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: Ashes Classic (DX12)
Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of the DirectX12 features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.
As a real-time strategy title, Ashes is all about responsiveness during both wide open shots but also concentrated battles. With DirectX12 at the helm, the ability to implement more draw calls per second allows the engine to work with substantial unit depth and effects that other RTS titles had to rely on combined draw calls to achieve, making some combined unit structures ultimately very rigid.
Stardock clearly understand the importance of an in-game benchmark, ensuring that such a tool was available and capable from day one, especially with all the additional DX12 features used and being able to characterize how they affected the title for the developer was important. The in-game benchmark performs a four minute fixed seed battle environment with a variety of shots, and outputs a vast amount of data to analyze.
For our benchmark, we run Ashes Classic: an older version of the game before the Escalation update. The reason for this is that this is easier to automate, without a splash screen, but still has a strong visual fidelity to test.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Ashes: Classic | RTS | Mar 2016 |
DX12 | 720p Standard |
1080p Standard |
1440p Standard |
4K Standard |
|
Ashes has dropdown options for MSAA, Light Quality, Object Quality, Shading Samples, Shadow Quality, Textures, and separate options for the terrain. There are several presents, from Very Low to Extreme: we run our benchmarks at the above settings, and take the frame-time output for our average and percentile numbers.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Ashes Classic | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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 |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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As a game that was designed from the get-go to punish CPUs and showcase the benefits of DirectX 12-style APIs, Ashes is one of our more CPU-sensitive tests. Above 1080p results still start running together due to GPU limits, but at or below that, we get some useful separation. In which case what we see is that the 9900K ekes out a small advantage, putting it in the lead and with the 9700K right behind it.
Notably, the game doesn’t scale much from 1080p down to 720p. Which leads me to suspect that we’re looking at a relatively pure CPU bottleneck, a rarity in modern games. In which case it’s both good and bad for Intel’s latest CPU; it’s definitely the fastest thing here, but it doesn’t do much to separate itself from the likes of the 8700K, holding just a 4% advantage at 1080p. This being despite its frequency and core count advantage. So assuming this is not in fact a GPU limit, then it means we may be encroaching on another bottleneck (memory bandwidth?), or maybe the practical frequency gains on the 9900K just aren’t all that much here.
But if nothing else, the 9900K and even the 9700K do make a case for themselves here versus the 9600K. Whether it’s the core or the clockspeeds, there’s a 10% advantage for the faster processors at 1080p.
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AutomaticTaco - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Revised. TDP is still some generic average not true max. Regardless, not 220w.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen...
The motherboard in question was using an insane 1.47v
https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/105342741705...
https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/105339755111...
dezonio2 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
I would love to see overclocking performance of the 9600k. It would show exactly how much of a difference the upgraded TIM makes if compared to 8600k.emn13 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
That power consumption seems pretty crazy. Going from 4.5 to 5Gz for +56% powerdraw? or worse, from 5.0 to 5.3GHz for 6% clock boost and +40% powerdraw?This proc looks like it makes sense at 4.5GHz; beyond that - not much. I mean going from 4.5 to 5.3 isn't nothing - 18% more clocks! But that's going to translate into less-than-that performance gain, and even 18%, while admirable and all, is often not actually all that noticeable - unlike that powerdraw, which you'll likely notice in terms of noise and effort to get the system cooled at all.
I don't know; this proc looks... cool... but borderline. I'm not sure I'd buy it, even if money were no object (and since I'd consider this for work - it basically isn't).
Tkan2155 - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Yes bill add up this prepare big wallet . amd can overclock higher but it's better at stock . intel is going over limit because they want to show the world they are the bestmapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
But then, the candle that burns twice as brightly burns half as long. :)MonkeyPaw - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
In regards to TDP, I say use your own methodology and ratings if Intel and AMD can’t arrive at a standard measure. Based on how the i9 truly performs in this regard, the 95W rating is just shy of disingenuous. When real world values are applied it does change where this CPU sits in regard to its overall value. Lots of performance? Yes, but it comes at a significant cost. These CPUs aren’t like GPUs, where the cooling solution is designed to match the limits of the GPU. No, Intel doesn’t even bundle a cooler, because they know they have nothing to offer to hit boost speeds, and let’s be real—it’s the boost speeds that help sell this product and yield bragging rights.pavag - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
It doesn't have a price/performance chart, so it is hard to tell how justifiable is to spend on this processor, compared to alternatives, and that's the main purpose of reading this kind of articles.Here is one from TomsHardware, for reference:
https://img.purch.com/r/711x457/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLm...
It makes clear that is little to gain from a cheap i5-8400 to an i9-9900K, and it also tells which processors are better performing at a given price, or cheaper at a given performance. At least from an average FPS gaming viewpoint.
WinterCharm - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Well written. Great article, and I enjoyed it thoroughly :)Machinus - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Can you test the power draw and temperatures of the 9900 with HT disabled, and compare that to the 9700 under the same conditions?Felice - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link
Ryan--Any chance of you doing the same run with the 9900K's hyperthreading disabled? A lot of gamers find they get better performance without hyperthreading.