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 |
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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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| 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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Ian Cutress - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
Emn13: Base code with compiler optimizations only, such as those a non-CompSci scientist would use, as was the original intention of the 3DPM test, vs hand tuned AVX/AVX2/AVX512 code.just4U - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
The only problem I really have with the product is for the price it should have come with a nice fancy cooler like the 2700x which is in it's own right a stellar product at close to 60% of the cost. Not sure what intel's game plan is with this but It's priced close to a second gen entry threadripper and for it's cost you might as well just make the leap for a little more.khanikun - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
I'm the other way. I'd much rather they lower the cost and have no cooler. Although, Intel doesn't decrease the cost without the cooler, which sucks.I'm either getting a new waterblock or drilling holes in the waterblock bracket to make it fit. Well I just upgraded, so I'm not in the market for any of these procs.
brunis.dk - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
no prayers for AMD?ingwe - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
I don't see the value in it though I understand that this isn't sold as a value proposition--it is sold for performance. Seems to do the job it sets out to do but isn't spectacularly exciting to me.jospoortvliet - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Given how the quoted prices ignore the fact that right now Intel CPU prices art 30-50% higher than MSRP, yes, nobody thinking about value for money buys these...DanNeely - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Seriously though, I'm wondering about the handful of benchmarks that showed the i7 beating the i9 by significant amounts. 1-2% I assume is sampling noise in cases where the two are tied, but flipping through the article I saw a few where the i7 won by significant margins.Ian Cutress - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Certain benchmarks seem to be core-resource bound. In HT mode, certain elements of the core are statically partitioned, giving each thread half, and if only one thread is there, you still only get half. With no HT, a thread gets the full core to work with.0ldman79 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
I'd love to see some low level data on the i5 vs i7 on that topic.If the i5 is only missing HT then the i7 without HT should score identically (more or less) with the i5 winning on occasion vs the HT enabled i7. I always figured there was a significant bit of idle resources (ALU pipelines) in the i5 vs the i7, HT allowed 100% (or as close as possible) usage of all of the pipelines.
I wish Intel would release detailed info on that.
abufrejoval - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Well I guess you should be able to measure, if you have the chips. My understanding has alway been, that i7/i5 differentiation is all about voltage levels with i5 parts needing too much voltage/power to pass the TDP restrictions rather than defective logic precluding the use of 'one hyperthread'. I find it hard to imagine managing defects via partitions in the register file or by disabling certain ALUs: If core CPU logic is hit with a defect it's dead, because you can't isolate and route around the defective part at that granularity. It's the voltage levels on the long wires that determine a CPUs fate AFAIK.It's a free choice between a lower clock and HT or the higher clock without HT at the binning point and Intel will determine the fate of a chips on sales opportunities rather than hardware. And it's somewhat similar with the fully enabled lower power -T parts and the high-frequency -K parts, which are most likely the same (or very similar) top tier bins, sold at two distinct voltage levels yet rather similar premium prices, because you trade power and clocks and pay premium for efficiency.
Real chips defects can only be 'compensated' via cutting off cache blocks or whole cores, but again I'd tend to think that even that will be more driven by voltage considerations than 'hairs in the soup': With all this multi-patterning and multi-masking going on and the 3D structures they are lovingly creating for every FinFeT their control over the basic structures is so great, that it's mainly the layer alignment/conductivity that's challenging the yields.