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.

Gaming: Far Cry 5 Gaming: F1 2018
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  • 0ldman79 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    AMD needs to improve their AVX processing as well, but they've got Intel in a bit of a predicament.
  • Hifihedgehog - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...

    Intel’s FX 9000 series.

    Now even hotter and more power hungry than ever!
  • mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    It reminds me a lot of the P4 days when Intel just had to shove clocks through the roof to remain relevant. And I don't know why tech sites are salivating so much on oc levels that are barely any better than a chip's max turbo, it's a far cry from the days of SB, especially since one can run a 2700K at 5GHz with sensible voltage and good temps using a simple air cooler (ordinary TRUE works fine) and one fan, without high noise (I know, I've built seven of them so far). To me, the oc'ing potential of the 9K series is just boring, especially since the cost is so high that for gaming one is far better off buying a 2700X, 8700K (or many other options) and using the save to get a better GPU.
  • sgeocla - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Why compare to the TR 1920x ($799) and not to the TR 2950X ($899)?
    The TR 2950X kills it in almost every productivity benchmark even against i-9 9900k.
    Not even mentioning the 9th gen power consumption.
  • Yorgos - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    don't bother with the review.
    They show you the results that makes intel seem good.
    Intel/Purch media have failed to show to the people that they exceed even Threadripper's TDP in order to fight Zen.
    Desperate moves for desperate times.
    Better look somewhere else for an unbiased review.
  • mkaibear - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    What, you mean apart from page 21 where it shows that it almost doubles Threadripper's TDP for the same core count CPU and is 50% greater than the one which has 50% more cores than it does?

    Some reading comprehension lessons needed I think.
  • yeeeeman - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    The 9900K looks like a nice CPU, but damn that power consumption is stupidly high. It is almost twice what the 2700X consumes.
  • Hifihedgehog - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    *High-end AIO required.
  • AGS3 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Twice the CPU - 8 cores over 5Ghz :)
  • AutomaticTaco - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link

    Revised down. The first motherboard they used was extremely higher voltage settings.
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen...

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