Intel has released some benchmarks for the company's upcoming Core i9 "Cascade Lake-X" processors, which are launching next month with dramatic price drops from last year's equivalent Core X CPUs.

The benchmarks claim the 10th Generation Core i9 X-Series processors can crunch through certain AI-powered programming tasks up to two times faster than equivalent chips in last year's Core X line. Specifically, the performance boost pertains to how fast the programs can process images per second. Photo tagging, editing images with creative effects, and motion tracking algorithms are the kinds of tasks slated to benefit from the extra pep.

Another benchmark from Intel claims the new chips perform 3D animation rendering up to 7 percent faster over last year's Core i9 X-Series processors. Compared to a PC running an Core i7 chip from three years ago, the performance gain can reach up to 14 percent.

The improvements will appeal to desktop PC builders and upgraders in need of a heavy-duty processor for image editing, video rendering, game development, or 3D animation. But the real selling point is the pricing. Last week, Intel announced the 10th Generation Core i9 X-series processors will start at $590 and scale up to $979 over four different chip variants. That's a huge drop from the $999-to-$1,999 prices from last year's line. Intel has also added support for four additional PCI Express 3.0 lanes to the CPUs for a total of 48 CPU lanes, or 72 including the lanes on the chipset.

New Xeon Chips

Alongside the refreshed Core i9 chips, Intel is preparing to launch a new line of Xeon W-2200 desktop processors for enterprise buyers next month. The silicon will arrive in eight different chips that range from $294 to $1,333 in pricing.

Intel is marketing the Xeon W-2200 processors to data scientists, engineers, and visual-effect artists who need a powerful chip to perform simulations and renderings. "For example, 3D architectural rendering processes on Autodesk Revit with V-Ray accelerates up to 10 percent faster compared to the previous generation, and up to two times faster compared to a three-year-old workstation," Intel said.

The Xeon W-2200 series starts at four cores and, like the Core X-Series chips, scales up to 18. They now support up to 1TB of DDR4 RAM, and, like the Core i9 chips, can process AI-powered programs up to two times faster than the last generation.

Intel also released some benchmarks for the new Xeon chips, which show incremental performance boosts for 4K video editing and building games using the Unreal Engine when compared to last year's chip line.

Another (Smaller) Price Cut

For PC desktop builders looking to spend under $500 for a new CPU, Intel has some good news: The chipmaker is slightly reducing prices for some of the company's 9th Generation Core S-series desktop processors, specifically the ones that have no Intel integrated graphics active on the chip.

The Core S-series can be a little confusing, because some of the chips carry an "F" suffix, which indicates that they do not include integrated graphics. (For instance, the "Core i9-9900KF" lacks integrated-graphics silicon, whereas the "Core i9-9900K" has it.) Intel debuted these graphics-less processors back, which are meant to used with a dedicated graphics card, in January at a time when the company was facing a chip shortage. However, the Core S-series was originally launched with the same pricing as the standard Core processors, which had built-in integrated graphics. As a result, observers wondered why should anyone pay the same amount for a product missing a notable feature.

Intel is now trying to differentiate the "F" versions of these CPUs with a price tweak, although it's nothing as dramatic as the generation-to-generation price drops on the Core i9 Cascade Lake-X chips. You can now expect to pay about $20 to $30 less versus the "F"-less chips with integrated graphics.

The Core S-series will range from $97 to $463, and include Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 variants.

Further Reading

Component Reviews