Intel Core i9: Six Cores Of Speed

On paper, the Core i9 might not sound that exciting: It's a lot like the Core i7, except built with a 32nm fabrication process and two extra cores, for a total of six. Early benchmarks, though, say it flies. Sometimes. 

The i9 doesn't extract significant advantages from its pumped core count (which brings processing thread count up to 12) in a lot of day to day tasks, so don't expect to see an increase in game performance, Windows startup speed or other single-core optimized tasks. It's when you start rendering video or doing 3D modeling—tasks that are suited to parallelization—that the i9 flexes its muscles.

While testing the pre-release 2.8 GHz Gulftown chip, PCLab found a significant speed increase with certain applications. According to their report, certain resource-intensive tasks, such as editing video or 3D modelling, perform up to 50% faster than Intel's current Core i7 chip.

Unfortunately, the chip didn't shine in all areas; its performance is similar to that of older Core i7 chips when handling less demanding general activities.

However, the Core i9 CPUs fared well when it came to power usage, using less power and running cooler compared to older chips.