Intel has announced that their new i9-9900KS CPU is due to hit the shelves in October. They broke the news at the Real World Performance event at IFGA 2019 along with an announcement that the Cascade Lake-X line up will also be appearing next month.
What we know about the i9-9900KS is that it is a step up from the i9-9900K that it is based on, 8 cores capable of 16 threads, but with a base clock speed of 4.0GHz over the 3.6GHz of the earlier model. The All-Core turbo speed of the i-9-9900KS is a nice even 5.0GHz over the 4.7GHz of the i9-9900K. There isn’t much to say about a chip that is for all intents and purposes the same as its predecessor only faster, but there’s nothing to complain about either, particularly since we don’t know the price yet.
The Cascade Lake-X CPUs fit into what Intel are calling their High End Desktop (HEDT) line and are intended to go up against the AMD Threadrippers. These CPUs will be accompanied by a refresh of the LGA 2066 socket motherboards, although they will still be compatible with existing boards.
We’ll have to wait and see how they compare but it is notable that in their performance slideshow Intel introduced a metric of ‘relative performance per dollar’. This suggests the future possibility of repositioning of the Intel HEDT line as a more frugal option if going head to head with AMD on the usual benchmarks gets painful.