New 18 Core Intel CPU

For the devout PC and Hackintosh based producers out there, yesterdays ‘big reveal’ from Intel probably comes with mixed emotions. The 18-core, 36-thread monster known as the i9-7980XE does not come cheap but it promises a level of performance previously thought impossible. Especially for serial abusers of NI’s Kontakt or the amazing Acoustica Audio plugins. Priced at a scrotum tightening $1,999, the Intel i9-7980XE comfortably usurps AMD’s 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen ‘Threadripper ‘which was supposed to be the most powerful processor in the world. If this is a bit over the top for you, you can still get in the hyper-workstation game from as ‘little’ as  $999 for 10 cores or $1,699 for 16 cores (12 and 14 cores are also available). All i9 processors have a base clock speed of 3.3 GHz and can be comfortably pushed to 4.3 GHz dual-core frequency with Turbo Boost 2.0 and 4.5 GHz with Turbo Boost Max. No clue on availability just yet but watch this space.