The curator has not yet captured or verified the visual artifacts for this entry.
The panic button. For a decade, an Intel "i3" meant two cores and a prayer. But in 2019, with AMD's Ryzen breathing down their neck and stealing market share, Intel was forced to unlock four full cores on their entry-level chips. The i3-9100 is essentially an i5-7600 from two years prior, sold at half the price in a desperate bid to stay relevant.
It represents a specific moment in history: the return of competition. It features Turbo Boost technology, which Intel had previously greedily reserved for expensive chips. It's a scrappy little fighter that proved competition is always good for the consumer. It’s not the fastest chip in the museum, but it’s the one that proves monopolies don't last forever.
