Intel is facing off with AMD in the battle for share of the high-end computing market, and it has a new weapon in the fight. The chip maker revealed its new Core X-Series high-end desktop chip platform at Computex in Taiwan this week, and it seems that the battle has gotten even more interesting.
New Kaby Lake-X processors at the bottom end
The high-end desktop PC market targets extreme gamers, software developers, those who stream videos, and other types of content creators. The market is a highly lucrative one for chip makers such as Intel and AMD, as those who need these chips are usually willing to shell out big bucks for more powerful computing.
Intel’s new X-Series chips replace the current X99 platform and come at a wide price range, from as little as $242 all the way up to $2,000. Intel management described the new processors as having been designed for “enthusiasts” who “hunger for the best performance.
The chip maker added that the new processor family includes a number of firsts, such as its first teraflop desktop CPUs. Intel also revealed its new Core i9 processor, which it said targets advanced gaming, virtual reality and content creation.
Intel reveals 18-core X-series chips
The most expensive chip in the new lineup is the Core i9 Extreme Edition, which is the first consumer desktop CPU with 18 cores and 36 threads. The company described it as “by far the most extreme desktop processor ever introduced.” Additionally, it introduced its new x299 chipset, which offers more I/O and overclocking capabilities, and updates to its Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0.
At the low end of the spectrum are the new Kaby Lake-X processors called the i5-7640X and the i7-7740X, and they’re similar to the current Kaby Lake processors that were released this year and designed for the mainstream. They’ve got four cores and four or eight threads and two memory channels. However, the chips also offer more power at 112W instead of the 91W offered by the non-X processors. They also offer higher clock speeds than the mainstream versions have.
Intel also shared more details about its new Compute Card, which it said packs the full capabilities of a computer into a unit the size of a credit card.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about how the company is preparing to fight off AMD, which has been encroaching on its turf lately. Some even suggested that it would release its new PC chips early just to get ahead of AMD’s Ryzen processors. Now we have a little bit of detail on how Intel was preparing to fight back, but investors don’t seem to be impressed. Shares of Intel slipped by as much as 0.34% to $36.14 during regular trading hours today.
