Intel to Paper-launch 9th Gen Core on August 14, Availability in Q4-2018

[btarunr]

Intel's client desktop processor lineup is under tremendous pressure owing to competition from AMD, with the company having to roll out entire processor generations over mere 2-3 quarters. You'll recount that Intel was merrily trotting around with its barely-innovative 7th Gen "Kaby Lake" family in early 2017, when AMD stunned the industry with an outperforming product lineup. The 7th generation barely lasted its planned product cycle, before Intel rushed in a pathetic sub-$500 Core X lineup, and the 8th generation "Coffee Lake" with 50-100% core-count increases. Even that is proving insufficient in the wake of 2nd generation AMD Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge," and Intel is cutting short its product cycle with the 9th generation Core "Whiskey Lake" (or "Coffee Lake" Refresh) series, that further increase core-counts.

"Whiskey Lake" was originally planned for Q1-2019 alongside the 14 nm original Z390 chipset. Intel wasn't expecting AMD to rebound with Ryzen 2000 series (particularly the tangible IPC increases and improved multi-core boosting). And so, it decided to rush through with a new product generation yet again. The Z370 is being re-branded to Z390 (with an improved CPU VRM reference design), and what was originally meant to come out in Q1-2019, could come out by Q4-2018, at the very earliest by October. Intel reportedly planned availability sooner, but realized that distributors have heaps of unsold 8th generation Core inventory, and motherboard vendors aren't fully ready for the chip. Since getting a 9th gen Core chip doesn't warrant a new motherboard, customers would be inclined to pick up 9th generation chip with their existing boards, or any new 300-series board. This would kill the prospects of selling 8th generation Core CPUs.



Intel still wants to make the presence of its 9th generation Core processors felt. And so, at the risk of cannibalizing its 8th generation Core sales, Intel is going ahead with a paper-launch of 9th generation Core on 14th August. You'll have to wait until October not just for availability, but also reviews of these chips. The company is just looking to restore competitiveness at the upper end of its lineup for now, and so its launch will be limited to three SKUs: Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K, and Core i5-9600K (detailed in the table below). Of these, the i9-9900K and the i7-9700K are the first 8-core processors by Intel on the mainstream-desktop platform; while the i5-9600K is a 6-core chip that's largely unchanged from the current-generation Core i5 chips. This shows that Intel won't improve its lineup over generation unless absolutely warranted by the competitive environment.



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[Onemanlan]

As a PC building enthusiast who has always aligned with Intel/Nvidia... AMD Ryzen is the best thing to happen to the industry in 10 years.

 

[ssdpro]

As a PC building enthusiast who has always aligned with Intel/Nvidia... AMD Ryzen is the best thing to happen to the industry in 10 years.

Yes, progress at last. Intel is making more money than ever, AMD is comfortably afloat, prices hopefully start to compete too... right now AMD wins the value race.

 

[StrayKAT]

edit: Oops. Wrong thread.

On that note though, it's not like the past 10 years were particularly bad for computing. Or am I missing something? Sure, they needed competition, but it's not like my computing and gaming life was worse during that time.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

A paper launch means Intel is really shitting bricks, after years of being the the drivers seat its something Intel is not handling well.

 

[Zubasa]

edit: Oops. Wrong thread.

On that note though, it's not like the past 10 years were particularly bad for computing. Or am I missing something? Sure, they needed competition, but it's not like my computing and gaming life was worse during that time.

Your experiences are in theory, worse than what they could have been if there were proper competition.
Competition drives price down and performance up, as you see is happening here.

If there were more competition in the market in the pass years, 4k and VR Gaming should have been a common place.
Instead what we got was people saying 4k and more than dual / quad core are never needed, because they were priced so high and impractical for most people.
Just look at 2 years ago when a good 8-core CPU cost $1100, that being the 6900K.
Today with Ryzen you can find one on sale for $200, and offer similar performance.

 

[StrayKAT]

Your experiences are in theory, worse than what they could have been if there were proper competition.
Competition drives price down and performance up, as you see is happening here.

If there were more competition in the market in the pass years, 4k and VR Gaming should have been a common place.
Instead what we got was people saying 4k and more than dual / quad core are never needed, because they were priced so high and impractical for most people.

