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: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Civilization 6 | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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Continuing the theme we’ve seen thus far, Civilization 6 is another game where the 9900K does provide some benefits, but not under all circumstances. The game is not particularly GPU-intensive to begin with, so at just 4K Ultra we’re still not entirely GPU limited; but past a Ryzen 7 2700X or so, all the CPUs start running together. We have to drop to 1080p Ultra to really pull the CPUs off of the dogpile, at which point the 9900K comes out in the lead.
This is another game that doesn’t seem to care about core counts so much as it does frequencies. So the 9900K has the strongest position here, while the 9700K brings up second place. But neither are very far from the 8700K, with Intel’s latest coming in at just 12% faster than their former flagship even at these CPU benchmarking sympathetic settings.
Curiously we also see the 9900K fall behind the 9700K at 4K and higher. The difference is easily close enough to be noise, but it might be a very slight impact of the lower-tier chips not having to share their cores with hyper-threading.
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GreenReaper - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
The answer is "yes, with a but". Certain things scale really well with hyperthreading. Other things can see a severe regression, as it thrashes between one workload and another and/or overheats the CPU, reducing its ability to boost.Cache contention can be an issue: the i9-9900K has only 33% more cache than the i7-9700K, not 100% (and even if there were, it wouldn't have the same behaviour unless it was strictly partitioned). Memory bandwidth contention is a thing, too. And within the CPU, some parts can not be partitioned - it just relies on them running fast enough to supplky the parts which can.
And clearly hyperthreading has an impact on overclocking ability. It might be interesting to see the gaming graphs with the i7-9700K@5.3Ghz vs. i9-9900K@5.0Ghz (or, if you want to save 50W, i7-9700K@5.0Ghz vs. i9-9900K@4.7Ghz - basically the i9-9900K's default all-core boost, but 400Mhz above the i7-9700K's 4.6Ghz all-core default, both for the same power).
NaterGator - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Any chance y'all would be willing to run those HT-bound tests with the 9900K's HT disabled in the BIOS?ekidhardt - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Thanks for the review!I think far too much emphasis has been placed on 'value'. I simply want the fastest, most powerful CPU that isn't priced absurdly high.
While the 9900k msrp is high, it's not in the realm of irrational spending, it's a few hundred dollars more. For a person that upgrades once every 5-6 years--a few hundred extra is not that important to me.
I'd also like to argue against those protesting pre-order logic. I pre-ordered. And my logic is this: intel has a CLEAR track record of great CPU's. There hasn't been any surprisingly terrible CPU's released. They're consistently reliable.
Anyway! I'm happy I pre-ordered and don't care that it costs a little bit extra; I've got a fast 8 core 16 thread CPU that should last quite a while.
Schmich - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
You have the numbers anyway. Not everyone buys the highest end and then wait many years to upgrade. That isn't the smartest choice because you spend so much money and then after 2-3 years you're just a mid-ranger.For those who want high-end they can still get a 2700x today, and then the 3700x next year with most likely better performance than your 9900k due to 7nm, PLUS have money over PLUS a spare 2700x they can sell.
Same thing for GPU except for this gen. I never understood those who buy the xx80Ti version and then upgrade after 5 years. Your overall experience would be better only getting the xx70 but upgrading more often.
Spunjji - Monday, October 22, 2018 - link
This is what actual logic looks like!Gastec - Sunday, November 4, 2018 - link
Basically "The more you buy, the more you save" :-\shaolin95 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Exactly. I think the ones beating the value dead horse are mainly AMD fanboys defending their 2700x purchaseeva02langley - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Sorry, value is a huge aspect. The reason why RTX is such an issue. Also, at this price point, I would go HEDT if compute was really that important for me.It is not with 10-15% performance increase over a 2700x at 1080p with a damn 1080 TI that I will see a justified purchase.
Arbie - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Gratuitous trolling, drags down thread quality. Do you really still need to be told what AMD has done for this market? Do you even think this product would exist without them - except at maybe twice the already high price? Go pick on someone that deserves your scorn, such as ... Intel.Great_Scott - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
What a mess. I guess gaming really doesn't depend on the CPU any more. Those Ryzen machines were running at a 1Ghz+ speed deficit and still do decently.Intel needs a new core design and AMD needs a new fab.