Yesterday Intel announced their latest top-end processors, known as the X-Series. The new Core i9 processor is the most powerful the company has produced for consumers and business with up to 18 cores and 36 threads. Forget quad-core, 36 freaking threads. Over the past decade, our software has been re-written to take advantage of multiple threads, but new computing challenges means Intel are turning that up to 11 (or 36).
This seemingly ridiculous amount of processing power is designed to turn your PC into workstation for creating and editing 4K or 360-degree videos, as well as become the ultimate gaming and VR rig. If you’re someone who often multi-tasks, then this chip will let you run every application you can imagine without hesitation with its ability to handle multiple, CPU-intensive tasks at once. Intel says their Core X-Series processor, allows you to edit video, render 3D effects, and compose the soundtrack simultaneously without compromising your computer’s performance. Personally, I’d just love to be able to pre-visualise After Effects animations in full quality, when working on VR video and maybe listen to Spotify in the background.
If you happen to find yourself on a piece of software that is single-threaded, you’ll take advantage of the available performance with and updated Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 which identifies the two best performing cores to provide increased single and dual-core performance. The new Extreme Edition boasts 44 PCIe lanes and support for multiple discrete graphics cards, Thunderbolt technology, and high-speed storage like Intel’s Optane technology.
Sounds amazing right? Its unlikely most people will ever own a Core i9 Extreme Edition, with the premium price tag of US$1,999 for the Priced at $1,999, the 7980XE converted to Australian dollaroos becomes A$2,683.22 plus GST of 10% (268.322) puts the price tag with no Australian tax at a very big $2951.542. This is the price of a very decent, complete system, so you’d have to have a serious commercial need to justify the cost of the top model.
In business where time really is money, every minute counts and being able to reduce the time required to export and render media elements, means more can be accomplished in the same period of time. These kind of time savings can easily justify the high cost of the best Intel chip.
One of the other benefits Intel is promoting is the capacity for gamers to multitask. This means you can be playing the latest games, while streaming live, while recording your gameplay. Typically these 3 functions are some of the most strenuous that you can apply to a PC and we’ll only really know how well this works once the new chips arrive.
Until then, here’s the introduction trailer for the Core i9 from Intel.
In terms of a release date, right now Intel lists it as ‘coming soon’.
