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: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
The latest instalment of the Tomb Raider franchise does less rising and lurks more in the shadows with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As expected this action-adventure follows Lara Croft which is the main protagonist of the franchise as she muscles through the Mesoamerican and South American regions looking to stop a Mayan apocalyptic she herself unleashed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to the previous Rise of the Tomb Raider and was developed by Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics and was published by Square Enix which hit shelves across multiple platforms in September 2018. This title effectively closes the Lara Croft Origins story and has received critical acclaims upon its release.
The integrated Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark is similar to that of the previous game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which we have used in our previous benchmarking suite. The newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses DirectX 11 and 12, with this particular title being touted as having one of the best implementations of DirectX 12 of any game released so far.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Action | Sep 2018 |
DX12 | 720p Low |
1080p Medium |
1440p High |
4K Highest |
|
| *Strange Brigade is run in DX12 and Vulkan modes | ||||||||
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| SoTR | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
Diving into Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we have another game that’s mostly GPU-bound at its 1080p settings. At 1080p Medium the 9900K is actually a step behind the 7900K – noisy results in their purest form – while at 720p Low it’s still technically behind the 9700K. Either way, once we turn down our settings low enough to remove the GPU bottleneck, its overall another typical showing for the new CFL-R processors. Intel’s latest and greatest is several percent ahead of its predecessors, but none of these games are in a position to really take advantage of the extra two cores. So instead it’s all about frequency and L3 caches.
Though this game (like so many others) does seem to reinforce the idea that the 9600K is the new 8700K. The 8700K is still ahead by a few frames at CPU-bound settings, but despite losing HT, the 9600K is still hanging in the fight for a noticeably lower price.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
274 Comments
View All Comments
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?