Something to look forward to: Intel has been showing off some of its new products at Computex, including the Core i7-8086K anniversary CPU that some retailers began listing last week, and a monstrous 28-core single-socket processor.
Intel is only making 50,000 of the Core i7-8086K chips, which arrive 40 years after the release of its 8086 processor. The company says the six-core/12-thread CPU would be its first ever to reach a 5.0GHz turbo frequency without overclocking.
The processor comes with a base clock speed of 4.0GHz, making it 300MHz faster than the Core i7-8700K's base and single-core turbo frequencies. It's expected that the Core i7-8086K will have the same 95W TDP rating.
As Intel's 50th anniversary draws near (June 18), it is giving away 8,086 Core i7-8086K through a sweepstake on its website. Participants can register for a chance to win in two days' time, but you'll only have 24 hours to enter.
Intel didn't announce how much the chip would cost, though the competition website lists its average retail price as $425. The processors will ship on June 6.
But the announcement that's getting most of the attention is Intel's high-end desktop processor (HEDT) that comes with an incredible 28 cores and 56 threads. Gregory Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the client computing group at Intel, showed the chip running at 5GHz across all cores and scoring 7334 multi-core points in Cinebench. As a comparison, the 18-core/36-thread Core i9-7980XE scored around 5000 points.
Intel only teased the chip---no details on the name, architecture or process---but we can expect it to be considerably more expensive than the $1999 Core i9-7980XE. It plans to sell the CPU before the end of the year Update: Intel has come up saying the chip showcase was just that, not a future product.
News of both chips overshadowed Intel's announcement on its upcoming Amber Lake Y-series and Whiskey Lake U-series CPUs. Both still use Intel's 14nm++ technology, and while Whiskey Lake will consume around 15 watts, Amber Lake's 4.5 watts is designed for ultra-low power devices. They will arrive in more than 70 new laptops and 2-in-1s this fall, and offer double-digit performance improvements over the current generation of chips. Additionally, Intel said the new X-series and next-generation S-series processors are coming to desktops later in 2018.