Intel Core i9-9900K Re-Review

Today nosotros're revisiting our original Cadre i9-9900K review and updating it with 95 watt TDP limited results, basically results based on the official Intel specification. For improve context about this delight read our stance article from earlier this week titled "Do Nosotros Need to Re-Review the Cadre i9-9900K?".

The brusque version of this is that motherboard makers are currently getting blamed for running the 9900K out of spec, when in reality we strongly believe it'southward Intel who's cheating their own spec and pushing lath partners to run the 9900K at the default clock multiplier table, rather than at the official power spec.

Whatever the case, out of the box the 9900K isn't running at the Intel spec, it's essentially overclocked and this has acquired power and thermal results to get through the roof. So in today'south re-test we'll be showing how the Core i9-9900K performs when adhering to the Intel specification and comparing that information to the electric current out of the box experience.

Information technology doesn't really matter where you stand on this, having a resource that shows how these configurations compare nether the same test weather is useful information in our opinion. For the unlimited testing the MSI Million Z390 Godlike has been used and for the 95-watt limited testing I used the Asus ROG Maximus XI Hero, loaded upwards the "xtreme" memory contour and opted to use the Intel settings which enforces the 95-watt TDP. So allow's get into the results...

Benchmarks

First up are Cinebench R15 multi-threaded scores. Previously nosotros found the 9900K breaking the 2000 point barrier, however with the TDP limit in identify the score is reduced by fourteen%, and that places it roughly on par with the Core i7-7820X and crucially, meant it was a few percent slower than the 2700X. Already you might be getting a sense of why Intel is happy for board partners to run out of spec.

Next upwards nosotros take the Blender brusque run test and hither the 95-watt TDP limited configuration can merely burst upwards to 120 watts for x seconds. In other words, for about one-half the test it's about fully unleashed, and we were only seeing a 9% reduction in operation. That'southward even so a reasonable driblet, but it's not the full story.

Professionals looking to invest in a rig for rendering volition be running workloads that have much longer than 20-30 seconds. Generally nosotros're talking hours of rendering piece of work. Whereas we saw a ix% reduction in the short run test, here we're seeing a xiv% reduction in a more realistic rendering workload. That's a pretty big drop off and it means the 9900K is now only keeping step with the Ryzen 7 2700X.

The Corona benchmark runs for over a minute and here we encounter a xiii% decrease in performance when power express. The 9900K was 25% faster than the 2700X when allowed to run without a power limit, just with the 95 watt TDP enforced it's only 9% faster. It's withal faster but the margin isn't every bit impressive anymore.

Here nosotros see a 15% reduction in operation for the 9900K when using the 95 watt limit and this meant it was just 4% faster than the 2700X, whereas nosotros found it to be 23% faster previously.

vii-cypher compression operation isn't impacted heavily by the 95-watt TDP limit as nosotros see a minimal three% subtract.

For decompression the 9900K suffers a chip more than, showing 7% slower results with the TDP limit enforced, enough to make it slower than the Ryzen 7 2700X. It's non a significant difference dividing the two however.

Excel is the perfect case of a curt workload, at under 10 seconds the 9900K isn't impacted by the official spec and we meet much the same performance with and without the TDP limit in identify.

Testing with HandBrake we see a xiv% reduction in performance with the TDP limit enforced, and then the 9900K is just four% faster than the 8700K and thirteen% faster than the Ryzen seven 2700X. The 1st and 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs don't practise that well with AVX workloads, and so let's look at the margins in the H.264 test.

Whereas we saw a 14% reduction in performance running H.265 encoding, we only run into half that hit with a non-AVX encoding workload. However Ryzen is much better when using H.264 and looks more competitive hither.

The 9900K with the TDP limit in place dropped downwardly to an all-core of 4 GHz in the H.265 test while it sustained 4.2 GHz in the H.264 test.

Moving on, hither we see some other example where the 95-watt TDP sees the 9900K come up in backside the 2700X past a small margin. It's likewise interesting to note that in this Premiere Pro CC consign the unlimited 9900K matched the 7820X, a 140 West part on the same process. I've said previously that the 9900K should have at least a 140w TDP rating and that does seem to fit with what we run across here.

The Premiere Warp stabilizer test doesn't max out all cores all the fourth dimension, information technology's a typical editing workload, and here we see a half dozen% reduction in performance with the TDP limit in place. Still that was enough to see the 9900K come in backside the 8700K.

Power Consumption

The following graph results explain a lot... during the Core i9-9900K'due south launch week and first batch of reviews, nosotros saw a few reviews that claimed the 9900K consumed less ability than the 8700K, which doesn't actually pass the common sense exam.

Notwithstanding, if you exam the 9900K with a 95-watt TDP limit and the 8700K without a TDP limit yous go this. Even with the TDP limit in place, the 8700K and its half-dozen-cores won't be impacted most as much equally the 9900K and its 8-cores, for things to remain fifty-fifty the 9900K would need a TDP limit of at to the lowest degree 125 watts.

What we see hither is a 31% subtract in total system consumption equally all 8-cores are wound downward from 4.7 GHz to 4.0 GHz and equally y'all can see that xv% reduction has a profound bear on on arrangement consumption as nosotros're also taking a lot of voltage out of the flake at the lower clock speed.

