Intel Announces X299, Skylake-X, and Kaby Lake-X Release Schedule: Pre-Orders June 19th, Availability June 26th
by Ian Cutress on June 13, 2017 5:40 AM EST
At Computex a couple of weeks ago, Intel announced its new Basin Falls platform, consisting of the X299 chipset with motherboards based on it, a pair of Kaby Lake-X processors, and a set of Skylake-X processors going all the way up to eighteen cores, denoting the first use of Intel’s enterprise level high core-count silicon in a consumer product. For the most part, we had assumed that the news was just that, and following traditional Intel strategy they would not officially give a launch date until the reviews go live sometime later. So imagine our surprise when Intel starts announcing dates at the E3 show this week.
As part of Intel’s E3 press release, as well as their presentations at the show, the new Core i9 processors were discussed, along with Intel’s continued commitment towards eSports. Intel gave the dates for the new platform as the following:
- 4, 6, 8 and 10-core parts available for pre-order from June 19th
- 4, 6, 8 and 10-core parts shipping to consumers from June 26th
- 12-core parts expected to ship in August
- 14, 16 and 18 core parts expected to ship in October
This means that the following five processors will be available from June 26th:
| Intel Basin Falls X299 Processors, June 26th | |||||
| i5-7640X | i7-7740X | i7-7800X | i7-7820X | i9-7900X | |
| Cores | 4C/4T | 4C/8T | 6C/12T | 8C/16T | 10C/20T |
| Base Clock | 4.0 GHz | 4.3 GHz | 3.5 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.3 GHz |
| Turbo Clock | 4.2 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 4.0 GHz | 4.3 GHz | 4.3 GHz |
| TurboMax Clock | N/A | N/A | N/A | 4.5 GHz | 4.5 GHz |
| L2 Cache | 256 KB per core | 1 MB per core | |||
| L3 Cache | 6 MB | 8 MB | 8.25 MB | 11 MB | 13.75 MB |
| PCIe Lanes | 16 | 28 | 44 | ||
| Memory Channels | 2 | 4 | |||
| Memory Freq | DDR4-2666 | DDR4-2400 | DDR4-2666 | ||
| TDP | 112 W | 140 W | |||
| Price (1k tray) | $242 | $339 | $389 | $599 | $999 |
The two quad-core parts are part of the Kaby Lake-X family, essentially using the mainstream Kaby Lake-S silicon but disabling the integrated graphics and expanding the voltage/frequency window and TDP limit to give extra frequency. As already demonstrated, extreme overclockers have hit over 7.5 GHz on these chips at a special Computex Intel event using Liquid Helium, with positive words coming out about 24/7 overclocking capabilities on air and water.
The other three parts are the Skylake-X family, with the 6, 8 and 10-core variants all coming from the same harvested low-core-count die. The big upswing for these processors is the rearranged cache arrangement, with Intel moving from 256KB of L2 cache on the previous generation to 1MB of L2 cache on Skylake-X (and changing the L3 cache from being a fully inclusive cache to being a non-inclusive cache). This significantly enhances software which is L2 cache size sensitive, although it remains to be seen how much of an effect it will have for consumers.
For the other parts, 12 core and up, Intel is staggering their launch to the extent that we do not even know many of the details. Intel's own documents list them all as TBD for frequency, power and DRAM support – the only certainties are core counts, pricing, and the fact that they will use the same socket as the above five processors. The August shipping date for the 12-core will be interesting, given that Dell has announced that pre-orders for its ThreadRipper Alienware desktops start on July 27th. The same announcement from Dell states 'and the Area 51 featuring Intel Core X-Series will arrive on August 22nd, and the product page states that this includes the 12-core option, as well as 6-10 cores. Whether the wording 'arrive' means pre-order or release we do not know, although the TR version explicitly states 'pre-order'. Ryan points out that this could just mean the 6-10 core options, as it doesn't explicitly state the 12 core and Intel hasn't made a firm date themselves yet.
