The Intel Core i9-9990XE Review: All 14 Cores at 5.0 GHz
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 28, 2019 10:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: Office Tests
The Office test suite is designed to focus around more industry standard tests that focus on office workflows, system meetings, some synthetics, but we also bundle compiler performance in with this section. For users that have to evaluate hardware in general, these are usually the benchmarks that most consider.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
3DMark Physics: In-Game Physics Compute
Alongside PCMark is 3DMark, Futuremark’s (UL’s) gaming test suite. Each gaming tests consists of one or two GPU heavy scenes, along with a physics test that is indicative of when the test was written and the platform it is aimed at. The main overriding tests, in order of complexity, are Ice Storm, Cloud Gate, Sky Diver, Fire Strike, and Time Spy.
Some of the subtests offer variants, such as Ice Storm Unlimited, which is aimed at mobile platforms with an off-screen rendering, or Fire Strike Ultra which is aimed at high-end 4K systems with lots of the added features turned on. Time Spy also currently has an AVX-512 mode (which we may be using in the future).
In simpler titles like Ice Storm, having that high frequency causes the 9990XE to be the best physics calculator for this test that we have.
GeekBench4: Synthetics
A common tool for cross-platform testing between mobile, PC, and Mac, GeekBench 4 is an ultimate exercise in synthetic testing across a range of algorithms looking for peak throughput. Tests include encryption, compression, fast Fourier transform, memory operations, n-body physics, matrix operations, histogram manipulation, and HTML parsing.
I’m including this test due to popular demand, although the results do come across as overly synthetic, and a lot of users often put a lot of weight behind the test due to the fact that it is compiled across different platforms (although with different compilers).
We record the main subtest scores (Crypto, Integer, Floating Point, Memory) in our benchmark database, but for the review we post the overall single and multi-threaded results.
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DillholeMcRib - Monday, November 4, 2019 - link
Some of you peeps seem really, REALLY bored. Do you make all these comments while at work?Retycint - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
This is a niche CPU for an extremely niche market. That is all. Nobody (except people in that tiny niche) is looking to buy this CPU.AshlayW - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Sure it is, so go and buy an i3-9350K for (probably) 1% the price, and have the same single-threaded performance. If you want 14-cores, you're likely going to be doing multi-threaded work, you get my drift?This product has a small niche where you work on both types, and somehow need the 5-10% more ST perf the 9990XE has, over, say the 3950X which will boost to 4.7 on a single core at vastly (and this is a huuuge under-statement) lower power draw and price.
Proponents of Intel claim that Single-threaded speed is so important (because, hey, that 5% is all they have these days) but don't seem to understand that Zen2 has absolutely fantastic single-threaded performance. Within 10% of Intel's best, thanks to slightly higher IPC, and the clock speeds on 1T boost get up there in the high 4 GHz area, too.
vanilla_gorilla - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
>(because, hey, that 5% is all they have these days)And it's 5% on single threaded tasks that are instantaneous on our desktop PC. I don't have any desire to have 5% more performance there. What I want is the +30-50% performance on multithreaded tasks that have real, wall clock times that can be improved, which is what Ryzen delivers. Who cares if an Intel CPU has 5% better javascript when everything I do in my web browser is instantaneous? So instead of 15ms its 13ms? Ok? What blows my mind is when my kernel compiles or video encoding times are shaved off by MINUTES.
Retycint - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
I love how people are turning this into Intel vs AMD, even when this is an extremely niche CPU for an extremely niche market.>Who cares if an Intel CPU has 5% better JavaScript?
Well apparently people who buy these care. You are irrelevant to the discussion because you were never part of the target market for this anyway
HollyDOL - Tuesday, October 29, 2019 - link
In scenarios where 'winner takes it all' those 5% are more than enough. Previously I worked on algorithmic trading and there it would be worth every cent.ET - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
> Against AMD counterparts, that 5.0 GHz frequency carves through anything like butter.From the benchmarks, it lost to the 12 cores 3900X on more than one occasion. While it's true that for specific workloads the 9990XE would be much better, on average it seems to definitely not be worth the price. Also, comparisons to Zen 2 EPYC CPUs (or Threadrippers, which will soon be released) would be much more apt.
chris.london - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
I was thinking the same. Even if I don’t take the power draw into account I am not impressed at all. And at 600W I would expect this to destroy the 3900X, so these results are actually quite embarrassing for Intel. I personally would rather wait for a 16 core Zen 3 AND pay for it than have this one for free.Retycint - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Well I'll gladly take this one for free... Infinite perf-to-price ratio (x performance over $0 price)GreenReaper - Tuesday, October 29, 2019 - link
You may however have to factor in a new motherboard, and new cooling as well.