I think VR is a waste of my time. I'm not or ever will be the right market for it. As for 4K, that wasn't going anywhere until all mass media jumped on it as their new standard (i.e. Televisions). I'm not sure what Intel has to do with pushing gaming GPU performance anyhow.

 

[Zubasa]

I think VR is a waste of my time. I'm not or ever will be the right market for it. As for 4K, that wasn't going anywhere until all mass media jumped on it as their new standard (i.e. Televisions). I'm not sure what Intel has to do with pushing gaming GPU performance anyhow.

If you miss the memo, Intel will be jumping on making GPUs as well in the future.
Oh and 4k TVs and display are quite easy to find today.

In the case of CPUs, faster cpus do allow better AI and more NPCs etc interacting on screen, so it still helps the gaming experience.
Also I forgot to mention that Larrabee was also a fail attempt to make a GPU and some of that tech ended up as Xeon Phi.
Even Larrabee wasn't their first deciated graphics card either, I forgot the name of the much older one that they actually released.

 

[StrayKAT]

If you miss the memo, Intel will be jumping on making GPUs as well in the future.
Oh and 4k TVs and display are quite easy to find today.

I'm not talking about the future. I don't understand how you're blaming them for the past 10 years of displays and gpus. Feel free to resent them, but they don't need to be the whipping boy for everything.

 

[Manu_PT]

Yes, progress at last. Intel is making more money than ever, AMD is comfortably afloat, prices hopefully start to compete too... right now AMD wins the value race.

Sorry, but if we talk about value race we talk about i5 8400. One of the best performance vs price CPUs in history. You can find it as low as 140 in some places. This thing is a beast.

Worth mentioning G5400 for 60 bucks.

Amd has good chips too, but people tend to forget the Intel lower end/mid end offer and only focus on the super expensive i7 x700k and its awful paste on the die.

 

[Dakmio]

No, 14th August isn't the launch date.
According to HKEPC, the Intel document said that a more precise release date will be provided on 14th August.

 

[Easo]

So basically Intel is selling product, which cannot be bought, yet? Quite funny, but sad at the same time.

 

[RejZoR]

A paper launch means Intel is really shitting bricks, after years of being the the drivers seat its something Intel is not handling well.

Indeed. Paper launch feels like "oh my god, we need to show ppl that we're still relevant otherwise they'll forget about us entirely". That's what happens when you sleep on laurels of your past glory and become entirely detached from reality.

 

[Manu_PT]

Is so funny how ppl on tpu bash Intel so much and make it seem like Intel is failing big time right now. Then I go to amazon and the best seller is a 8700k and they still have the cpu with better performance on most applications, better ram compability, less bios problems etc etc

Is laughable really xD

 

[R0H1T]

I'm not talking about the future. I don't understand how you're blaming them for the past 10 years of displays and gpus. Feel free to resent them, but they don't need to be the whipping boy for everything.

You could argue that Intel pushed the good enough computing paradigm for desktops too much & far too long. I've seen users on other forums defend them for selling mainstream quad cores for 10 years! Now the same users are buying their hexa and possibly upcoming octa cores, just because it's Intel. The price gouging and absolutely ripping the consumers off by updating motherboards every year is just despicable. Sure they are in the business of making money, but when you're saying the following shouldn't you blame someone like Intel as well?

I can see this being a hit in China.

One thing I don't see mentioned much.. and it's not to be offensive.. but the Chinese are kind of wasteful. Many don't seem to have the same love/attention to detail/care for their property or tools, in many cases. I have to wonder if they even have a strong PC building culture there.

It goes for their buildings, or their bikes, or their cars. And I can see them being just as disposable with their computers. If a bike breaks, you might just find it left to rot and they buy a new one.

Not trying to be snide but IMO Intel absolutely deserve all the hate they've garnered over the years.

 

[qubit]

As a PC building enthusiast who has always aligned with Intel/Nvidia... AMD Ryzen is the best thing to happen to the industry in 10 years.

Exactly. Now we just need the same thing to happen with graphics cards.

 

[ssdpro]

Indeed. Paper launch feels like "oh my god, we need to show ppl that we're still relevant otherwise they'll forget about us entirely". That's what happens when you sleep on laurels of your past glory and become entirely detached from reality.

