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: Civilization 6
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer underflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but I have played every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, and it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
For this benchmark, we are using the following settings:
- 480p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
For automation, Firaxis supports the in-game automated benchmark from the command line, and output a results file with frame times. We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages and percentiles.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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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.