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
CPU Performance: Synthetic Tests
As with most benchmark suites, there are tests that don’t necessarily fit into most categories because their role is just to find the peak throughput in very particular coding scenarios. For this we rely on some of the industry standard tests, like Geekbench and Cinebench.
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.
LinX: LINPACK
The main tool for ordering the TOP500 computer list involves running a variant of an accelerated matrix multiply algorithm typically found from the LINPACK suite. Here we use a tool called LinX to do the same thing on our CPUs. We scale our test based on the number of cores present in order to not run out of scaling but still keeping the test time consistent.
This is another of our new tests for 2020. Data will be added as we start regression testing older CPUs.
Cinebench R20
The Cinebench line of tests is very well known among technology enthusiasts, with the software implementing a variant of the popular Cinema4D engine to render through the CPU a complex scene. The latest version of Cinebench comes with a number of upgrades, including support for >64 threads, as well as offering a much longer test in order to stop the big server systems completing it in seconds. Not soon after R20 was launched, we ended up with 256 thread servers that completed the test in about two seconds. While we wait for the next version of Cinebench, we run the test on our systems in single thread and multithread modes, running for a minimum of 10 minutes each.
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watzupken - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Sorry for typo, its a 28 core, not 20 core.blaktron - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
No one else wondering how Ian manages to get only a 5% drop in performance going from h264 Faster to h265 Fast? That should be well over a 50% drop, and suggests he is running his HEVC tests with an H264 profile.Am I crazy here or is the idea that an 8 core CPU gets 200 fps h265/HEVC encoding just plain wrong?
WaWaThreeFIVbroS - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
This place is owned by the dudes running tomshardware, what do u expectIcehawk - Saturday, May 23, 2020 - link
I have asked numerous times how they get HEVC #s as they are almost quadruple what I get. 3900x gets in the 70s encoding and my 8700 was in the 60s. I can only guess they use the hardware encoders which isn’t how anyone who cares about quality is going to do it and doesn’t show the full cpu vs cpu difference, it shows the built in encoder. But Anand still thinks people who bother to read CPU reviews don’t use XMP.lucasdclopes - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
"Intel's turbo has a recommended length of 56 seconds according to the specification sheets, and on our test system here, the motherboard manfuacturer is confident that its power delivery can support a longer-than-56 second turbo time. "So performance of those chips will have significant differences depending on the motherboard? Maybe cheaper boards will result in worse sustained performance then.
jcc5169 - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Intel fanboys are gasping for air, looking for excuses not to buy the obvious choice, AMDDannyH246 - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
www.IntelTech.com does it again!! Every element designed to show Intel in the best possible way.How about this instead...
The Core i9-10900K's is priced so that its clear competitor is the Ryzen 9 3900X. However AMD offering is still >=15% cheaper, offers PCIe 4.0 compatibility, uses less power, is more secure and can be used on older, cheaper boards that also support the 16-core 3950X allowing for an upgrade path. The Core i9 is a moderately reasonable chip at best, however as it requires a new motherboard it is effectively a dead end.
vanilla_gorilla - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
I always know it's a good review when half of the comments claim the author is an Intel shill and the other half claim they are an AMD shill.Beany2013 - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Ain't it beautiful?Honestly, I'm kinda surprised how well Intel has managed to maintain their performance on a pure math basis, but oh *goodness* that power usage.
I think things will get really interesting when intel hit the sub 10nm* process (by which time AMD should be on 5nm*) and we'll see how much fight both Intel and AMD both have.
That it means we can all get solid multicore, multithread (fucking finally) CPUs from both vendors at prices that can be described as 'not entirely crazy' is a win win no matter which side of the fence you're on.
Steven R
Beany2013 - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
* yeah, nm is a bit of a poor measurement these days, but you get the idea.