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 |
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| *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 |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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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.
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The Original Ralph - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
sorry, B&H's availability date should be JAN 1, 2100eastcoast_pete - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
JAN 1, 2100? Intel's manufacturing problems must be at lot more serious than we knew (:I wonder if the 9900K will be supported by "Windows 21" when they finally ship?
cubebomb - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
you guys need to stop posting 1080p benchmarks for games already. come on now.gammaray - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
I agree, 1440p and higher, especially with the top CPUsmapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
They would of course respond that they have to show 1080p in order to reveal CPU differences, even if the frame rates are so high that most people wouldn't care anyway. I suppose those who do game at 1080p on high refresh monitors would say they care about the data, but then the foundation of the RTX launch is a new pressure to move away from high refresh rates, something the aforementioned group of gamers physically cannot do.piroroadkill - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
They need to show a meaningful difference between CPUs. setting a higher resolution makes the tests worthless, as you'll just be GPU bottlenecked.eva02langley - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
They are important since they bring in perspective CPU bottleneck, however it is widely overpreached.1080p, 1440p and 2160p at max settings... enough said. Without multiple resolutions benchmarks, it is impossible to get a clear picture of the real performances to expect from a potential system.
However, basically, a value rating system is now MANDATORY. It doesn't make any sense that the 9900k received 90% + score on Toms and WCCF. They offer abysmal value for gamers, so it is not "The Best Gaming CPU", however it is the "strongest"
DominionSeraph - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
It's $110 over the i7. If you're looking at a $2500 i7 rig, going to $2610 with an i9 is a 4% increase in price. Looks to me like it generally wins by over 4%. That's a really good value for a content creator since it stomps the i7 by over 20%.Chestertonian - Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - link
No kidding. Why are there barely any 1440p benchmarks, but there are tons of 8k benchmarks? I don't get it.avatar-ds - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
Something's fishy with the 8086k consistently underperforming the 8700k in many (most?) gaming tests by more than a margin of error where differences are significant enough. Undermines credibility of the whole thing.