Intel Core i9-9900K and ASUS Z390 Strix-E Review

Very impressive performance. I mean, it's not surprising given the core count, clock speed, and price, but it's great to finally see that kind of performance on the 'mainstream' platform. Buying this over the 8700K or 9700K for gaming doesn't make very much sense (even over the 9600K), but still, it's a very powerful processor and handily beats AMD in all tasks. Zen 2 will need to bring the pain.

Thanks very much for the review. Excellent work.
 
Honestly at this price I would expect everything. Not just a cardboard cop out reviewer's edition and then tray OEM for retail.

I know none of it matters, but it kinda does. If you are charging a premium people expect a premium product. It's kinda compounded by the fact that it does nothing the 2700x can't do. Sure it may do it a little faster but at that price?

CPUs are just not important. Not any more. You could still run games on an old quad core S775 and people know this because there are many Youtubers still building rigs like that.

I used to love Intel launches but over the past few years there have simply been far too many and all of the excitement has evaporated.

I also have a feeling AMD may respond with some sort of 2800x, but we'll see. Right now if I were them? I wouldn't bother.

Thanks for the review Tom.
 
AlienALX said:
Honestly at this price I would expect everything. Not just a cardboard cop out reviewer's edition and then tray OEM for retail.

I know none of it matters, but it kinda does. If you are charging a premium people expect a premium product. It's kinda compounded by the fact that it does nothing the 2700x can't do. Sure it may do it a little faster but at that price?

CPUs are just not important. Not any more. You could still run games on an old quad core S775 and people know this because there are many Youtubers still building rigs like that.

I used to love Intel launches but over the past few years there have simply been far too many and all of the excitement has evaporated.

I also have a feeling AMD may respond with some sort of 2800x, but we'll see. Right now if I were them? I wouldn't bother.

Thanks for the review Tom.
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High FPS gaming (90+) still benefits noticeably with a modern Intel CPU. For me personally, my sweet spot is 90 FPS. That would be easier to hit with my graphics card if I had an 8700K instead of a 1600X. Much easier. The problem is, I don't want to support Intel. Also, I haven't played a game in almost a year.
 
5GHz single core and 4.7GHz all core was always going to make it top dog in pretty much everything.


It's an extremely impressive processor, with the single threaded and multi-threaded grunt. There always was a compromise between the two, but this one really does away with that.


Problem with me though is I'm a bit of a cheap-ass, I figure if I'm not going to notice the performance difference then there's not much point in spending the extra cash.


My 6700k will probably have to last me for another year or longer with buying a house. However 60FPS in games is fine for me though, so I'd be fine on lots of CPUs now which is such a nice change from 3/4 years ago.
 
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AngryGoldfish said:
High FPS gaming (90+) still benefits noticeably with a modern Intel CPU. For me personally, my sweet spot is 90 FPS. That would be easier to hit with my graphics card if I had an 8700K instead of a 1600X. Much easier. The problem is, I don't want to support Intel. Also, I haven't played a game in almost a year.
Click to expand...

How many monitors are 90hz though? Most would be 60 or 70.

Sure, if you bought one of those 144hz monitors it may benefit you, but most big games are designed to run much lower any way. Like, in my instance I can not actually run the games I play at 90hz because they break.

I don't understand this obsession with high FPS. I really thought my Xbox was going to absolutely and utterly suck at sub 30 but it is perfectly fine.

Big problem of course is could this CPU maintain a game at 90 FPS? I highly doubt that.
 
AlienALX said:
How many monitors are 90hz though? Most would be 60 or 70.

Sure, if you bought one of those 144hz monitors it may benefit you, but most big games are designed to run much lower any way. Like, in my instance I can not actually run the games I play at 90hz because they break.

I don't understand this obsession with high FPS. I really thought my Xbox was going to absolutely and utterly suck at sub 30 but it is perfectly fine.

Big problem of course is could this CPU maintain a game at 90 FPS? I highly doubt that.
Click to expand...

I'm talking about system FPS, not a monitor's refresh rate.

Of course the 9900K could maintain 90 FPS. All you have to do is reduce in-game settings or buy a better GPU. That's the point, that's why everyone is raving about Intel CPUs being better for gaming. These 5Ghz six/eight-core chips from Intel, they're the best CPUs for hitting a high FPS consistently and never having to worry about it. With a 2700X, if buy a more powerful GPU, the CPU could become a bottleneck. Reduce in-game settings or resolution, the CPU could become a bottleneck. The game is simply not demanding, the CPU could be a bottleneck. If your main purpose in doing either of these things is to increase your FPS to reach 144 FPS, the 2700X is not the better CPU or even equivalent. The 9600K is roughly the same price and will be better at that job. With a 60 FPS target, don't buy a 9600K. Ryzen will be far better value. It's only at the 90+ FPS target that Intel makes sense.

