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The best gaming processor ever? Intel's Coffee Lake Refresh has arrived
by Martin Jud
Intel i9-9900K: The new gaming king is also at the top in terms of price
22.10.2018
Translation: machine translated
The review embargo for the 9th generation of Intel Core i processors has been lifted. How does the new series perform?
Like its predecessor, the Coffee Lake Refresh from Intel is based on the 14nm++ manufacturing method. The new processors are compatible with the boards with the Z370, H370, Q370, B360 and H310 chipsets. An updated UEFI is required. However, the Z390 chipset is now also available. But I don't want to bore you with the specs now. You can read them in the article by my colleague Martin Jud.
Single core
According to the tests by PC Gamer, Intel's new flagship, the Core i9-9900K, is faster in all cases than its predecessor, the i7-8700K, and its competitor, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. However, the increase in performance varies depending on the application. In theoretical gaming performance, i.e. single-core use, the i9-9900K is around five per cent faster than the i7-8700K and around 15 per cent faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X. PC Gamer comes to these results with a GTX 1080 Ti and a resolution of 1080p. The increase in theoretical gaming performance is therefore not as great as with previous generations. This would decrease even more at higher resolutions, as the graphics cards would then take on more computing power.
Multi-threading
In multi-threaded benchmarks, the Intel i7-8700K still lost out to the Ryzen 7 2700X. The Intel i9-9900K is around 35 per cent faster than its predecessor and around 25 per cent faster than the competition from AMD across all multi-threaded benchmarks conducted by PC Gamer. According to PC Gamer, the increase in performance on a motherboard with a Z390 chipset compared to one with a Z370 chipset is negligible. If you can do without integrated USB 3.1 Gen2 support, your old motherboard will still do.
The German IT portal Golem comes to similar conclusions. For gamers who already own an i7-8700K, the upgrade to the i9-9900K is only worthwhile to a limited extent. Especially when the current high price of around CHF 630 is taken into account - and that's without a fan. Due to the bottleneck in 14nm production, the predecessor i7-8700K is also relatively expensive at around CHF 530. The Ryzen 7 2700X, currently available for around CHF 370 including fan, is definitely worth a look for the price-conscious. If you can afford it, the i9-9900K will give you a big performance boost with multi-threading.
Here you can find all Intel processors of the 9th generation
Kevin Hofer
Senior Editor
kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.chFrom big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.
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