Exclusive: Testing Intel's Unreleased Core i9-9900KS

[harlan4096]

We take Intel's unreleased Special Edition Core i9-9900KS for a benchmarking spin.

It isn't often that we get a chip in the lab that's so secret that we can't even post a picture of it to protect our sources, but that's exactly what we have today with a pre-production Special Edition Intel Core i9-9900KS that has found its way onto our test bench before the company's official launch.

Intel says the Core i9-9900KS will come to market later this month, but aside from some basic specifications it shared at an event in Taipei, the company hasn't revealed much official information about its latest flagship part. That means we'll have a bit of discovery ahead of us as we take a closer look at what Intel hopes will build upon the success of the Core i9-9900K that currently sits atop the gaming throne for the desktop PC market.

Intel certainly needs every advantage it can get. AMD's Ryzen chips, armed with the Zen 2 microarchitecture and TSMC's 7nm process, have proven to be potent competitors against Intel's aging combination of its 14nm process and Skylake architecture. Intel is faced with a nimble opponent in AMD, which has beaten the odds and wrested the process lead from Intel, a first in the storied rivalry between the two companies. That combination fuels the Ryzen processors and their often-superior value proposition of more cores for less money, leading performance in threaded workloads, and similar gaming performance.

In response, Intel has added cores and features to its lineup while wringing every last drop of performance out of its 14nm process through a continual string of '+' revisions. Those enhancements have consistently improved performance (more than 70%) over the original manufacturing technology that debuted five years ago.
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