Recently, Intel was rumored to be releasing 10 and 12 core "Core i9" CPUs to compete with AMD's 10-16 core "Threadripper" CPUs. Now, Intel has confirmed these as well as 14, 16, and 18 core Skylake-X CPUs. Every CPU with 6 or more cores appears to support quad-channel DDR4:
Intel Core | Cores/Threads | Price | $/core |
---|---|---|---|
i9-7980XE | 18/36 | $1,999 | $111 |
i9-7960X | 16/32 | $1,699 | $106 |
i9-7940X | 14/28 | $1,399 | $100 |
i9-7920X | 12/24 | $1,199 | $100 |
i9-7900X | 10/20 | $999 | $100 |
i7-7820X | 8/16 | $599 | $75 |
i7-7800X | 6/12 | $389 | $65 |
i7-7740X | 4/8 | $339 | $85 |
i7-7640X | 4/4 | $242 | $61 (less threads) |
Last year at Computex, the flagship Broadwell-E enthusiast chip was launched: the 10-core i7-6950X at $1,723. Today at Computex, the 10-core i9-7900X costs $999, and the 16-core i9-7960X costs $1,699. Clearly, AMD's Ryzen CPUs have forced Intel to become competitive.
Although the pricing of AMD's 10-16 core Threadripper CPUs is not known yet, the 8-core Ryzen R7 launched at $500 (available now for about $460). The Intel i7-7820X has 8 cores for $599, and will likely have better single-threaded performance than the AMD equivalent. So while Intel's CPUs are still more expensive than AMD's, they may have similar price/performance.
For what it's worth, Intel also announced quad-core Kaby Lake-X processors.
Welcome to the post-quad-core era. Will you be getting any of these chips?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday May 30 2017, @04:56PM
>Honestly, there's not much point unless the chip is going into a server, or you have some really special applications.
> If you have a four-core processor, it already spends most of its time bored.
That is 100% true.
However, if you pay engineers to twiddle their thumbs during hour-long compiles (just joking, they're obviously writing documentation...), every minute saved is money.
If that CPU spends 90% of its time idling, but saves a mere 10 engineering minutes a day, it will not only pay for itself mathematically, but make your geek happy and therefore more productive even when not directly compiling.