Further Reading
Source: Intel
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mapesdhs - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Only recently. Ryzen was out ages ago.hahmed330 - Tuesday, June 13, 2017 - link
i5-7640X 4Cores/4Threads... $242 Ugh...Is something really wrong with Intel???
artk2219 - Tuesday, June 13, 2017 - link
Yes and no, I cant blame them for trying to milk people for as long as they can, but it also shows you just how accustomed they've gotten to being the only game in town. I'm sure it'll change, but only when it really starts hurting their pocket book, and honestly I can see them pulling the shit they did in the past again, rebates to customers that use only their parts, and punishing customers that don't.razvanics - Tuesday, June 13, 2017 - link
https://youtu.be/3o3mLsrPoP8 Funny Interview Intel :)none12345 - Tuesday, June 13, 2017 - link
"For me Ryzen is already dead. The 8-Core Skylake-X part is only $100 more than the top of the line Ryzen, but offers so much more. Faster single thread performance, more PCIe lanes direct to the CPU, Quad-Channel Memory, and better platform motherboards with loads of premium features. After all of AMD's hype, Intel swats them away as if they were a pesky fly."Bad comparison. You are comparing a mainstream platform to high end desktop. You should be comparing high end desktop to high end desktop. Thats x299 to x399. And on top of that you choose the most expensive am4 chip to the budget x299 chip. 1700 vs the 8 core x299 would be a much fairer comparison.
You can look at it 2 ways.
With ryzen you can get an 8 core for half the price, the cpu is half the price, and the mobo will probably be less then half the price.
With threadripper you can probably get a 12 core for that same $600(dont know pricing yet), so on price to price, threadripper will give you 12 cores vs 8, both give you quad channel ram, and threadripper gives you 64 lanes of pci vs 28.
Either comparison makes the x299 8 core look like a really bad deal. You can spend half as much with ryzen, and not get the extra I/O, or you can spend the same amount with threadripper, and you get more I/O then intel, and a lot more multithread performance.
Single threaded performance, intel will definitely win. But who buys a 8-18 core cpu and gives 2 craps only about single threaded perormance? If you cant use the cores, you have no business buying these platforms. Go buy kaby lake instead, and clock up for your single threaded heart's content.
Pointless to try to guess which is better tho without benchmarks. we know the x299 platform will be more expensive, we know the x399 platform has better i/o. What we dont konw is how much performance/dollar on either untill we can benchmark both.
mapesdhs - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Holy grud, a sensible, balanced post! Are you an alien? :DAGS3 - Saturday, June 24, 2017 - link
These are consumer HEDT CPUs. What consumer needs 16+ cores? Ryzen hype has the market believing "if 4 cores is good, 8 or more cores must be better". Consumer application software is limited by parallelism and multi-threading and few apps benefit from more than 4 cores/8 threads and only benefit from faster clock speeds due to sequential processing. Time for Anandtech to do an article for HEDT users and the "upgrade" trade-off of fewer cores at faster clock speed vs more cores (and more money) at slower speeds for consumers. CPU speeds hit the wall 6 years ago and stalled at 4-5ghz and we won't see 8-10ghz CPU's in the next six years - which is only 2X the speed in 12 years. i9s are NOT new but just existing Xeons with ECC removed at better prices as a reaction to Ryzen like other i7 "X" CPUs. An old i7-4790K user running at 4.5-5ghz may see little improvement for the cost of upgrading to X299 and App performance may be worse. Last, but not least, all i9s are missing the often underrated Intel Graphics iGPU. Kaby Lake i7 iGPU can playback and encode multiple streams of H.264 and H.265 4K video realtime for free. All the above CPUs will need an expensive discrete GPU card in addition to the new CPU and motherboard cost. The "new" i9-7740K has disabled the iGPU. http://www.anandtech.com/.../intel-launches-7th...... http://www.edn.com/.../The-future-of-computers--Pa...Ian Cutress - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
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