Back at the Computex trade show earlier this year, I wrote about about an event I attended with Intel along with a select few other journalists where the company revealed its Core i9-9900KS. Today I can, at least, say that I've got one and that retail models will cost a recommended $513 and that later this week you'll see just how fast it is. Today journalists are only able to unbox the CPU and talk about its specifications.
Intel's Core i9-9900KS
The Core i9-9900KS doesn't sport any new features, manufacturing processes or architectural tweaks. This is a binned CPU, pure and simple - taking the best of the silicon lottery and packaging it as an ultra-fast CPU, in this case, Intel's new mainstream flagship. The new CPU boasts the ability to turbo boost to 5GHz across all cores at the same time. In contrast, both the Core i9-9900K and Core i9-9900KF (the KF lacks onboard graphics and is a bit cheaper) can only manage that on up to two of their eight cores at once.
Intel's Core i9-9900KS and Core i9-9900K boost frequencies compared
In a heavily multi-threaded workload, the benefit will be tangible; the Core i9-9900K drops back to an all-core boost of 4.7GHz, which is 300MHz slower than the new CPU. However, this is likely to be the only area that sees gains. Seeing as the Core i9-9900K can already get to 5GHz on up to two cores, in lightly-threaded workloads including many games, there's likely to be little or no benefit with the Core i9-9900KS.
I'll be back later this week when the embargo lifts on the CPU and I can talk about performance numbers. Till then, be sure to follow me on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook more more news and reviews.
