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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 |
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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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muziqaz - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
I love the price of $488 stamped all over each of the test results, while over here in UK I see price of £599 and newegg quotes $580. Even your linked amazon has it at $580. And conclusion is awesome with: "At $488 SEP, plus a bit more for 'on-shelf price'..." Since when is extra 100 bucks a bit more? :Dcompudaze - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
What was the actual vcore for your overclocks?HardwareDufus - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
I7-9700k.... an I7 that isn't hyperthreaded.... let's totally muddy the waters now Intel.... Guess they had to save some feature for the I9's $100+ surcharge...… Good grief.bogda - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link
How pointless is reviewers comment: "... World of Tanks gives the 9900K some room to stretch its legs..."?Difference between two chips in discussion is between 712fps and 681fps! Not even Neo from Matrix could note the difference.
How pointless is discussing top of the line CPU gaming performance in 720p in any game??
How pointless is marketing 8C/16T CPU for gamers???
sseyler - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link
Not sure whether this has been pointed out yet, but the Threadripper prices need to be updated. For example, the 1920X is now well under $500 as advertised even on AMD's website and the 1900X goes for $350 on Newegg.dlum - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link
For me, listing the long-obsolete prices for AMD processors (still initial, long-outdated MSRP for 1920x $799 - whereas a simple amazon search confirms it's now for just over half of that ($431)) is clearly disrespectful and shamefull practice for a reviewer.It's very sad such dishonest practices found their way to Anandtech and they are so prominent here.
Probably that's also why no one answers nor fixes those clearly misleading figures.
(Maybe that's the cost of being able to read such anyway valuable reviews for free :)
sseyler - Thursday, October 25, 2018 - link
Well, to be fair, I'm sure the editors didn't dig this deeply through the comments. They're busy people.Also, I think I heard something mentioned before about their graphs having some semi-automatic mechanism for listing prices and the like. I don't remember exactly, but it probably has something to do with pulling MSRP data and it's difficult to change given the way the templated graphs are generated from the benchmarks.
I imagine it was done something like this for consistency across the site as well as not biasing prices according to specific vendors. Given the first reason, I don't know why it'd be difficult for individual editors to customize/tweak certain aspects, but maybe that needs to be revised to be more flexible. As for the second reason, there are clearly reasonable solutions, like finding the *current* MSRP (rather than the release MSRP), or selecting the lowest/median/average price among a pool of selected retailers.
Anyway, it doesn't make much sense to me to characterize this as an instance of dishonesty, but rather a technical detail that's important enough to invest the time in it's improvement.
sseyler - Thursday, October 25, 2018 - link
its*zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Meh. Intel owner could simply delidd and approach these kinds of performance.Resolution above 1080p, AMDs parts have better value.
zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Made the comment without reading the review. The difference is a lot smaller than I expected where the only useful difference is in Ashes where AMD usually dominates due to sheer core count.I'd be fine with that 6 core CPU from AMD.