Why are there so many foolish posts like this? Read my first post. Balanced, fair, thoughtful, complimentary of Intel and AMD because each has their pro-s and con-s. Jumping to dreamlike Intel CEO statements like: "oh my god, we need to show ppl that we're still relevant otherwise they'll forget about us entirely" is just kid stuff. Intel had revenue of 16.96 billion last quarter alone which exceeded analyst expectations. AMD had revenue of 1.76 billion. There is no crippling drama over at Intel, they are still crushing the competition. It will take AMD a long time and a long period of Intel stagnation to even catch up to even half of Intel's revenue.

 

[Caqde]

Why are there so many foolish posts like this? Read my first post. Balanced, fair, thoughtful, complimentary of Intel and AMD because each has their pro-s and con-s. Jumping to dreamlike Intel CEO statements like: "oh my god, we need to show ppl that we're still relevant otherwise they'll forget about us entirely" is just kid stuff. Intel had revenue of 16.96 billion last quarter alone which exceeded analyst expectations. AMD had revenue of 1.76 billion. There is no crippling drama over at Intel, they are still crushing the competition. It will take AMD a long time and a long period of Intel stagnation to even catch up to even half of Intel's revenue.

I don't think you understand Intel's line of thought very much (at least the way their executives act). Intel from past experience was exactly like this. They don't want AMD to gain ANY market share. Intel is a company that PAID the OEM's to sell only their product to the point that the OEM's made more money from Intel's Payments than selling the chips. This is the kind of company Intel childish actions Intel has taken and their current actions are not much better. The unfortunate matter is that the post about them acting like that is probably not that far off. Remember last year Intel released the 8x00 series chips before they had enough to actually sell. Why did they do this? Because they were afraid the Ryzen 2x00 series would cannibalize their sales and here we are again Intel's 9x00 series this time paperlaunched in August 2018, 10 months after the semi paper-launch coffeelake launch in Oct, 2018. Are we again going to see Intel launch without proper stock of chips or are they going to actually have the chips needed to a decent amount of the demand this time around.

I wouldn't consider these thoughts completely foolish. But at least for me there is some historical precedent for my skepticism of their actions.

 

[ssdpro]

I don't think you understand Intel's line of thought very much (at least the way their executives act). Intel from past experience was exactly like this. They don't want AMD to gain ANY market share. Intel is a company that PAID the OEM's to sell only their product to the point that the OEM's made more money from Intel's Payments than selling the chips. This is the kind of company Intel childish actions Intel has taken and their current actions are not much better. The unfortunate matter is that the post about them acting like that is probably not that far off. Remember last year Intel released the 8x00 series chips before they had enough to actually sell. Why did they do this? Because they were afraid the Ryzen 2x00 series would cannibalize their sales and here we are again Intel's 9x00 series this time paperlaunched in August 2018, 10 months after the semi paper-launch coffeelake launch in Oct, 2018. Are we again going to see Intel launch without proper stock of chips or are they going to actually have the chips needed to a decent amount of the demand this time around.

I wouldn't consider these thoughts completely foolish. But at least for me there is some historical precedent for my skepticism of their actions.

I also don't see this Intel panicking narrative as even remotely researched. Intel released Skylake (6th-gen Core) in Fall 2015. Kaby Lake (7th gen) released in Fall 2016. Why is it even breaking news or thought of as a panic that 9th-gen may come out in Fall 2018? Seems right on track. You can bend the spoon if it makes you think Intel is in some panic but 16.96 billion vs 1.7 billion says otherwise. If you compare net income it is worse - 5 billion to 114 million. Intel was up from Q2 2017 net income of 2.7 to that 5.0 in Q2-18. AMD's resurgence has almost doubled Intel's net income. It would be a lot easier and more mature if people just just agree Intel went into a holding pattern while AMD fell apart. AMD showed a heartbeat and put out a great value product. Intel countered by moving ahead. Hopefully AMD's resurgence maintains and is good for progress.

https://www.intc.com/investor-relat...eports-Second-Quarter-2018-Financial-Results/
http://ir.amd.com/news-releases/new...reports-second-quarter-2018-financial-results

 

[hzlph]

