Intel 9th Generation 8-Core 35W CPUs: Launch May 15th (Kikatek)
by Ian Cutress on April 15, 2019 1:00 PM EST
It is always quite amusing when retailers pre-announce products before the company actually pushes out a press release. Embargo or not, the retailers want to advertise the fact they will be getting stock and want to sell early – in the gaming industry, people pre-order games, but in the PC industry, you rarely pre-order hardware. Nonetheless, today’s news comes from online UK retailer Kikatek, which has already listed some of Intel’s 9th Generation Core 35W CPUs as coming out on May 15th.
Intel’s 9th Generation Core family, known as the Coffee Lake Refresh, has had an interesting birth. Having first released the high-end overclockable processors, the rest of the processor stack has seemingly got stuck in Intel’s system – coming out in drips here and there. This might appear to be an odd implementation of Intel’s strategy, or there might be something more fundamental going on, such as the recent reports of Intel’s ability to manufacture enough processors for its customers. As a result, for the consumer lines at least, it is still selling plenty of 8th generation CPUs based on what retailers have available.
What Kikatek has now listed on its website means that there will be more 9th Generation Core processors to choose from, assuming they have them in stock: we now get Intel’s 35W offerings.
| Intel 9th Gen 35W CPUs | |||||
| Cores Threads |
Base Freq |
Turbo Freq |
TDP | Price | |
| Core i9-9900T | 8 / 16 | 2.1 GHz | ? | 35 W | £455.32 |
| Core i7-9700T | 8 / 8 | 2.0 GHz | ? | 35 W | £338.18 |
| Core i5-9600T | 6 / 6 | 2.3 GHz | ? | 35 W | ? |
| Core i5-9400T | 6 / 6 | 1.8 GHz | ? | 35 W | ? |
| Core i3-9300T | 4 / 4 | 3.2 GHz | ? | 35 W | ? |
| Core i3-9100T | 4 / 4 | 3.1 GHz | ? | 35 W | ? |
| G5600T | 2 / 4 | 3.3 GHz | - | 35 W | ? |
| G5420T | 2 / 4 | 3.2 GHz | - | 35 W | ? |
| G4930T | 2 / 2 | 3.0 GHz | - | 35 W | ? |
Intel’s 35W offerings have always been interesting. 35W is the Thermal Design Power, which as Intel indicates is the expected thermal design required for the base frequency of the processor. However, Intel’s processors rarely ever run at the base frequency – most of them have a form of turbo built in to the base design, such that even when all the cores are running, the frequency is beyond the base frequency. This means that the 2.1 GHz base frequency of the eight core sixteen thread Core i9-9900T might never be seen, and the power consumption of the chip might be beyond 35W.
It is worth reading our article here about Intel’s relationship with its TDP numbers to get a better understanding.
Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained
The best way to see the power consumption is to actually test the processors. Hopefully we will get some in for analysis.
Kikatek lists these processors as being announced on May 15th. Subject to any Intel imposed delay, this seems to be a reasonable timeframe for launch.
Update: It would also appear that GIGABYTE and BIOSTAR have both has these CPUs listed in their support lists, some of which have already been removed.
Related Reading
- Intel Readies New Stepping of 9th Gen Core Processors
- Intel Details New 9th Gen CPUs for Notebooks: i9-9980HK to i5-9300H
- More Intel 9th Gen Desktop CPUs: Core i7-9700, Core i3-9100, Pentium Gold G5420, and a new Core i3-8100F ?
- More Intel 9th Gen Desktop CPUs: Core i7-9700, Core i3-9100, Pentium Gold G5420, and a new Core i3-8100F ?
- The Intel 9th Gen Review: Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K Tested
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GeoffreyA - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
Thanks, Ian, for the linked article on TDP.MarcusMo - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
16 mobile threads while stuck in 14nm purgatory. Prepare for throttling galore.baka_toroi - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
14nm++++ is a much better process than 14nm+++!mczak - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
They should still be able to do base clock, so not really throttling.That said, it's interesting intel is going to release these, becuase 1) the performance advantage over 6 cores likely isn't all that great. Yes more cores at lower clocks is more efficient, but they can't really reach really high frequencies with 6 cores already at 35W, and this effect is diminished at low frequencies - so it may be 33% more cores but probably only 15% or so higher performance.
And 2) there is actually no competition from AMD in this space, since the only APU AMD has is 4 core only (unless this is a really dedicated gaming notebook, you definitely want it to have a integrated gpu, even if the notebook has a discrete gpu too, since the battery runtime with discrete only gpu is always awful).
chipped - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
These are not mobile chips. The T means power optimised and you usually see them in all in one designs or NUC’s.mczak - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
Oh you're right I confused them with the -H chips (which are mobile, and 45W) for a minute.AMD does have some competition there in theory (haven't really seen these 8-core low-power ryzen chips used anywhere) but again only in designs with discrete gpus.
Targon - Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - link
Wait and see what 7nm does for Ryzen, this should be fun.Samus - Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - link
T-series are pretty typicacal in USFF PC's like the HP Elitedesk Mini's and Lenovo Thinkcentre Mini's, too.Very common in compact enterprise PC's.
1_rick - Tuesday, April 16, 2019 - link
Yep, and contrary to Ian's guess that "[t]his means that the 2.1 GHz base frequency of the eight core sixteen thread Core i9-9900T might never be seen, and the power consumption of the chip might be beyond 35W", this is going to depend on the individual machine. I have a Dell Optiplex with an i7-8700 (non-K) at work, and it will not go beyond 65W. Day-to-day stuff that won't peg the CPU will let it reach its boost speeds and sustain close to them, but run Handbrake or a stress test along with HWInfo64, and you'll see it locked to 65W, which results in sustained all-core speeds just under the base speed (which is 3.2GHz, so it'll bounce around between 3.0 and 3.2).I would expect most enterprise desktops would function this way, too.
tipoo - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link
Where all threads are used it's still a large net benefit in MP performance, where one thread is used it still has high single threaded turbo. Same as the 8th gen, bumping cores even in 14nm limbo is a net win.