Intel’s powerful new 8-core processor could land in desktops this September

By Chuong Nguyen Published June 13, 2018

Intel may have some powerful processors in the works that are slated to arrive this fall. After revealing plans to debut a high-end, premium processor with 28 cores at Computex, Intel may be working on a more powerful option for mainstream desktop users with eight cores of computing power.

The Intel processor roadmap was pieced together by PC Watch, which is citing intelligence gathered from discussions with Intel’s original equipment manufacturing partners rather directly with Intel’s own executives, so the accuracy of the timeline is uncertain. “First of all, I am not directly listening to the roadmap from Intel,” PC Watch cautioned in its reporting. “Therefore, please be aware of the possibility that this article may be inaccurate.”

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The eight-core consumer desktop processor is said to arrive as part of Intel’s planned Coffee Lake refresh in September and not on the Coffee Lake-S family, TechRadar reported. Coffee Lake Refresh will expand on Intel’s 2017 launch of Coffee Lake, which at the time delivered up to a maximum of six cores. Moving to an eight-core product will help Intel stay competitive against rival AMD and its Ryzen 2 processors with a maximum of 32 cores.

But before Intel could introduce its eight-core consumer processor, it still has to work out details on how it will address the prosumer market. The Coffee Lake refresh is expected to arrive first in July in the form of the Xeon E processor, but that desktop processor only has four cores.

Enthusiasts who need the most powerful PCs can look forward to Intel’s Basin Fall refresh, which will come with 22 cores. The Basin Fall refresh is expected to arrive around September and adds four additional cores to Intel’s current 18-core Core i9-7980XE flagship. This new chip could either be part of the Skylake-X or Kaby Lake-X family, but comes with a new socket design. This means you would need a new motherboard to upgrade.

Looking ahead into the second part of 2019, Intel may be launching a new Cascade Lake-X family for the high-end desktop market.

In addition to working on more powerful processors, Intel is also looking at making its own GPU to compete against Nvidia and AMD. In discussions with analysts, Intel revealed that its discrete GPUs could arrive as early as 2020, Marketwatch reported.

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