It was at Computex last year Intel debut its Core I7 6950E Extreme edition, displaying what then was the first 10-core CPU to grace the market. It was Intel's flagship processor which retailed for $1700, though the processor was probably meant for the enterprising server or high-end workstation, the chip found its way into a great number of gaming PC's.
Moving forward into present day Computex 2017, Intel once again makes a big splash at the event with yet another processor for the would be PC enthusiast, bringing you an entirely new branding that falls under the Core X Series. And we also have a processor that have double digit CPU cores, 18 to exact, making it first processor of its kind on the market. The i9-7980XE is the full branding name by the way and it is definitely a clap back response to AMD's most recent unveiling of another CPU for the PC enthusiast, code name Threadripper (the name though) having 16-Cores, and like the i9-7980XE, it also have 32-cores.
The biggest eye popping feature is not the specs which I'll get to later, but it is the price, retailing for a whopping $1,999. Inflated price and all, you're definitely getting what you pay for with the i9 7980XE processor, as I mentioned before, it presents 18-cores, and like its AMD counterpart, there's also 32-threads of processing.
Maybe you don't want to expend a great deal of cash for a processor, or you might want come down a bit on the processing cores, good news, Intel has other Core i9 Extreme Edition variants as an option that come in 10, 12,14, and 16 cores at various prices. The 10-core i9-7900X might be the more popular choice with consumers since its significantly discounted from last years chip at $999, its Core clock speed comes in at 3.3 GHz featuring Intel's 4.3 GHz boost technology, also featuring Intel's 4.5 GHz boost Max technology 3.0.
The Core X-Series extends its line into the quad-core i5-7640X and i7 processors containing 4, 6,7 and 8 cores. There is no conformation of any shipping date from Intel at this time. I'm betting these chips will be release at the end of this year, but don't quote me on that.