Review: Core 9th Series 9900K, 9700K and 9600K Processors

hey Hilbert, idk where you find the time but a huge thank you. i love your methodology and detail.

the I-9 imho, is the only "winner" in this line-up and it's 10-15% overpriced (Intel always charges premium). there is no doubt we all should applaud AMD for forcing Intel to release a chip that honestly should've already been here last year.

the I-5 is in serious trouble and only because of Intel's market penetration will it sell. it is outclassed by Ryzen+ and Ryzen 2 will be on the shelves by the time it hits its stride (distribution wise).
making things worse for the I-5, the Qualcomm 845 (10nm) is already in the market with the 850 (7nm) in production now for next year's models of laptops and phones. it will be the first mobile processor over 4mhz and it will equal the ipc of Intel's 8th gen...for far less money and far less power. the current Qualcomm laptops are only a proof of concept by comparison.

 

There are WQHD results. It would nice to see more games tested on that resolution.

And i´m also perfectly fine with my 2700X.

 

Except price has never been an issue from Intel getting sales, and I'm sure Intel could've dropped the price by at least $50 without having supply issues. Intel themselves don't need the extra profit; they have more money than they know what to do with. As far as I'm concerned, shareholders are the only reason why Intel has this priced the way it is, but the irony is Intel lost shareholders by pulling that scheme with PT.

 

Run games with Nvidia GTX1030 and you get those results. Why you want see GPU benchmarks in CPU benching, make your mind if you want GPU or CPU results.

 

Problem with that is at 4K games are often GPU bound not CPU bound meaning the differences would be very close to 0-1%. 720p is one of the few places realistically to see CPUs not be bound by the GPU.

It's true that yeah no-one would run this at 720p and maybe not even 1080p, but there are 1440p results and you can see how much the fps in games diminishes should show you that at 4K it would diminish much further

 

Nice Review HH

Do these CPU's work with the Z370 boards? or only 390... be interesting to know, Mind you the 9900k Is quite insanely priced, But the idea of having a soldered CPU again sounds nice

 

{bringing out that old saw}
because Marketing is in control at Intel.

imho, they don't care to listen to the engineers... who could say "i told you so" all day long about every aspect of the I-9 9900k.
and since they don't understand, they think they don't have a sexy story to tell.
but to most of us here, HH's test results are sex appeal enough.

but we are geeks.
the entire 9th gen (especially after a years delay) is a hard sell at the price, compared to AMD to the average consumer.

the avg. guy will go "moar cores, less money" and realize that they can now get a better gpu for the price differential or just save the money.

 

Everyone knows at 4k+ that even a dual core i3 will not be the bottleneck in most cases.

Do you really need a review to show that all CPUs perform the same there?

 

Worth more than twice the price of the 2700X, I think not.

 

After reading the review for me the most interesting CPU is the 9700K, lots of performance for a "reasonable" price followed by the 9600K as a more budget oriented part. The 9900K offers great performance but the price difference between it and the 9700K is simply too much.

Too bad i don´t have the chance of buying one of those because Intel decided the Z170/270 boards can´t use them...

Great review as always!!

 

Intel CPUs have always been more expensive, but the price difference is far more extreme here. The 8700K being $50 more than the 2700X may have been acceptable, but a $100+ difference is a tough sell (especially with the shortage driving prices up even higher). Like with the 7980XE vs 1950X, the 9900K performs better than the 2700X but at an absurdly higher price. It's no surprise that Intel would try to sweeten the pot by releasing misleading benchmarks.

 

Hey, be thankful G3D is one of the few sites that includes 1440p CPU benches. Most others dont bother with that res.

 

Awesome reviews Hilbert , absolutely great and in depth read , thank you. This are great cpus indeed the fastest for gaming high refresh rates 144 - 240hz , the truth. The only thing i can see a little off it's the pricing , but hey if you are running 2080Tis or running benchmarks for hwbot this is the right choice. I still see the Ryzen 2700x as the better choice based on price to performance ratio in my opinion.

I have in my hands already an Asus Maximus crosshair hero wi-fi Z390 and a core i9 9900K incoming already for benchmarking competitive purpose only for hwbot to be run at subsero temperatures ( Water chiller -21c for now ), liquid nitrogen soon -196c. That is the only way to be on top of the charts benchmarking at hwbot with the fastest overclockable cpus , so no regrets here as Ryzen 2700x at ~4.7- 4.8Ghz has served me well at subsero temps benchmarking for hwbot but i need more cpu clocks ~5.4-5.6Ghz up to 6.5Ghz ln2.

But i love my Ryzen 2700x - crosshair hero 7 so much that will still be my 24/7 pc for good and it won't be replaced by this cpus . Having the best of both worlds as each cpu has it purpose for my usage. Thanks to AMD we have very competitive products on the market and it will get better once Ryzen 2 arrives.

 

All true Hilbert, the non-gpu bound lower resolutions do show true CPU horsepower. But, if I game @ 1440p or higher, that higher frequency CPU horsepower is worthless and the cheaper 2700x or 8700k make much more sense for a consumer in that position. If you game at 1080 or lower and think the difference between 150fps and 130fps is worth almost twice the cost, then more power to you. Fantastic reviews, as always. Thank you.

 

You´re getting a 9900K system just for bench marking? Good thing you can´t see all the envy i´m feeling right now...

 

Well, 720p and realistically has really no place in same sentence if GPU is 2080Ti. 1080p, sure. Happens, that's where High fps gamers go. But there are no 240Hz 720p screens.
It is just one of few scenarios which are providing some questionable value. But there are few people who will base their purchase on it. And even they know that it is not their use case.

It would be probably better to bench CPU limited situation with SLI 2080Ti on 1080p, as that's still sane scenario showing high fps.

 

The Shadow of Tomb Raider 720p chart says: GeForce RTX 20980 Ti founder.

As has been said, a really powerful CPU, but the price is ridiculous. As expected of Intel.

 

Bro no need to feel envy , it has been my hobbie for the last ~15 years or so overclocking at subsero temps for competitive benchmarking , the only way to stay at the top is with fast cpus.

 

No need for me to upgrade, but i'm really thinking about Zen 2 if it proved to be equal or better than 9900K, while offering great multicore performance, mainly need it to process huge RAW files.