Intel 9th Gen Core Processors: All the Desktop and Mobile 45W CPUs Announced
by Ian Cutress on April 23, 2019 9:00 AM ESTIntel’s 9th Generation Core Mobile Processors: 45W H-Series
The 45W range of processors from Intel fits into the high-performance / prosumer niche of portable gaming laptops and workstations. These typically populate the 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch devices, going from a basic gaming system with a discrete graphics card all the way up to DTR, or DeskTop Replacement hardware, that takes the place of a full on desktop in a (insert non-committal gesture) mobile sort of form factor that weighs almost double digits in pounds.
Intel has recently released some mobile processors into the market, such as Whiskey Lake at 15W on 8th Gen, but this is the first proper outing for high performance 9th Gen in a mobile form factor. At this point, we’re not seeing a replacement for Kaby Lake-G, where Intel paired a H-series CPU with a Radeon GPU in the same package, so it will be interesting to see if that gets a refresh later this year.
Intel 9th Generation Core CPUs Mobile 45W H-Series |
||||||||
AnandTech | Cores Threads |
Base Freq |
Turbo Freq |
L3 Cache |
DDR4 | OC | TDP | |
i9-9980 | HK | 8C / 16T | 2.4 GHz | 4.9 GHz* | 16 MB | 2666 | Y | 45 W |
i9-9880 | H | 8C / 16T | 2.3 GHz | 4.7 GHz* | 16 MB | 2666 | 45 W | |
i7-9850 | H | 6C / 12T | 2.6 GHz | 4.6 GHz | 12 MB | 2666 | ish | 45 W |
i7-9750 | H | 6C / 12T | 2.6 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 12 MB | 2666 | 45 W | |
i5-9400 | H | 4C / 8T | 2.5 GHz | 4.3 GHz | 8 MB | 2666 | 45 W | |
i5-9300 | H | 4C / 8T | 2.4 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 8 MB | 2666 | 45 W | |
* i9 CPUs support Intel Thermal Velocity Boost for +100 MHz Turbo |
Enter the Musclebook: Intel is introducing the new ‘Musclebook’ name for the DTR equivalent devices. Ultimately these are likely to be paired with the high end Core i9 processors. Intel has two parts here, the 9980HK which allows for overclocking, and the 9880H. The 9880H equivalent is new to this processor stack, based on requests from Intel’s partners that they wanted something ‘as fast’ as the top HK model, but not actually overclockable – it turns out that if you stick a HK in a system, users expect to be able to push it, and OEMs wanted equivalent performance without having to build in support for overclocking.
Both the 9980HK and 9880H supports Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost, giving an additional 100 MHz if the thermal performance of the hardware allows it. Again, Intel doesn’t specify what requirements those are, of if manufacturers can ignore them, or if it’s enabled by default etc. It could be somewhat misleading to include those values into the single core turbo frequencies, however with mobile platforms we’ve seen such a wide range in PL2 values set in hardware due to the form factor, there are a wide range of single core turbo frequencies that don’t match up to the SKU list anyway – this is OEM and design dependent, so there isn’t much fuss from us on this.
There are two Core i7 parts, with six cores and hyperthreading, and the Core i7-9750H supports ‘Partial Overclocking’. In Intel terminology, this means that the CPU can be up to 400 MHz higher if the OEM sets it as such, allowing the CPU to turbo up to 5.0 GHz. That will be extremely device dependent, and given the way that most OEMs deliver their specification sheets, it will be interesting to see if any of them actually list if this is the case, or just take the 4.6 GHz and not tell anyone.
The two Core i3 parts bring up the rear, with four cores and hyperthreading. This means Intel still makes quad cores with hyperthreading, even though they have disappeared from the desktop product line.
Given the tight integration of mobile chipsets into the products, expect to see a few new devices enabled with Intel’s new AX200 Wi-Fi 6 card that was launched last week. The mobile chipsets are also listed as supporting Samsung’s new 32 GB memory modules, so we will likely see some high-end ‘Musclebooks’/DTR replacements using those, at extreme cost to the user. Intel is again stating Optane storage support on these devices, as well as TB3 support when additional controllers are included.
With the annual Computex trade show around the corner (last week of May), we’re expecting to see a smorgasbord of devices being offered with the new H-series parts: both refreshes of old models and perhaps some new ones in the mix. Stay tuned for our coverage from the show.
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No_such_username - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
...If with "Desktop Market" you mean the "New/Upgraded System Home Enthusiast Market", then yes, without a doubt.However, never forget the Huge boring, ultra-conservative, traditional non-workstation corporate Blarghh-desktop OEM market.
AFAICT the OEM's are still pushing Intel (and form personal anecdotal experience, sometimes 7th Gen Intel at that) onto those clients, and that is not about to change...
PeachNCream - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
Pretty much this stuff here. Intel will land massive OEM bulk deals with the likes of Dell, HP, and so forth that will keep the company chugging along. AMD can't just be at a rough parity. In order to reach market dominance, the company must deliver products that offer so much more value to those OEMs that they will be willing to shift years of momentum in business partnerships over to an "unproven" competitor.And anyway, the desktop market is declining significantly. It is still a big chunk of money, but I think we've long since hit the top of the plateau.
Irata - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
I think part of the value Intel offers to OEM (besides design help) is the incentive cheque that helps pad the C level executives annual bonus.Sadly, this seems to be their way to secure market share - throw wads of money at the right people to make competition go away.
We have all seen how good this was for the market after they got rid of the Athlon problem a few years back (when said wads of money ensured that you had the hardest time even finding any OEM Athlon systems, let alone laptops at all).
Spunjji - Wednesday, April 24, 2019 - link
It's not just OEMs they do this with. I used to work for a small IT reseller in the UK, and Intel would give them "Marketing Development Funds" with bonuses for selling enough products with Intel CPUs in them. AMD would occasionally send their guys in too, but the difference was pretty stark - they were focused on product education and competitive analysis, while the Intel people were focused on making it clear that selling their products would get us kickbacks.Great_Scott - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
The "Huge Boring Corporate" market isn't going to be happy with product shortages. That's at least one good reason for AMD to be making inroads.drothgery - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
The standard corporate office worker market has been almost all laptops (and almost all with U-series parts since Haswell) for a long time now, at least in the US.deil - Wednesday, April 24, 2019 - link
corpo market will be very slow to adopt RYZEN but with new type of data steal hacks that cannot be "fixed" and exists in all intels, they might start to sway because of security.they did banhammer many things because of worse reason....
Gastec - Friday, April 26, 2019 - link
True that. I experience it on my own skin every day, working for one of those multi-national, greedy but cheap, corrupted but well hiding it Blaaarghs. Das Auto.Great_Scott - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
Probably not on the high end. All Intel needs to do is rediscover HT.That said, Intel's insane product segmentation is a sign that they still aren't taking RyZen seriously. If so, that's a huge mistake.
Opencg - Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - link
if you mean hyperthreading its kinda pointless for 90% of games and doesnt make a huge difference in the end. games are not optimised to run efficiently with that level of multithreading. its usually better to give each thread its own resources and execution ability. just look at some 9900k vs 9700k benchmarks. they are virtually the same with the 9700k even pulling out ahead quite often.