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: Integrated Graphics
Despite being the ultimate joke at any bring-your-own-computer event, gaming on integrated graphics can ultimately be as rewarding as the latest mega-rig that costs the same as a car. The desire for strong integrated graphics in various shapes and sizes has waxed and waned over the years, with Intel relying on its latest ‘Gen’ graphics architecture while AMD happily puts its Vega architecture into the market to swallow up all the low-end graphics card sales. With Intel poised to make an attack on graphics in the next few years, it will be interesting to see how the graphics market develops, especially integrated graphics.
For our integrated graphics testing, we take our ‘IGP’ category settings for each game and loop the benchmark round for five minutes a piece, taking as much data as we can from our automated setup.
Finally, looking at integrated graphics performance, I don’t believe anyone should be surprised here. Intel has not meaningfully changed their iGPU since Kaby Lake – the microarchitecture is the same and the peak GPU frequency has risen by all of 50MHz to 1200MHz – so Intel’s iGPU results have essentially been stagnant for the last couple of years at the top desktop segment.
To that end I don’t think there’s much new to say. Intel’s GT2 iGPU struggles even at 720p in some of these games; it’s not an incapable iGPU, but there’s sometimes a large gulf between it and what these games (which are multi-platform console ports) expect for minimum GPU performance. The end result is that if you’re serious about iGPU performance in your desktop CPU, then AMD’s APUs provide much better performance. That said, if you are forced to game on the 9900K’s iGPU, then at least the staples of the eSports world such as World of Tanks will run quite well.
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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.