The Intel Core i9-9900KS Review: The 5 GHz Consumer Special
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 31, 2019 10:45 AM ESTCPU Performance: Rendering Tests
Rendering is often a key target for processor workloads, lending itself to a professional environment. It comes in different formats as well, from 3D rendering through rasterization, such as games, or by ray tracing, and invokes the ability of the software to manage meshes, textures, collisions, aliasing, physics (in animations), and discarding unnecessary work. Most renderers offer CPU code paths, while a few use GPUs and select environments use FPGAs or dedicated ASICs. For big studios however, CPUs are still the hardware of choice.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: Performance Render
An advanced performance based renderer for software such as 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, the Corona benchmark renders a generated scene as a standard under its 1.3 software version. Normally the GUI implementation of the benchmark shows the scene being built, and allows the user to upload the result as a ‘time to complete’.
We got in contact with the developer who gave us a command line version of the benchmark that does a direct output of results. Rather than reporting time, we report the average number of rays per second across six runs, as the performance scaling of a result per unit time is typically visually easier to understand.
The Corona benchmark website can be found at https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark
Interestingly both 9900KS settings performed slightly worse than the 9900K here, which you wouldn't expect given the all-core turbo being higher. It would appear that there is something else the bottleneck in this test.
Blender 2.79b: 3D Creation Suite
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Blender can be downloaded at https://www.blender.org/download/
All the 9900 parts and settings perform roughly the same with one another, however the PL2 255W setting on the 9900KS does allow it to get a small ~5% advantage over the standard 9900K.
LuxMark v3.1: LuxRender via Different Code Paths
As stated at the top, there are many different ways to process rendering data: CPU, GPU, Accelerator, and others. On top of that, there are many frameworks and APIs in which to program, depending on how the software will be used. LuxMark, a benchmark developed using the LuxRender engine, offers several different scenes and APIs.
In our test, we run the simple ‘Ball’ scene on both the C++ and OpenCL code paths, but in CPU mode. This scene starts with a rough render and slowly improves the quality over two minutes, giving a final result in what is essentially an average ‘kilorays per second’.
Both 9900KS settings perform equally well here, and a sizeable jump over the standard 9900K.
POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing
The Persistence of Vision ray tracing engine is another well-known benchmarking tool, which was in a state of relative hibernation until AMD released its Zen processors, to which suddenly both Intel and AMD were submitting code to the main branch of the open source project. For our test, we use the built-in benchmark for all-cores, called from the command line.
POV-Ray can be downloaded from http://www.povray.org/
One of the biggest differences between the two power settings is in POV-Ray, with a marked frequency difference. In fact, the 159W setting on the 9900KS puts it below our standard settings for the 9900K, which likely had an big default turbo budget on the board it was on at the time.
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Maxiking - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Shame you don't complain so much about AMD CPUs unable to reach promised boost clocks as much as you care about Intel power consumption. We get it, you are poor, you could finally afford 8 cores thanks to AMD yet loosing to Skylake refresh crippled by security patches so venting your frustration here. Difficult time to be an AMD fan, especially after the first gen threadripper support drop fiasco, suddenly a new socket and no backward compatibility is not an issue. Don't hate things just because you can't afford them. Fridays for future is up today again, vent your problems there, thanks. Anyway, bye, a private plane is waiting, gonna have a pizza for dinner in Italy to piss off Greta because I can.jonbar - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
"Skylake refresh crippled by security patches" - you must be kidding, right? It shouldn't have those security holes. Please stop talking shit about poor because people here talk about optimization - the best for the least money at a price point. And please stop bashing AMD's ryzen - it's not bulldozer, without ryzen this shit here would be sold as "Intel i11 Unobtanium Edition" for 1k$ and you, rich boy, would have 6 cores or more only on LGA 2011.Nobody hates a product - I don't like Intel practices - 5% increase per generation to the point. Where my i7 3840qm is 10-15% slower than 7700hq with a 4! generations gap.
Speaking about private planes - nobody gives 1 cent on rich boys approach on tech at this level because, while you can afford stupid - the rest of us have to be smart. Now you can fly eat your pizza:)
Korguz - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
wow maxiking... resorting to insults and name calling still ?? still believing all the intel bs ?? still believe intels bs about how much power their cpus use ?? talking like you have money is supposed to impress people ?? good for you.. nice to see you are also arrogant rich spoiled bratMaxiking - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
How dare you? Where did I name call anyone? If someone is fat and I call them fat or if they smell and I tell them so, it is not an insult, it is called stating a fact.I see you still do not get the TDP does not mean power consumption, it is even stated and explained in the review.
If I were you, I would be more concerned about 1700x, 1800x, 2700x, 3900x TDPs and AMD misleading marketing about boost frequencies because there have been so far 3 bios patches which were supposed to fix the issue and guess what. Nothing has changed. People have to use a makeshift custom power profile created by a geek in order to get closer to the promised boost clocks.
Typical AMD, I give it 3 months till he starts fixing their awful gpu drivers aswell.
Korguz - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
calling people poor.. among many other things in previous posts by you.. and yes it is an unsult to call some one fat.. or they smell.. but, i bet you do that because either your selfesteem, and self worth is so low, you have to say things like that to make your self feel better..yet you still cry about ryzen and the clock speeds.. but yet. you STILL refuse to admit the fraud intel calls is tdp spec ?? so what ever maxipadking . go back to your cave...
Maxiking - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
Yeah, my self esteem is so low that I regularly visit Mercedes and BMW showrooms only to tell them how they cars are overpriced and my Dacia is cheaper and can perform the same and consuming less gass like you do. If Intel TDP is fraud, so does is AMD's one and their promised boost clocks and video on youtube where they promise you can overclock chips even further with sufficient cooling. What do they mean by that? Ay, and what about the bulldozer fraud?Korguz - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
yea sure you do, your the one who is probably poor... you are becoming the worst intel shill on here now.... all you EVER do is talk. if you are so sure amd is committing fraud as you claim, then put your supposed money where your mouth is, and take AMD to court,m or shut upMaxiking - Monday, November 11, 2019 - link
Again, it is you, you and only you perpetuating lies. I never come here first talking **********, I only reply to amdfanboys comments.I do not own any AMD cpu, I do not buy subpar products so I can not take them to court.
Anyway, if you are so sure about Intel wrongdoings, take them to the court. EZ.
Unfortunately for you, it is AMD who lost at court and got caught misleading about that parody on cpu called bulldozer. Claiming to possess 2 times more cores than they actually had.
This is your AMD marketing in a nutshell
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/...
QQ more. Deal with it.
Korguz - Monday, November 11, 2019 - link
maxipadking.. you are so full of it... what about the intel lies about its 10nm nodes for the last what.. 6 years being on track ?? what about the lies about their not doing anything wrong to prevent amd feom selling its products ?? among various other things over the years that you so easily for get... you never come here 1st ?? BS actually.. you DO buy sub par products.. intel is sub par now.. but in your intel blindness.. you just dont see it... intels marking has been worse over the years then amd.. deal with that.keep QQing more about it... your good at it..
Gastec - Tuesday, November 19, 2019 - link
Maxiking, this is a tech site, not your favourite social network for trolling. Your shameless trolling should be punishable with a ban.