Intel’s Core i9-9900K is here. With eight cores and 16 threads clocked at up to 5 GHz (on as many as two active cores, to boot), plus a 4.7-GHz all-core Turbo Boost 2.0 clock, the i9-9900K has the potential for incredibly formidable performance. We’ve been testing that performance down to the very last minute, and we have a comprehensive set of results to share with you now, but analysis of those results will have to trickle in as we fully digest the reams of data our work has produced. In honesty, though, a chip with the kinds of performance we’ve been seeing over the past few days doesn’t need us to vouch for much on its behalf.

We’ll be adding more detail and flavor to this article throughout the day (and intermittently, at best, as I’ll be traveling by air and won’t have consistent Internet access), but if you want more perspective on the i9-9900K, David Schor at WikiChip has an excellent run-down of the Coffee Lake Refresh silicon that underpins ninth-generation Core CPUs. For our part, let’s dive right into our performance results.

Our testing methods

As always, we did our best to deliver clean benchmarking numbers. We ran each benchmark at least three times and took the median of those results. Our test systems were configured as follows:

Processor Intel Core i7-8700K Intel Core i7-9700K Intel Core i9-9900K CPU cooler Corsair H100i Pro 240-mm closed-loop liquid cooler Motherboard Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master Chipset Intel Z390 Memory size 16 GB Memory type G.Skill Flare X 16 GB (2x 8 GB) DDR4 SDRAM Memory speed 3200 MT/s (actual) Memory timings 14-14-14-34 2T System drive Samsung 960 Pro 512 GB NVMe SSD

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 2700X AMD Ryzen 5 2600X CPU cooler EK Predator 240-mm closed-loop liquid cooler Motherboard Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wifi Chipset AMD X470 Memory size 16 GB Memory type G.Skill Flare X 16 GB (2x 8 GB) DDR4 SDRAM Memory speed 3200 MT/s (actual) Memory timings 14-14-14-34 2T System drive Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB NVMe SSD

Processor AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X CPU cooler Enermax Liqtech TR4 240-mm closed-loop liquid cooler Motherboard Gigabyte X399 Aorus Xtreme Chipset AMD X399 Memory size 32 GB Memory type G.Skill Flare X 32 GB (4x 8 GB) DDR4 SDRAM Memory speed 3200 MT/s (actual) Memory timings 14-14-14-34 1T System drive Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB NVMe SSD

Processor Core i9-7900X CPU cooler Corsair H100i Pro 240-mm closed-loop liquid cooler Motherboard Gigabyte X299 Designare EX Chipset Intel X299 Memory size 32 GB Memory type G.Skill Flare X 32 GB (4x 8 GB) DDR4 SDRAM Memory speed 3200 MT/s (actual) Memory timings 14-14-14-34 1T System drive Intel 750 Series 400 GB NVMe SSD

Our test systems shared the following components:

Graphics card Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition Graphics driver GeForce 411.63 Power supply Thermaltake Grand Gold 1200 W (AMD) Seasonic Prime Platinum 1000 W (Intel)

Some other notes on our testing methods:

All test systems were updated with the latest firmware, graphics drivers, and Windows updates before we began collecting data, including patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities where applicable. As a result, test data from this review should not be compared with results collected in past TR reviews. Similarly, all applications used in the course of data collection were the most current versions available as of press time and cannot be used to cross-compare with older data.

be compared with results collected in past TR reviews. Similarly, all applications used in the course of data collection were the most current versions available as of press time and cannot be used to cross-compare with older data. Our test systems were all configured using the Windows Balanced power plan, including AMD systems that previously would have used the Ryzen Balanced plan. AMD’s suggested configuration for its CPUs no longer includes the Ryzen Balanced power plan as of Windows’ Fall Creators Update, also known as “RS3” or Redstone 3.

Unless otherwise noted, all productivity tests were conducted with a display resolution of 2560×1440 at 60 Hz. Gaming tests were conducted at 1920×1080 and 144 Hz.

Our testing methods are generally publicly available and reproducible. If you have any questions regarding our testing methods, feel free to leave a comment on this article or join us in the forums to discuss them.

Memory subsystem performance

The AIDA64 utility includes some basic tests of memory bandwidth and latency that will let us peer into the differences in behavior among the memory subsystems of the processors on the bench today, if there are any.

