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
Complaining at the reviewer for failing to test something that doesn't really get used is... a thing.Datawhite - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
Bring on ZEN 3 AMD than Intel can R.I.P. ......Still waiting for RDNA 2!
Samus - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
No quad core under $100 basically just gave AMD the entire budget segment.Overall, this pricing is ridiculous but at least the 6C parts are somewhat competitive.
ph1nn - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
Does Intel realize global climate change is a thing? This power consumption is an embarrassment, this company used to have the most most efficient CPUs now they draw 200W?!Gastec - Friday, May 22, 2020 - link
I don't understand what the climate change has to do with a 200W CPU power consumption. I would have understood something like "does Intel realize we have limited or non-existent incomes, given the current Pandemic situation?"Beaver M. - Friday, May 22, 2020 - link
I hope you buy a new PC only every 10 years.pegnose - Friday, May 22, 2020 - link
It looks to me that a simple re-ordering of the core-to-core latency chart for the 10900K removes the apparent 3-4 ns jump. You already mentioned that the core "names" not necessarily represent hardware positions, Ian.Btw, I am curious why it seems that a higher core/thread index comes with higher latency. Adjacent cores should have low core-to-core latency. But 16-to-18 takes longer than 4-to-6. Is this due to address-checking in the ring-bus communication taking longer for higher indices?
Shaquille_Oatmeal - Friday, May 22, 2020 - link
X570 chipset AMD boards can't be found in stock almost anywhere. This isn't news. But even today, days after Intel's 10th gen LGA1200 CPUs launched, and the arguably subjective reviews are finally made public, there's an endless supply of Z490 boards. PC enthusiasts do want the fastest CPUs, for sure, but we also consider the cost and [overall efficiency]. We are not 12 year old kids wanting the colorful RGB lights for our COD rig. No. The RGB lighting is a nice feature, but we're not idiots. These Intel CPUs are garbage based on even Intel's standards over the years; yet they are being marketed like they are the best CPUs. Intel, we can see the truth. And the truth is we won't touch these CPUs; perhaps if you dropped the price on the 10700K to $250 we can have a serious convo. Hopefully Intel gets there game together. I'm sure their OEM buyers are thinking the same.Gastec - Friday, May 22, 2020 - link
The way this is going I'm looking forward to that 32-core Intel consumer CPU, with 1000 W power draw, that will definitely give us those much needed 1000 fps @ 1080pboozed - Saturday, May 23, 2020 - link
Got a question about the game benchmarks. The table has an "IGP" column but the charts in that column have "GTX 1080" written on them. So which is it?