Intel's New i9 Skylake Processor Lineup and Specs Leak

Just when you thought it was safe to upgrade your PC.

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You may have had some extra cash to spend recently and decided to upgrade to a new top of the line Intel i7 processor. But hey, look, in June it won't be top of the line any more, if a leaked marketing slide is to be believed.

A slide from a German Powerpoint presentation shows Intel's planned Core X chipset lineup, which include two new Kaby Lake i7s and four new Skylake i9s. The top-of-the-line has a whopping 12 cores and 16.5 MB L3 cache. The 7920X is still in the finalization stage, as its clock and overclock speeds haven't been determined yet for its August launch.

Here are the proposed specs for the i9s and two higher-end i7s:

CPU i7-7640K i7-7740K i9-7800X i9-7820X i9-7900X i9-7920X
Cores/Threads 4/4 4/8 6/12 8/16 10/20 12/24
Base clock (GHz) 4.0 4.3 3.5 3.6 3.3 n/a
Boost clock (GHz) 4.2 4.5 4.0 4.5 4.5 n/a
L3 cache (MB) 6 8 8.25 11 13.75 16.5
TDP (watts) 112 112 140 140 160 160

In addition, each Skylake-X will have1 MB L2 cache, four times that of the Core i7-7700K

That's a lot of processing power on the high end, with the 7800X and 7820X looking like the most viable for super gaming rigs. It will all come down to price, however, which Intel probably won't announce until its presentation officially revealing the i9s. The i7-7700K currently runs around $300, so it wouldn't be unlikely that the starting i9s, especially the 7820K to double that. The cores and hyperthreading of the 7900X and 7920X could take it to the $900-$1,000 range.

This is all speculation at this point, and falls in line with rumors that the new chips being unveiled this year at Gamescom in Germany, but at least we have a talking point for the next generation of Intel's flagship processors. 

Contributing Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 25, 2017 9:40 AM

    John Keefer posted a new article, Intel's New i9 Skylake Processor Lineup and Specs Leak

    • reply
      May 25, 2017 9:47 AM

      New monitor or a single processor... new monitor or a single processor...

    • reply
      May 25, 2017 10:07 AM

      I better build this 7700K system before it is out of date.

    • reply
      May 25, 2017 10:22 AM

      [deleted]

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      May 25, 2017 10:27 AM

      Yeah I've been eyeballing that 7820X for a possible upgrade. Hopefully in the $600 range.

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      May 25, 2017 11:23 PM

      [deleted]

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        May 25, 2017 11:49 PM

        Well, Intel is still IPC king, and it's not like the 4.5Ghz boost clock on the better ones is bad. The bang per buck is sure to be worse than it is for AMD, but if you want top of the line gaming performance, these will most probably be the best CPU's money can buy.

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          May 27, 2017 5:17 PM

          Not at those TDPs they're not. 112W for a 4C/4T CPU? No matter the clocks, these are all DOA. The clock advantage isn't there considering the TDP necessary to get it, it's a wash. IPC is workload dependent, Ryzen has better IPC than Kabylake in some cases. Anyone can build a horribly inefficient processor (which is what TDP measures, efficiency). For mini-ITX builds on air, these are all completely off the list, even the 4T part. What a mess.

    • reply
      May 26, 2017 12:08 AM

      Definitely would have been interested in the 7820X if I hadn't just build a 7700K machine.

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