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 |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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1_rick - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Because you've got the people who will spend any amount of money to get 5fps more in their games so they can smugly tell everyone who they've got the best.lopri - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I see Ryzens beating this thing by sizeable margins in games.zodiacfml - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Ryzen 5000 series is significantly faster than Intel's i9-10900k in all games though I haven't seen compared with overclocks. The Intel gets good at rendering/encode but I'd rather buy old Xeons with Chinese motherboards for those loadsV3ctorPT - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
In gaming the real star is the 5600X... awesome performance for its price, for a 65W(!) CPU...lmcd - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
It's basically an 80W CPU though lolCrazyeyeskillah - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
my 5600x is 10-20c hotter than my 3600 clock for clock on the same exact rig and watercooler.JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I was considering 10850k as an upgrade option when I it for $400. It's undeniably significantly better deal than 10900k at $530.But ultimately decided that it's just not good enough for an upgrade because it still doesn't support PCIE 4 so if I upgrade I would have to upgrade again very shortly.
Would have to wait for 5900x availability or maybe intel will come up with something better.
edzieba - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
The same argument can be made for the 5900x and PCIe 5 (or DDR 5). There will always be a new protocol, or new interface, or etc on the horizon.JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Disagree. Right now I have the same Skylake cores running 5Ghz and the same PCIE 3, the same everything and it's still fine except I have less cores.With 5900x I'll get better single thread and multi thread performance as well as PCIE4 which is really important for future GPU's and upcoming upgrades unlike PCIE5 which isn't important at all at this point in time.
MDD1963 - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
PCI-e 4.0 was going to be 'critical' for GPUs to get best performance from a 3080/3090...; instead, it was/is still a non-player. Maybe that will change for next gen. Maybe not.