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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
274 Comments
View All Comments
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.