Intel 9th Gen Core-X Basin Falls Family Tops Out At 18-Core, 28-Core Skylake-X To Support 192GB RAM, Six Channels
While is nothing is yet official, Intel is expected to announce several new processors later today, and rumor has it a beastly Core i9-9980XE with 18 physical cores and 36 threads will be among them. The new chip is said to be part of Intel's next generation Core-X high-end desktop (HEDT) series and a refresh of Basin Falls.
Rumor has it this launch will coincide with new 9th generation Core processors for the mainstream market. The latter is expected to include up to 8-core processor offerings, including the Core i7-9700K and Core i9-9900K. Typically there is a waiting period for new HEDT parts to come out, but last minute leaks hold true, today will be an exception.
Intel is said to be launching both Basin Falls Refresh and new Skylake-X parts, both of which fall into the HEDT category. There will be seven new HEDT chips in all. They include:
- Core i9-9980XE (18 cores, 36 threads)
- Core i9-9960X (16 cores, 32 threads)
- Core i9-9940X (14 cores, 28 threads)
- Core i9-9920X (12 cores, 24 threads)
- Core i9-9900X (10 cores, 20 threads)
- Core i9-9820X (8 cores, 16 threads)
- Core i7-9800X (6 cores, 12 threads)
We'll have to wait for clockspeeds and other details, namely the breakdown of how many PCIe lanes each chip will grant access to. These are all enthusiast parts, however, with new motherboards expected to offer support for up to 192GB RAM spread across six channels. Dual power supplies could factor into some of the offerings as well.
As beastly as the Core i9-9980XE is, Intel actually has something even more monstrous on tap, reportedly for later this year. Come December, word on the web is Intel will launch another HEDT chip, one with 28 cores and 56 threads. Intel demonstrated such a chip this past summer and showed it running at 5GHz, though it was later discovered that Intel had used an existing Xeon processor with a fancy water chiller.
