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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AshlayW - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Agreed. This product is a pathetic attempt to push their slight advantage in single-core, and justify the obscene pricing too. It's disgusting, really, tech press seem to lap up these things without understanding that this product is, well, pointless.Intel made like 5 of them. So, AMD could bin a 3950X so damn effectively, you can have 4.7 on all 16-cores, because trust me with that level of binning; it's possible. But they won't, because they actually have people buying thier silicon for datacentres.
Anyway, the ST performance isn't even that much higher. Nothing worth the obscene price. I'll wait for the 3950X, and hope AT will sing its praises as it will likely demolish Intel's entire HEDT at a lower price and half the power use - it's only fair.
xrror - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Guys, seriously...I'm an AMD person myself, but give Intel some credit - I doubt (sadly) that AMD could even release a Ryzen 5Ghz base clock part right now. Granted they might be able to bin out a 4.7 one but....
2nd, everyone going on and on about how expensive the 9990XE. Like it's under $3000? That's stupid cheap! Historically these HPC chips are like 1 or 2 cores enabled out of 12 and you pay over 5 or 10grand for them. Look up the old socket 1366 HPC chips like Xeon X5698 some time!
http://www.cpushack.com/2018/07/03/cpu-of-the-day-...
Korguz - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
" Like it's under $3000? That's stupid cheap! " maybe in your world.. but for the rest of us, that is stupid expensive.xrror - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
It is stupid cheap for a halo professional performance part from Intel. But even a cheap HPC - $3000 proc - it is more money than I could ever justify personally spending for what would essentially be a glorified gaming rig.Which means, we're not the target market. Even in your world.
Retycint - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
The whole point of this chip is that it throws price-to-perf out of the window for highest possible ST perf sustainable on all-cores. You know, like what the article describes?But sure, AMD has better value or something, so everyone that buys Intel is stupid, despite the fact that different people have different usage scenarios and, gasp, Intel performs better under certain cases
FreckledTrout - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
This was fun to read even if it is akin to describing what a brown unicron looks like.airdrifting - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Everytime there is a worthless product from Intel or Apple you always see fan boys and smart ass trying to defend it.Single threaded 9900K >=
Multi threaded 2990WX, maybe even 3950X >
1_rick - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
If you click the link to Case King, they've cut the price to 1799EUR/1996USD (at today's rates).29a - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Please get rid of the 3DPM and FCAT benchmarks, the article even admits they are both poorly written.MrSpadge - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
Ian, what happened to your appetite for chips? Are you ill or is this toasty piece of egineering not tempting enough?