The Intel Core i9-9980XE CPU Review: Refresh Until it Hertz
by Ian Cutress on November 13, 2018 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | Open World | Apr 2015 |
DX11 | 720p Low |
1080p High |
1440p Very High |
4K Ultra |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Game | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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nexuspie - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
Marketing doesn't work in tech. Tech buyers aren't dumb. People want performance, and today that's Intel by far. On a per-core basis it creams the competitor.Arbie - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
Ironically stated in pure marketing-speak.Tech buyers know that shouting "performance" is meaningless out of context - and that includes a lot more than clock speed. For example price, power, cooling, cores, threading, features, platform, socket life... the list goes on. All conveniently ignored in a slogan like yours, which could have come from an Intel ad.
Spunjji - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
He's dropping classic lines from the "I am an empowered, smart individual and marketing doesn't work on me" playbook. I find it's usually a line trotted out by people on whom marketing works absolute miracles.Kilnk - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
I've been reading your comments and I love your style.Arbie - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
"there’s no point advertising a magical 28-core 5 GHz CPU ... if only one in a million hits that value."Sure there is: to confuse the market and draw attention away from the competition. As at Computex in June.
twtech - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
How about 4.5 GHz?eva02langley - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
So many refreshes, and so little supply on the shelves.jospoortvliet - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Takes only 9 weeks to be delivered I suppose? And that is just the promise - delays likely.Cooe - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
Rofl, and the second you look at the price tags, anyone with half a piece of common sense would realize that buying an i9-9980XE over a TR-2950X is absolutely freaking ridiculous! (Unless you simply NEED AVX-512 that is). Intel's flailing with Skylake.... again..., while AMD's near finished changing the game entirely with 7nm Zen 2, and it's all honestly pretty damn hilarious. Karma's a b**ch and all that lol.benedict - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
Agreed, the 2950X offers the best value in the HEDT segment.