Intel Core i9-10850K Review: The Real Intel Flagship
by Dr. Ian Cutress on January 4, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core
- Z490
- 10th Gen Core
- Comet Lake
- LGA1200
- i9-10850K
Gaming Tests: Chernobylite
Despite the advent of recent TV shows like Chernobyl, recreating the situation revolving around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the concept of nuclear fallout and the town of Pripyat have been popular settings for a number of games – mostly first person shooters. Chernobylite is an indie title that plays on a science-fiction survival horror experience and uses a 3D-scanned recreation of the real Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It involves challenging combat, a mix of free exploration with crafting and non-linear story telling. While still in early access, it is already picking up plenty of awards.
I picked up Chernobylite while still in early access, and was impressed by its in-game benchmark, showcasing complex building structure with plenty of trees and structures where aliasing becomes important. The in-game benchmark is an on-rails experience through the scenery, covering both indoor and outdoor scenes – it ends up being very CPU limited in the way it is designed. We have taken an offline version of Chernobylite to use in our tests, and we are testing the following settings combinations:
- 360p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
|
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
temps - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
Sorry but most of us professionals have moved to Thunderbolt interfaces. How can Ryzen outperform Intel at something it can't support?Qasar - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
so because ryzen doesnt support thunderbolt, the whole platform is slower? thats just stupidtemps - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
I said "outperform" not "slower." Besides, when I built my PC the only AMD that actually was faster than it was the 3900X, which you couldn't buy anywhere at the time. In fact, I still can't get one locally.Zoolook - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
You seem pretty ignorant, there are plenty of am4 motherboards with thunderbolt support.temps - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
What a joke, I can find exactly one officially certified AM4 motherboard and it's mini ITX. Again, we need these for work. I'm not going to run an uncertified, unsupported setup.Qasar - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
zoolook is right, temps, you do seem pretty ignorant if you think just because intel has thunderbolt, it out performs amd, but you dont say how. thunderbolt has nothing to do with how fast a comp is, its a connection interface for external devices, like usb.temps - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
I already said my audio interface needs Thunderbolt... so really, a Celeron outperforms AMD for my requirements. Good job reading. Good day.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
They did, they were called HDET, and you whined they were too expensive.eastcoast_pete - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Thanks and Happy New Year! @Ian and all, one question I had for a while is why Intel or AMD don't use the approach that Qualcomm (with help from ARM and TSMC) started with their 865 SoC? AFAIK, they specifically designed and made one of the four big cores as the core with the highest performance and frequency, and the 888 and others are now using that approach even more formalized by having a single X1 core alongside the 3 A78 big cores. So, is an approach like this - one dedicated high frequency, larger cache etc core plus 5, 7 and 15 others- possible and feasible in x86/x64 CPUs, and if so, why isn't it used? Thanks!Otritus - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
The windows scheduler was not good enough to properly allocate workloads to the best cores, losing out on performance and efficiency. Intel believes that the scheduler will be good enough when they launch their 12th gen CPUs using Golden Cove and Gracemont cores.