In Blender nosotros see a 27% reduction in total system consumption and at present the 9900K looks like a mighty efficient CPU. It was a few percent faster than the 2700X and here we see information technology reduced total system consumption by 12%. Previously information technology was 19% faster than the 2700X, but also pushed consumption 21% higher.

Given what nosotros saw from the total system ability consumption results, these thermal numbers while shocking aren't that surprising. Using the Noctua NH-D15 and Corsair Hydro H100i Pro I constitute the 9900K to hitting temperatures in the mid-80s when fully unleashed.

However, using the 95-watt TDP spec the 9900K maxed out at just 64 degrees in our Blender stress exam and that figure was dropped to just 58 degrees with our custom loop. So when operating all cores at 4 GHz the 9900K is as cool as a cucumber, but at 4.seven GHz it turns the CPU socket into a peppery pit of melting silicon. Ok... it'south not that bad, but it'due south bloody hot in comparison.

Gaming Benchmarks

When testing with Assassin's Creed Odyssey we observe at that place is a measurable functioning hit in CPU intensive titles, though this comes merely under unrealistic weather, for instance, gaming at 1080p with an RTX 2080 Ti. At 1080p nosotros see an 8% hitting to frame time performance, then this margin is reduced to 3% at 1440p.

Playing GPU bound titles like Forza Horizon 4 shows no touch on and I await this is how the 1080p results will await in most tiles. So keep that in listen as we're generally focusing on CPU bound games in this review, Forza being the exception.

Hither we see a seven% hit to frame fourth dimension performance when testing with Hitman at 1080p, a half-dozen% hit at 1440p, and information technology's not until we reach 4K that the margin evaporates.

Interestingly, we see no real touch in Projection Cars ii and this title is a bit odd in the sense that the 9900K is and so much faster than the 8700K. I'm not certain why that is as the game doesn't require 8 cores. Other sources have confirmed these margins, so it's non some strange bug with our exam organisation.

There's no real margin to speak of when testing with Rainbow Six Siege either. Any mod CPU running at around iv GHz seems to work well here.

Nosotros do run across a pretty hefty xv% performance hitting to frame time performance at 1080p in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, though once we get to 1440p we're near entirely GPU jump.

Finally, we have Star Wars Battlefront II where nosotros encounter a pocket-sized performance drop off at 1080p, naught extreme and past the time we hit 1440p the margins shut up to nix.

Conclusion

First things starting time, our original Core i9-9900K review is as valid today as the day we published it. In this second await, we've taken a deeper dive at why the 9900K runs so hot out of the box and course an explanation of why some reviews were showing more favorable power numbers, albeit at reduced raw functioning output.

Gamers don't demand to worry almost the 95-watt TDP spec, it doesn't make much difference either way and running overclocked out of the box on Z390 motherboards won't lead to insane thermals and power consumption for gaming.

Only if y'all exercise both work and gaming, and your work involves intensive CPU workouts -- they're most the only kind of workouts I seem to do these days -- then it's a different story. In our long-run Blender workload temperatures go through the roof when running the 9900K out of the TDP spec, nosotros saw an increase of 20 degrees. Of grade, it was a similar story for ability consumption, we saw total system consumption climb past about forty%. But if the 9900K was forced to run with Intel'due south TDP spec and abide past the power limits, it would be a mighty efficient 8-cadre processor. You'd get 2700X-similar functioning, while saving a little over 10% on power.

Simply this is the problem for Intel, the 9900K was already a tough sell in the overclocked configuration used by all motherboard makers and well... Intel knew that would be the case. It's a $500 viii-core desktop CPU competing with a $300 eight-core desktop CPU. As we merely saw with the 95-watt limit, information technology's barely any faster than the Ryzen vii 2700X. In fact, in some tests it'due south slower, and that's an awful result for a CPU that costs ~70% more than.

This is a big consequence for Intel and they've painted themselves into a corner hither. For the 9900K to make an ounce of sense, for anyone who isn't an farthermost overclocker, information technology needs to run at around 70 C with a quality aftermarket cooler and for that the TDP can't really be whatever higher than about 105 watts.

However, even at 105 watts it's barely any faster than the uncapped 8700K and simply a whisker faster than the much cheaper 2700X, then you can't take that with a Core i9. For those of you wondering, a 105 watt limit sees the 9900K sustain a clock speed of iv.fifteen GHz in our Blender workload and run at 69 degrees using the Corsair H100i Pro. That's a 150 MHz increase over the 95 watt TDP limit and a 5 caste increment in operating temperature.

Basically the 9900K is a actually good overclocker, if y'all invest in proper cooling. The 2700X, on the other hand, is on a situation where what you lot see out of the box is pretty much what you go. You can squeeze a little more than out of information technology and tuning retentivity sub timings really help, but won't be able to overclock the snot out of the cores like you tin with Intel CPUs.

With motherboards technically overclocking the 9900K to the default clock multiplier tabular array, four.7 GHz as an all core for case, under those conditions in that location isn't much left in it. For virtually 5GHz will exist the limit, expert luck keeping it cool past that without a serious amount of time, endeavor and gamble. So realistically yous're talking most upwardly to a half dozen% boost over what'south shown hither when looking at the unlimited results, and we certainly establish that to be true when attempting to overclock the 9900K in our mean solar day-one review.

Looking ahead into future reviews, we program to stick to show the typical out of the box feel, and if that means overclocked CPUs, well that's what we will testify. We'll too go on to publish additional insights and features like this i when need be.