Some quick synthetic math tests

AIDA64 also includes some useful micro-benchmarks that we can use to flush out broad differences among CPUs on our bench. The PhotoWorxx test uses AVX2 instructions on all of these chips. The CPU Hash integer benchmark uses AVX and Ryzen CPUs’ Intel SHA Extensions support, while the single-precision FPU Julia and double-precision Mandel tests use AVX2 with FMA.

Javascript

The usefulness of Javascript microbenchmarks for comparing browser performance may be on the wane, but these tests still allow us to tease out some single-threaded performance differences among CPUs. As part of our transition to using the Mechanical TuRk to benchmark our chips, we’ve had to switch to Google’s Chrome browser so that we can automate these tests. Chrome does perform differently on these benchmarks than Microsoft Edge, our previous browser of choice, so it’s vitally important not to cross-compare these results with older TR reviews.

WebXPRT 3

The WebXPRT 3 benchmark is meant to simulate some realistic workloads one might encounter in web browsing. It’s here primarily as a counterweight to the more synthetic microbenchmarking tools above.

WebXPRT isn’t entirely single-threaded—it uses web workers to perform asynchronous execution of Javascript in some of its tests.

Compiling code with GCC

Our resident code monkey, Bruno Ferreira, helped us put together this code-compiling test. Qtbench records the time needed to compile the Qt SDK using the GCC compiler. The number of jobs dispatched by the Qtbench script is configurable, and we set the number of threads to match the hardware thread count for each CPU.

File compression with 7-Zip

The free and open-source 7-Zip archiving utility has a built-in benchmark that occupies every core and thread of the host system.

Disk encryption with Veracrypt

Cinebench

The evergreen Cinebench benchmark is powered by Maxon’s Cinema 4D rendering engine. It’s multithreaded and comes with a 64-bit executable. The test runs with a single thread and then with as many threads as possible.

Blender

Blender is a widely-used, open-source 3D modeling and rendering application. The app can take advantage of AVX2 instructions on compatible CPUs. We chose the “bmw27” test file from Blender’s selection of benchmark scenes to put our CPUs through their paces.

Corona

Corona, as its developers put it, is a “high-performance (un)biased photorealistic renderer, available for Autodesk 3ds Max and as a standalone CLI application, and in development for Maxon Cinema 4D.”

The company has made a standalone benchmark with its rendering engine inside, so it’s a no-brainer to give it a spin on these CPUs.

Indigo

Indigo Bench is a standalone application based on the Indigo rendering engine, which creates photo-realistic images using what its developers call “unbiased rendering technologies.”

Handbrake

Handbrake is a popular video-transcoding app that recently hit version 1.1.1. To see how it performs on these chips, we converted a roughly two-minute 4K source file from an iPhone 6S into a 1920×1080, 30 FPS MKV using the HEVC algorithm implemented in the x265 open-source encoder. We otherwise left the preset at its default settings.

Digital audio workstation performance

After an extended hiatus, the duo of DAWBench project files—DSP 2017 and VI 2017—return to make our CPUs sweat. The DSP benchmark tests the raw number of VST plugins a system can handle, while the complex VI project simulates a virtual instrument and sampling workload.

A very special thanks is in order here for Native Instruments, who kindly provided us with the Kontakt licenses necessary to run the DAWBench VI project file. We greatly appreciate NI’s support—this benchmark would not have been possible without the help of the folks there. Be sure to check out their many fine digital audio products.

A very special thanks also to RME Audio, who cut us a deal on one of its Babyface Pro audio interfaces to assist with our testing. RME’s hardware and software is legendary for its low latency and high quality, and the Babyface Pro has exemplified those qualities over the course of our time with it.

We used the latest version of the Reaper DAW for Windows as the platform for our tests. To simulate a demanding workload, we tested each CPU with a 24-bit depth and 96-KHz sampling rate, and at two ASIO buffer depths: 96, the lowest our interface will allow at a 96 KHz sampling rate, and 128. In response to popular demand, we’re also testing two buffer depths at a sampling rate of 48 KHz: 64 and 128. We added VSTs or notes of polyphony to each session until we started hearing popping or other audio artifacts.

















Crysis 3

Even as it passes six years of age, Crysis 3 remains one of the most punishing games one can run. With an appetite for CPU performance and graphics power alike, this title remains a great way to put the performance of any gaming system in perspective.









Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Ubisoft’s most recent Assassin’s Creed games have developed reputations as CPU hogs, so we grabbed Odyssey and put it to the test on our systems using a 1920×1080 resolution and the Ultra High preset.









Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Thanks to its richly detailed environments and copious graphics settings, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided can punish graphics cards at high resolutions and make CPUs sweat at high refresh rates.









Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V‘s lavish simulation of Los Santos and surrounding locales can really put the hurt on a CPU, and we’re putting that characteristic to good use here.









Hitman

After an extended absence from our test suite thanks to a frame rate cap, Hitman is back. This game tends to max out a couple of threads but not every core on a chip, so it’s a good test of the intermediate parts of each processor’s frequency-scaling curve. We cranked the game’s graphics settings at 1920×1080 and got to testing.









Far Cry 5









Gaming and streaming with Far Cry 5 and OBS

Intel made a point of the Core i9-9900K’s single-PC gaming and streaming prowess during its introduction of the chip, so we took Far Cry 5 and shared our test run with the world using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). We chose streaming settings that should be fairly typical for the serious streamer: 1920×1080 output at 60 FPS, with a bit rate of 6000 Kbps and the “faster” x264 preset for CPU encoding. For some CPUs, we’ve also provided an idea of what a higher-quality stream might look like for client-side performance using the “fast” preset.

















A quick look at power consumption and efficiency

Conclusions

Let’s try and wrap up some of the reams of test data we’ve collected using our famous value scatter charts. To produce these figures, we take the geometric mean of the results of our non-synthetic benchmarks in both productivity and gaming tests. Smushing the entirety of our test data into a chart like this inevitably conceals some areas of strength and others of weakness for the CPUs we tested, and as always, we encourage those with specific workloads to consult the benchmark results most relevant to them. Still, if you want an at-a-glance idea of the all-round competence of these chips, our scatters serve well enough.

In our productivity tests, Intel has delivered a CPU that’s actually a better all-rounder than the Core i9-7900X for roughly half as much money on its window sticker. Do I need to say more? Unless you need the memory bandwidth of a quad-channel platform for work like computational fluid dynamics or lots of PCIe lanes for NVMe storage, Intel has just obviated its entry-level high-end desktop CPUs with this part. Not surprising, since the i9-9900K is essentially an HEDT CPU in a mainstream package.





In our gaming tests, the i9-9900K doesn’t put quite as much light between itself and its predecessors. The i7-8700K was already the world’s best CPU for high-refresh-rate gaming, and since most CPU-bound games aren’t effective at using every bit of every core and thread available to them, the i9-9900K’s gains seem to come from its 300-MHz peak clock speed increase over the i7-8700K. That said, the positioning of the high-end desktop CPUs on our 99th-percentile-FPS-per-dollar chart emphasize just how balanced this chip is across both productivity and gaming workloads. You couldn’t buy this potent a blend of productivity and gaming performance at all before now.

Our Far Cry 5 streaming tests further show that gamers can use demanding x264 encoding presets with the i9-9900K while enjoying unparalleled fluidity and smoothness while sharing their gameplay with the world. That’s yet another high-end desktop advantage that the i9-9900K snatches away.

Apologies for the rather threadbare preceding pages, but our results speak for themselves. The Core i9-9900K often shadows chips costing nearly twice as much in multithreaded workloads while delivering unbeatable single-threaded responsiveness, gaming performance, and single-PC streaming chops. In some arenas, like the lowest-latency realms of DAW Bench VI testing, the i9-9900K’s performance is simply without precedent.

Intel Core i9-9900K October 2018

While the competition might occasionally beat Intel’s baby in one benchmark or another, no other CPU on the market can match its all-around balance. We’ve long wanted an Intel chip that didn’t trade off the single-threaded performance of the company’s client cores for the multithreaded grunt of its high-end desktop parts, and the i9-9900K finally delivers on that front.

AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper CPUs are certainly better performers in some specific workloads, but folks who want a single PC that’s good enough to handle both heavy-duty work and serious play after hours will want this chip. Doesn’t hurt that its $500 price tag is tantalizingly low for the performance on offer, although we doubt it’ll be easy to find an i9-9900K for that price until production ramps up.

All told, the i9-9900K is a remarkable and heady blend of balanced performance that truly bridges the mainstream and high-end desktop PC. Like the Core i7-8700K before it, there’s nothing this chip can’t do well, and the extra dose of power it brings to the table in all sorts of tasks is more than enough to make it worthy of a TR Editor’s Choice award. ‘Nuff said.