Is so funny how ppl on tpu bash Intel so much and make it seem like Intel is failing big time right now. Then I go to amazon and the best seller is a 8700k and they still have the cpu with better performance on most applications, better ram compability, less bios problems etc etc

Is laughable really xD

We dont bash intel for their lose in the market, because we're all well aware Intel has the upper hand in IPC and better brand recognition, Intel Core has been on for longer than even before the FX series begun, but the argument against intel is how much they were confortable since Sandy Bridge, not innovating enough in the PC space, until AMD Showed off with Ryzen. And it was just a matter of sense, Kaby Lake barely saw minor improvements over Skylake, which itself was more or less Broadwell. When we bash Intel, we like to bring up the fact that Ryzen made Intel's monopoly fall so hard, that their 8th and upcoming 9th gen are just clear attempts to stay relevant on a Market where Ryzen has a better value for multithreated worloads, while lagging just a few points in single threated workloads. And remember, Zen is a brand new architecture, while Intel Core has been around since 2006, and yet Zen is able to compete toe to toe against Intel Core. It is laughable that you ignore the fact that Ryzen has brought back competition to the market, because without it, our 8700K would probably still be 4C/8T.

 

[RejZoR]

Why are there so many foolish posts like this? Read my first post. Balanced, fair, thoughtful, complimentary of Intel and AMD because each has their pro-s and con-s. Jumping to dreamlike Intel CEO statements like: "oh my god, we need to show ppl that we're still relevant otherwise they'll forget about us entirely" is just kid stuff. Intel had revenue of 16.96 billion last quarter alone which exceeded analyst expectations. AMD had revenue of 1.76 billion. There is no crippling drama over at Intel, they are still crushing the competition. It will take AMD a long time and a long period of Intel stagnation to even catch up to even half of Intel's revenue.

Ever heard of things like sarcasm, irony and so forth? Well, that's that. And even if Intel made 17 billion, there is no denying they are in full panic mode since the moment AMD launched Zen based processors. They don't want that 17 billion cut to be smaller. Which is why they are freaking out. Because AMD has better products this time around. Maybe not in absolutely all segments, but as a whole, Zen stuff is really nice.

 

[nemesis.ie]

Is so funny how ppl on tpu bash Intel so much and make it seem like Intel is failing big time right now. Then I go to amazon and the best seller is a 8700k and they still have the cpu with better performance on most applications, better ram compability, less bios problems etc etc

Is laughable really xD

Actually it's more likely that a lot of regular consumers are still unaware of AMD's existence and will buy whatever the drone in the big-box store will push them to - likely the item with the most margin/kick-backs for the store.

 

[Tomorrow]

14th? Not a coincidence when Threadripper 2 is launching 13th. Intel trying to steal some thunder even without real products on shelves. Weak.

 

[Manu_PT]

y whatever the drone in the big-box store will push them to - lik

Or perhaps simply the best product? Yes because all I see are AMD fanboys talking about how better option Ryzen is, but in the end you forget that most people won´t bother with overclocking the chip to get better performance, they won´t bother spending 20 hours fine tuning memory timings, because not everyone buys B-Die Dimms. People also don´t want some software incompabilities, lack of thunderbolt (music production) and many other disadvantages. Intel has disadvantages too, wich I won´t mention because you guys do it everyday here, every time. But it is annoying that you threat Ryzen like a God tier product and that no one should buy an Intel CPU. When Ryzen itself is not user friendly AT ALL.

 

[Hood]

What's sad is how people think that bashing the competition somehow makes their choice better - it doesnt. Acknowledging the competion's good points actually makes your choice's virtues seem more of an accomplishment. What's the point of claiming to be better than an absolute piece of crap? That's like saying "our shit doesn't smell quite as bad as their shit, ours is the best smelling shit on the planet". Not a good brag. It's still all shit. Much more effective to say, "As great as our competition is, we believe our choice is a little better, or cheaper, (or more expensive, but the expense is somewhat justified by the better performance). It's been proven many times, that bashing your competition in advertising is one of the worst mistakes an company can make, effectively making the entire market look less appealing to potential customers. Bashing a company in a forum is no better, it makes the PC building community look like a bunch of petty assholes, instead of the forward-thinking pioneers we all aspire to be. Think about what you post, don't just give the knee-jerk reaction that seems to bolster your view while actually undermining it.