Intel 9th-Gen CPUs
Core counts go up, i9 hits the mainstream and a thin sliver of solder makes all the difference. Ben Mansill overviews Intel’s new generation of desktop CPUs.
With Intel’s 9th-gen desktop CPUs we see the i9 come to the fore, replacing the i7 as the hero product and joining the mainstream consumer line, where once it was a ‘prosumer’ CPU. It is still a premium CPU, but by the looks of Intel’s marketing and product positioning the i9 is the new i7 in terms of it being the likely choice for gamers and home power users.
There are three new lines in the 9th-gen range: the regular mainstream Core series (i5, i7, and i9), the prosumer X-Series, plus a new Xeon. Gaming continues to be the central focus of the regular Core line. The X-series are for prosumers, with Intel banging the content creation drum for this potential set of customers. Separating the two families on a technical level, broadly speaking the X-series gets quad-channel memory vs dual-channel for the mainstream, and more PCIe lanes.
The star of the show is absolutely the i9-9900K, and rightly so. It’s an exciting prospect to have a 8 core + 8 hyperthreads CPU that can Turbo at up to 5GHz out of the box. Base speeds of 3.6GHz for the 9900K are respectable, but the real action comes from the re-introduction of proper Thermal Interface Material (TIM), which will undoubtedly allow better overclocking – as Chris confirmed during his testing.
TIM?
The reintroduction of proper Thermal Interface Material after years of using a cheaper solution is welcome. Intel has long suffered criticism for replacing solder with less conductive paste years ago, while AMD went with solder for its Ryzen and Threadripper chips. Soldered TIM allows higher frequencies via better thermal dissipation, both at stock and when overclocking. Soldered TIM will allow more CPUs from a production die to be allocated to higher frequency CPUs, and thus more CPUs allocated as performance parts, lowering the final cost and reducing the chance of supply issues like Intel is currently facing with its 8th-gen CPUs. It’s why we’re seeing the i9 9900k Turbo at 5GHz.
All the CPUs in the new range are produced on the 14nm process, which Intel’s been on since its 5th generation. Which makes it even more critical that Intel reintroduced
“Intel’s own benchmarks show a 10-11% gain in gaming performance over the last gen, which is so small it’s just impossible to justify upgrading.”
TIM. A sliver of solder isn’t nearly as sexy a story as a reduction in the nano-scale size of the circuits on the chip, but it’s allowed Intel to hit those high clock speeds.
Another very welcome gain is in the number of PCIe lanes, which are up to 40 on the three new mainstream 9th-gen Core CPUs, and up to 68 on the higher-end X-Series. AMD no longer has the edge here.
KEEPING FAMILIES APART
The X-series gains seven new CPUs compared to just three for the Core series. You’ll be able to drop a new X-series into an existing X299 motherboard; it’s been a while since Intel offered backwards compatibility so this is a step in the right direction. The mainstream 9th-gen CPUs can be also used with any existing 300-series motherboard, so while it is true that there is backwards compatibility on offer, that platform is so new that it’s unlikely anyone that bought one in the last year would actually need to upgrade their CPU so soon.
X-series CPUs also support quadchannel memory, while it’s dualchannel-only for Core.
Relative to the previous 8th-gen CPUs, 9th-gen gains two more cores and an additional 400MHz on the clock. Power is still 95w.
Intel’s own benchmarks show a 10-11% gain in gaming performance over the last gen, which is so small it’s just impossible to justify upgrading from 8th-gen. Even so, the 9900K is very likely to repeat the huge success Intel has (and continues to have) with the mighty i7-8700K, which has already earned a place in the CPU book of legends as a game changer. The ability to hit 5GHz on a single core is impressive as Intel’s factory Turbo speed, but overclockers will likely find even more headroom. The 9900K is capable of running at closer to 6GHz with a custom water cooler, and an off the shelf AIO cooler should be sufficient to get the 9900K stable at over 5GHz on all cores.
THE NEW TOP DOG
With the i9 range now firmly established by Intel as the top dog, the i7 still offers terrific performance and value, coming in at $200 less than the i9, the i7 9700K offers eight cores at 3.6GHz and single-core Turbo of 4.0GHz.
It’s significant that this i7 no longer has hyperthreading (HT). It’s the first i7 to have no support for HT and it’s got nothing to do with the chip’s capabilities – this is purely marketing with Intel enshrining the i9 as the premium product. While the 8th-gen i7 and i9 both had HT, it’s Intel’s view that
8th-gen i9 wasn’t a ‘mainstream’ CPU. Now it is, so the i7 has been relegated to the lowly status of an i5 with only physical cores. Interestingly Intel is pushing the hyperthreaded i9 as the “best gaming CPU in the world”, but as most gamers know HT isn’t critical to gaming, so the now HT-less i7 may end up being the best bang for the buck gamer CPU.
The new i5-9600K offers six cores at 3.7GHz – which, notably, is 100MHz faster than the i7, though it Turbos 300MHz lower (4.6 vs 4.9). This is partly marketing, but the binning process also affects how a CPU is branded after it comes off the die. Fewer CPUs, evidently, yield the highest single core performance, and that’s what makes them an i7 instead of an i5.
TAKING IT TO AMD
Intel couldn’t let AMD get all the attention with its 32-core Threadripper 2. Its top of the line X-Series i9 9980XE is a way short with ‘just’ 18 cores (and another 18 HTs), and those cores are running at a relatively conservative 3GHz, too. The benchmarks may tell a different story, though. Intel is boasting that its ‘Mesh’ architecture, which interconnects all the CPU cores with all available cache memory is more efficient than AMD’s Infinity Fabric, which limits simultaneous use of all memory channels for all active cores. AMD needed to compromise with the Threadripper 2 to pack 32 cores in, with not all of them able to access the memory simultaneously and at full bandwidth, though in real world use the impact is minimal.
What the X-series does get, that the mainstream Core range does not, is Turbo Max boost. That allows two cores to be Turbo boosted instead of just the one on the main Core product range. Those cores are identified during the binning process and will be fed lightly threaded work when in Max boost mode so the cores can hit top speed, which is 4.5GHz for all but the lowliest i9-9820X CPU, which hits 4.2GHz in Max boost.
There’s no denying that the size of the X-series range will make the decision about which to buy tricky. There’s little separating them other than core count, and they span seven CPUs. But the whole idea with the X-Series is scalability, and that’s precisely why the range is the way it is – these are multi-core CPUs with a wide variety of choices of how many cores you want, but are otherwise almost identical. Most professionals use a small number of apps, and they should be familiar with how many cores/ threads offer the optimal price and performance balance, so the X-Series gives you that choice with its expansive range.
It’s helpful, too, that the price distinctions are more pronounced, with a quadrupling of the price when you go from the bottom to the top range product. All offer quad-channel DDR4 support, all have up to 68 PCIe lanes, and they all run at 165w at almost identical clock speeds.
We’ll have reviews of more 9th-gen CPUs in the next issue of APC, but for now we’ve been testing the i7-9700K as well as some of the new Z390 motherboards, which you’ll find on the following pages.