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: Final Fantasy XV
Upon arriving to PC earlier this, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition was given a graphical overhaul as it was ported over from console, fruits of their successful partnership with NVIDIA, with hardly any hint of the troubles during Final Fantasy XV's original production and development.
In preparation for the launch, Square Enix opted to release a standalone benchmark that they have since updated. Using the Final Fantasy XV standalone benchmark gives us a lengthy standardized sequence to record, although it should be noted that its heavy use of NVIDIA technology means that the Maximum setting has problems - it renders items off screen. To get around this, we use the standard preset which does not have these issues.
Square Enix has patched the benchmark with custom graphics settings and bugfixes to be much more accurate in profiling in-game performance and graphical options. For our testing, we run the standard benchmark with a FRAPs overlay, taking a 6 minute recording of the test.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Final Fantasy XV | JRPG | Mar 2018 |
DX11 | 720p Standard |
1080p Standard |
4K Standard |
8K Standard |
|
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Final Fantasy XV | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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Unlike World of Tanks, Final Fantasy is never entirely CPU limited at any one point. Even on its Low settings, our entire collection of CPUs is within a 7% range. Only once we drop down to IGP-level settings – which are really meant more for IGP comparisons – do we tease out any kind of CPU difference. Still, in that scenario the 9900K does at least eek out a few more frames than prior Intel CPUs, with the 9700K taking up second place. Past that, this is very clearly a game that is GPU limited in almost all scenarios.
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3dGfx - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
game developers like to build and test on the same machinemr_tawan - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
> game developers like to build and test on the same machineOh I thought they use remote debugging.
12345 - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link
Only thing I can think of as a gaming use for those would be to pass through a gpu each to several VMs.close - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
@Ryan, "There’s no way around it, in almost every scenario it was either top or within variance of being the best processor in every test (except Ashes at 4K). Intel has built the world’s best gaming processor (again)."Am I reading the iGPU page wrong? The occasional 100+% handicap does not seem to be "within variance".
daxpax - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
if you noticed 2700x is faster in half benchmarks for games but they didnt include itnathanddrews - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
That wasn't a negative critique of the review, just the opposite in fact: from the selection of benchmarks you provided, it is EASY to see that given more GPU power, the new Intel chips will clearly outperform AMD most of the time - generally with average, but specifically minimum frames. From where I'm sitting - 3570K+1080Ti - I think I could save a lot of money by getting a 2600X/2700X OC setup and not miss out on too many fpses.philehidiot - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
I think anyone with any sense (and the constraints of a budget / missus) will be stupid to buy this CPU for gaming. The sensible thing to do is to buy the AMD chip that provides 99% of the gaming performance for half the price (even better value when you factor in the mobo) and then to plough that money into a better GPU, more RAM and / or a better SSD. The savings from the CPU alone will allow you to invest a useful amount more into ALL of those areas. There are people who do need a chip like this but they are not gamers. Intel are pushing hard with both the limitations of their tech (see: stupid temperatures) and their marketing BS (see: outright lies) because they know they're currently being held by the short and curlies. My 4 year old i5 may well score within 90% of these gaming benchmarks because the limitation in gaming these days is the GPU. Sorry, Intel, wrong market to aim at.imaheadcase - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
I like how you said limitations in tech and point to temps, like any gamer cares about that. Every game wants raw performance, and the fact remains intel systems are still easier to go about it. The reason is simple, most gamers will upgrade from another intel system and use lots of parts from it that work with current generation stuff.Its like the whole Gsync vs non gsync. Its a stupid arguement, its not a tax on gsync when you are buying the best monitor anyways.
philehidiot - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Those limitations affect overclocking and therefore available performance. Which is hardly different to much cheaper chips. You're right about upgrading though.emn13 - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
The AVX 512 numbers look suspicious. Both common sense and other examples online suggest that AVX512 should improve performance by much less than a factor 2. Additionally, AVX-512 causes varying amounts of frequency throttling; so you;re not going to get the full factor 2.This suggests to me that your baseline is somehow misleading. Are you comparing AVX512 to ancient SSE? To no vectorization at all? Something's not right there.