The Intel 9th Gen Review: Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K Tested
by Ian Cutress on October 19, 2018 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Coffee Lake
- 14++
- Core 9th Gen
- Core-S
- i9-9900K
- i7-9700K
- i5-9600K
Gaming: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | Open World | Apr 2015 |
DX11 | 720p Low |
1080p High |
1440p Very High |
4K Ultra |
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| *Strange Brigade is run in DX12 and Vulkan modes | ||||||||
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| GTA 5 | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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GTA V is always an amusing game, and not just for its criminal hi-jinx. Originally released for the last-gen consoles years ago – with the best CPUs and GPUs of 2005/2006 – it still sells well. More importantly, it can still punish a modern GPU. And CPUs don’t get off too easily either, especially at our 1080p high settings. In this case the CFL-R chips take a 1-2-3 win, all of them pushing past even the 8700K. The performance gain is nothing to write home about, but the 9900K has improved over its predecessor by 9%.
However these CPU differences quickly become irrelevant at higher, more GPU-demanding settings. At 1440p Very High we’re looking at a tie for the top 7 CPUs, and no one is getting more than 23fps at 4K.
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29a - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
"The $374 suggested retail price is a bit easier to digest for sure, with the user safe in the knowledge that no two threads are sharing resources on a single core."If that statement isn't putting lipstick on a pig then I don't know what is. That is some major spin right there, you should think about being a politician. I generally feel safe that the scheduler will take care of what treads go to which core.
Nikorasu95 - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Did I just fu*king downgrade by purchasing the i9 9900K when I have the i7 8700K? Like WTF? Some gaming results show the i7 is beating the i9. Like what is going on here? The i9 should be ahead of both the i7 8700K, and 8086K in all gaming tests considering it has 2 extra cores. Once again WTF is going on here with these results? They are inconsistent and make no sense!mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
Honestly this is why one should never preorder, wait for reviews. You could also just do a return, go back to 8700K, save the money for a future GPU upgrade which would be better for gaming anyway.dustwalker13 - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
i9900K is a strange animal.if i want workloads, i can get a threadripper for basically the same price with better performance in that area.
if i want gaming i can get a 2700X for much less (plus savings on motherboard and cooler) and get a better gpu for that money, netting me higher fps total.
this part only makes sense if i want to check one single box: get all the parts that net me the absolute highest fps in gaming exclusively, without any compromise, no regard for cost/performance ratios and no other usage scenario like productivity in mind.
the potential customer group seems very limited in that respect. the i9900k just does not make sense for anyone but a statistics crazy gamer with too much money on his hand. for everything else - and especially anyone who does a basic value comparison even on the high end side of gaming - the 9700K and especially 2700X are just hands down the better picks.
jabber - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Yeah to be honest Intel is just redundant price wise. As you say I'd rather save $200-$250 and put the money into say an extra $50/$60 each on Ram/GPU/Motherboard and SSD.jabber - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
So looking at those graphs, AMD at around $360 is the sweetspot.daxpax - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
its funny how there is no 2700x included in benchmarks where it tops Intel. this is as deceptive as previous principle technologies benchmark. haha i thought you were transparent reviwerdaxpax - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
this is clearly intel paid article and you at anand tech should told us this is paid article. shame on youAutomaticTaco - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Seems like a balanced article to me.mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
Do you think it's balanced to refer to MSRP rather than typical retail pricing?