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.
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Boshum - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Pfft. You are hilarious.Spunjji - Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - link
Maxipad, the latest in the line of Gondalf imitators.Adm_SkyWalker - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Once again I find myself debating if I should upgrade. My current i7-6950X has held up better than I thought it would. I guess it's another year or two wait for me.Boshum - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
I would be good with a beast like that for 5 more years.Icehawk - Saturday, May 23, 2020 - link
I’d wait until a component like mobo dies, that’s what got me to move from a 3770 about a year ago to a 8700 - mobo died and they were pricy and old. Replaced my wife’s i5 from same gen with a 3900X though recently and gave her the intel box. I’m a gamer but I do a lot of encoding so felt AMD offered a better mix and allows me to use my 450W fanless PSU. But aside from encoding speed I barely notice a difference from that 3700.Dug - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
The problem with all these charts is that they are inconsistent.There are so many variables that aren't shown that it doesn't make sense to show these.
Most of this has to do with how motherboards handle the cpu's and what their default settings do.
There can be a 15% swing in AMD motherboard default settings between brands. Not to mention things like pbo on or off, infinity fabric, memory timings, etc.
I don't know about the Intel side. I remember their settings made less difference unless it was just cpu clock speed.
shady28 - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Agree with the sentiment, but you kinda stacked the deck with that last statement.Most of the Z490s are now supporting much higher speed RAM (up to DDR4-5000) and even intel 9th gen were good at overclocked RAM, while AMD systems rarely get above 3600Mhz. It shows if you look at something like PCMark 10 where the top 100 systems on almost all of the charts is completely dominated by intel. All of them are overclocked of course, but all of the top AMD systems are also overclocked.
What I would like to see is something along the lines of a i5-10600K vs AMD 3600 vs AMD 3600X, but not using 'all the same components other than mobo and CPU'. Take those 3 chips and build the fastest system you can with them. Use that PCI 4.0 NVMe and GPU on AMD, use that 4800Mhz CAS 18 RAM on the Intel. See what happens.
mrvco - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Ok, part of me would be curious to see what Intel could (or couldn't) do with an 11th Gen spin of their 14nm process.Findecanor - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
The "Security" portion of this article is not really comprehensible. I can't guess what the author is thinking. The author needs to write it down in actual words what these things mean.Security on Intel processors is what is holding me off from buying any Intel CPU for the time being.
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the actual vulnerabilities themselves, and how they work, and how they can be mitigated -- in theory --, but if I have not kept up with every little tidbit of news about security on Intel's processors in particular, that portion of the article tells me absolutely NOTHING.
quadibloc - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
These chips are impressive, and for people with a need to build a system today, and a preference for Intel, they are reasonably competitive. So I am favorably impressed, even if AMD would remain my own choice at the moment. I still do believe that in the long run, Intel does have the means to regain leadership, so that in a year or two or five, AMD will be back to being in second place (but in second place like the previous generations of Ryzens, not like the Bulldozer years). I don't know, though, if even Intel will be able to keep up at the process end; even it may have to go fabless after 10nm, which would have significant implications for the industry.