The Intel 9th Gen Review: Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K Tested

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.

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Final Fantasy XV	IGP	Low	Medium	High
Average FPS
95th Percentile

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.