We?re reviewing our first Core i9 chip?Intel's Core i9-7900X 10-core part?as a veritable CPU storm looms. Sure, Core i9 blew in as the most powerful CPU the company has ever sold to consumers, and it's currently the fastest Core-series CPU available. But an ill wind is blowing: AMD's Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 chips offer stiff competition in the low end, while its massive 12-core and 16-core Threadripper CPUs loom on the high end.

Because there's so much to say about Core i9, we put the prices, features and FAQs into a separate story you'll want to read for background. For this review, we'll walk through some of the under-the-hood issues directly related to performance, and then we'll dive into the benchmarks.