Using Gamers Nexus' review of the 9900K, take Far Cry 5 as an example. It's a very demanding game and is usually considered a GPU-intensive title. At 1440p/Normal settings with a 2080Ti, the 9900K handily beats the 2700X by 145 FPS to 110. People might say, 'But who cares?' People who want higher FPS care. I purposefully wait until games on older so I can run them at a higher FPS. I purposefully reduce settings even though I can maintain a 60 FPS average so I can run them at a higher FPS. My 1600X is not the best CPU for that type of situation, and neither is the 2700X. That's why I've skipped it in hopes of Zen 2 offering more. To me, part of the thrill of PC gaming is not just settling for 60 FPS. 60 FPS is a minimum; it's not the sweet spot, not for me.
 
AlienALX said:
How many monitors are 90hz though? Most would be 60 or 70.

Sure, if you bought one of those 144hz monitors it may benefit you, but most big games are designed to run much lower any way. Like, in my instance I can not actually run the games I play at 90hz because they break.

I don't understand this obsession with high FPS. I really thought my Xbox was going to absolutely and utterly suck at sub 30 but it is perfectly fine.

Big problem of course is could this CPU maintain a game at 90 FPS? I highly doubt that.
Click to expand...
Well good for you if high frame rate isn't important for you. That does indeed mean you can save on your CPU and yeah, a high end Intel would be a waste of money.

The point about 90fps is that it feels rather nice on an adaptive refresh rate monitor, personally I find it the sweet spot as well, since as long as FPS stays above 90 I don't notice dips. Except in CS where I just need it to stay above my monitor's refresh rate at all times - capping to 160 causes frame rate to be erratic and drop constantly, which is irritating.

The 'obsession' has to do with responsiveness, FPS games feel great at higher frame rates and there's no going back to 60 once you get used to that.

And obviously it depends on the game but at least that CPU is the best bet for maintaining 90fps. Though even a 8600K at 5.0GHz can deliver the same numbers.
 
If you play FP Shooters, or any game that has PvP like DotA, LoL, even WoW high FPS is crucial. I like playing LoL. And I was even invited in semi-pro team, and sadly refused it. Because studying medicine, and playing LoL for 6h a day doesn't go together. Trust me I can notice network lag when it gets from 35 to 60. Having CPU that can spit up tons of frames matters a lot. When I was at my parents house i played LoL on their computer it had 60-80 FPS, probably dropping under 60 during massive fights. For me it was almost unplayable. Even if it is hard to visually tell difference from 90-130FPS especially on G-Sync monitor, you can feel it in game responsiveness. So yea in certain scenarios 9900K is way better that 2700X.
 
If reviewers would publish how they ran there tests and configured the bios then we wouldn't have all this confusion would we. Bios settings are pretty easy to export with today's motherboards.
 
1: Any chance of a 9700K review soon?


2: Are the cores truly different on a 9900K and a 9700K - or does the 9700 simply have HT turned/burned off?
 
FTLN said:
If reviewers would publish how they ran there tests and configured the bios then we wouldn't have all this confusion would we. Bios settings are pretty easy to export with today's motherboards.
Click to expand...

I like the idea, but I also would refrain from being too transparent. Simply because reviewers often don't have the countless funds to provide a proper test lab. They do what they can, with what they have.

With that in mind, the moment you post your methods, it will be shredded, torn apart and scrutinized by 50% of the online population.
 
Dawelio said:
The 9700K doesn’t have Hyper-Threading at all. They removed it with this generation of i7’s.
Click to expand...


I know. I am asking, if the missing HT is because of different silicon or in fact the same silicon with HT disabled.


There are many cases of products being the same, but "crippled" to provide a lower cost product as well as a high-end product. It sounds strange, but it is used to optimize profits as manufacturing costs are often lower this way.
You may see it in your supermarket, where two products seems different - price and packaging are different, but the actual product is identical.


We see it on GPU's also, where some cores are disabled on mid-tier product but otherwise have identical silicon.
 
looz said:
They have the same amount of cores.
Click to expand...


Not really


The OS sees 8 vs 16 cores and the chip needs to deal with that.
So, i think, its 16MB for 16 'cores' and 12 MB for 8 'cores'.



However, I'm not really sure how the cache is divided and handled on a HT CPU.
 
Thanks for this review. Any chance @OC3D TV you can get your hands on one of these motherboards?, "SUPERMICRO SuperO MBD-C9Z390-PGW-O"
 
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