all-new Intel LGA3647 server-based socket. However, since the chipset comes with an all-new socket, there are currently no motherboards available on the market to support this chipset yet.
Intel launched this massively powerful unlocked chipset to accommodate the growing need and requirements of content creators. And accordingly, the chipset comes with 68 PCIe lanes combined, allowing users to install and configure more than one graphics card and multiple NVMe SSDs along with the special purpose accelerators and coolers.
Intel Core X series processors
In addition to the company’s brand-new Core i9 processor family, Intel also launched the “X-series” of processors. X series processors are faster, customizable, and expensive and meant for power users or PC performance enthusiasts.
The Core X series of processors are available in Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 variants with different features in each tier. The new Intel X series of processors comes with scalable options of 8 to 18 cores. The company has released nine variants of the Intel Core X series of processors and these processors can throttle up to 4.5GHz with the Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0. While the details of some of the processors are yet to be disclosed, all these X-series chipsets use the new LGA2066 socket. There are few other features these X-series chipsets offer such as AVX ratio controls, Intel Smart Cache, and more. The Core X series of chipsets allows users to work extensively on high-quality 4K content, gaming, VR, and more.
Intel Desktop Launch event: Fast times
All in all, Intel did an interesting job in terms of launching its new generation of processors along with the two unexpected launches in the form of Core X series of processors and the Intel Xeon W3175X at this year’s Intel Desktop Launch event. These processors offer top-of-the-line specifications and allow the users to bump up other essential aspects such as RAM, memory, and graphics.
Featured images: Intel
