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: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Civilization 6 | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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Continuing the theme we’ve seen thus far, Civilization 6 is another game where the 9900K does provide some benefits, but not under all circumstances. The game is not particularly GPU-intensive to begin with, so at just 4K Ultra we’re still not entirely GPU limited; but past a Ryzen 7 2700X or so, all the CPUs start running together. We have to drop to 1080p Ultra to really pull the CPUs off of the dogpile, at which point the 9900K comes out in the lead.
This is another game that doesn’t seem to care about core counts so much as it does frequencies. So the 9900K has the strongest position here, while the 9700K brings up second place. But neither are very far from the 8700K, with Intel’s latest coming in at just 12% faster than their former flagship even at these CPU benchmarking sympathetic settings.
Curiously we also see the 9900K fall behind the 9700K at 4K and higher. The difference is easily close enough to be noise, but it might be a very slight impact of the lower-tier chips not having to share their cores with hyper-threading.
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mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
Tell that to AutomaticTaco, his posts read like a shill mission atm.PG - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
How is the 2600X beating the 2700X in Ashes ?How is the 1800X beating the 2700X in AES?
2700x results are too low in some areas.
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!eastcoast_pete - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
@Ian / Anandtech: With the high premium over the MSRP for a 9900K, the difference vs. an 8700K is easily $ 200 as of now. So, here a suggested comparison that even stays in the Intel family: A comparison of a system with the 9900K with the (obligatory) high-end air cooler (so, another $ 100) vs. an 8700K based system at the same price point. Both with the identical graphics card (1080 GTX or 2070), but with the money saved with the 8700K then spent on delidding, a nice liquid cooler AND really fast DDR4? I believe that latter could really make a difference: While Intel's memory controller specifies rather slow DDR4 RAM, it's well known that one can effectively make use of much faster DDR4 RAM, and that has been shown repeatedly at least for the 8700/8700K. So, in a dollar-for-dollar matched comparison, would the 9900K then still be the king of the hill? I, for one, doubt it.eastcoast_pete - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
I have to recall my own comment, after checking prices at Newegg and Amazon. The current Intel 14 nm shortage has now also driven 8700/8700K prices far above their MSRP. This invalidates the performance/price = value equation my comment was based on, although the 8700K is still notably less than the even more overpriced (and out of stock) 9900K. Right now, building an Intel i7 rig is really questionable, unless one really, really wants (thinks one needs) those last few fps in some games and has plenty of money to burn. Assuming one uses the same video card, a Ryzen 2700 (or 2700x) setup with 16 GB of fast DDR4 RAM is cheaper, and if overclocking is on your mind, spend the difference to an 8700 (K or not) on a good liquid cooling setup.mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
For gaming, what it effectively does is push the "on the same budget" equation firmly into the camp of buying a 2700X and using the saving to get a better GPU. Only time this wouldn't apply is if someone does not have any kind of budget limit, but that has to be a tiny and largely irrelevant minority.SaturnusDK - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link
If you're planning to have a decent GPU and game at 1440p or higher then absolutely no Intel CPUs, at any price point, at the moment makes sense to buy. The 2700X is less than $300 at the moment, about half the price of a 9900K, and the 2600 is $160 at the moment, about half the price of a 8700K. Both AMD CPUs match or is only marginally behind the respective core/thread Intel equivalent at double the price.coburn_c - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Under the Mozilla Kraken label you have a power consumption graph.Rumpelstiltstein - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
"Intel Core i9 9900K: The fastest gaming CPU"Uh, really Intel? Looks like that's the 9700K.
The Original Ralph - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Looks like all this might be a moot point for awhile: Amazon hasn't started shipping, Newegg is not only stating "out of stock" but "NOT AVAILABLE" and B&H photo is showing availability date as "JAN 1, 2010" - i kid not. Suspect there's an issue with intel deliveries