The Intel Comet Lake Core i9-10900K, i7-10700K, i5-10600K CPU Review: Skylake We Go Again
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 20, 2020 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Skylake
- 14nm
- Z490
- 10th Gen Core
- Comet Lake
Gaming: 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).
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low |
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Spunjji - Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - link
Mixed disagree.In all likelihood, Intel is incentivizing OEMs to continue working with their products.
It certainly looks like there is some sort of unspecified agreement between OEMs, Intel and Nvidia - hence the seemingly universal limitation of the 2060 with an AMD CPU.
But then... this absolutely is AMD's first proper crack at a high-end notebook chip that performs up to its billing in a very, very long time. It will take time for it to filter though, so the current state of the market may not be a good indicator - especially with COVID-19 about.
Tunnah - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Regarding your gaming suite test and GTA V/Steam limitations; why not switch to the cracked, offline version ? It's not like you're pirating it as you already bought it.Also you could keep a monolithic version in which you could insert any scripts you want via the modding capabilities, and because it's offline, updates won't come in and screw up your files. I keep a pirate version separate for messing around with modding on, and I never have to worry about an update rolling things back.
arashi - Sunday, May 24, 2020 - link
I'm sure the legal liability would be very welcome.Hxx - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
im excited for the 10700k for my gaming rig. almost as good as the 10900k but cheaper and less power hungry.HammerStrike - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
The lack of PCIe 4.0 is a deal breaker for any gaming focused box. The one area where the new consoles have an undisputed lead is in their SSD’s and I/O infrastructure. As game engines and game design are transformed by this I think, within a few years, we are going to see game performance improvements with faster SSD’s. Much more so then the few % Intel currently has,based on CPU alone. Which is only really of practical benefit if you have a monitor with 165+ refresh rate and game at those settings. I love a high refresh but I’d much rather have the pretty bells and whistles on and get 80-120hz vs setting everything to low for 165.AMD chips are just much more compelling. Of course, unless you absolutely have to upgrade now, I’d wait a few months for Zen 3. Fair chance they take the performance crown, or get so close as not to matter. Plus they will run a lot cooler - even if you don’t care about the power draw per say, the cooler a chip runs the cheaper / quieter the cooling solution is. Take that savings and put it in a GPU, RAM or PCIe 4.0 SSD.
Boshum - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
I don't think lack of PCIe 4.0 is that bad, but is it certain that the LGA1200 won't support PCIe 4.0 when a Rocket Lake chip is plugged in?WaWaThreeFIVbroS - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
The board may support PCIe 4.0 signals but the Z490 chipset doesn't, so when a rocket lake is plugged in the PCIe 4 will probably only came from the CPUImNotARobot - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
I feel like there is a lack of testing between PCIe 4 and 3. The way I look at it, nvidia is right around the corner from launch their PCIe 4 lineup so these processors are going to be powering that. I haven't seen anyone review an AMD 5700xt on an intel and AMD machine just to see what other real life gaming impact that can have. Agreed if you're a hardcore gamer you might not want a 5700xt...but it gives insight on what next gen PCIe 4 channel can get you.haukionkannel - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
No impact at all. Todays and near future GPUs Are too weak to saturate pci 3.0... maybe in few years we will get GPUs that Are faster in Pci4.0... but that time has not yet arrived. (Unles you have 4Gb amd 5500 that has narrow 8wide bus.)Pci 4.0 is for m2ssd at this moments!
prophet001 - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
Can't really argue but the clock performance does matter a lot in WoW which is what I mainly play. No gen 4.0 is wack but so is 16 lanes into the CPU.