Intel i9 9900K CPU release date, specs, price, and performance

Intel's new i9 is launching today, and our Intel i9 9900K review is now live, signalling the start of the 9th Gen... despite it being architecturally identical to the 8th Gen. The new eight-core / 16-thread chip is set to launch costing upward of $500. In other words, almost twice as much as AMD's top octa-core CPU. Pre-orders have already started appearing across major retailers, and if you want Intel's halo processor, you'd better move quick. Benchmarks, too, have begun flooding in from across the web, and it looks almost certain that the i9 9900K is going to be one seriously capable processor. The benchmarks never lie... Actually, benchmarks often lie, but mostly only the ones that appear as skewed mobile phone pictures. They really are the worst. Though this isn't the first time Intel has taken the initiative to stick the i9 prefix onto one of its fastest chips. The mobile i9 8950HK has been available for quite some time, and the HEDT platform chips, Skylake X, have been rocking i9 for a while. But, the i9 9900K is the first LGA 1151 compatible i9 part gamers can pair with a full-size discrete GPU for the very best gaming performance, and that's pretty exciting.