Intel Core i9-9900KS Review: 5GHz All-Core Boost Takes on AMD’s

For much of the past year, Intel’s Core i9-9900K was the top x86 CPU on the market. AMD’s Ryzen 2700X offered excellent performance-per-dollar and made a strong argument in its own right, but the Core i9-9900K was the top-end performer in absolute terms. That remained the case until July 7, when AMD’s new 7nm Ryzen 7 family debuted and retook the overall performance lead. Since July, Intel has held a narrow lead in 1080p gaming and been pushed backward everywhere else.

The Core i9-9900KS debuting today is a strategic attempt to strengthen the markets where Intel still holds a lead, and to play on a strength of Intel’s where AMD is currently struggling: clock speed. As we’ve discussed, AMD’s 7nm CPUs do not hit their full boost clocks on every single CPU core. UEFI adjustments shipping now improve the clock speed on some AMD chips relative to where they were in August, but AMD’s sustained clocks on the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 family are lower than their Intel counterparts. The 9900KS is designed to capitalize on this by offering higher all-core boost frequencies.

Intel is introducing this chip with a price of $513, which puts it up against AMD’s Ryzen 7 3900X, at least in theory — that chip hasn’t been as easy to find as it should be, though it was available on Newegg as of this writing for $529.

Test Setup, CPU Clock

Our Core i9-9900KS was tested using an Asus ROG Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) motherboard with UEFI 1302. An Nvidia RTX 2080 GPU using the 430.86 WHQL driver was used for testing. All available patches and updates for Windows 10 were installed.

We must note that we had significant issues stabilizing our system with 32GB of RAM installed. Our standard test configuration is 32GB of G.Skill TridentZ (F4-3200C14Q-32GTZ). While Intel warns against attempting to use four DIMMs while overclocking to DDR4-3200 or above, we had problems with 32GB of RAM even when running at DDR4-2133. RAM that worked perfectly when paired with our Core i9-9900K was not stable, even at DDR4-2133, when paired with the 9900KS. Asus, meanwhile, told us that it did not observe these same problems with the 1302 UEFI when they ran their own tests.

It is not clear where the problem is. The Maximus XI Hero has been perfectly stable in the past when paired with this exact DRAM. Multiple sets of DRAM had issues and reseating the CPU did not solve the problem. We fell back to 16GB of RAM clocked at DDR4-3600 in two DIMMs for this testing (Crucial Ballistix, BLE8G4D36BEEAK.M8FE1). This configuration had no issues.

UEFI 1302 on the Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) offers three different Asus Multicore Enhancement settings. Auto (Lets BIOS Optimize), Disabled (Enforce All Limits) and Enabled (Remove All Limits). If set to “Auto,” the 9900KS is very nearly the same speed as the 9900K, according to our testing. “Disabled” opens the throttle on the CPU a bit more. When we queried Asus on how Disabled worked, the company told us that this setting “relaxes all thermal limits plus tightens timings.”

The Enabled setting appears to tell the CPU core to run at an all-core boost of 4.8GHz in all cases. This was unstable in our testing. We tested in the Disabled (Enforce All Limits) mode, with Windows 10 set to Balanced power profile.

Our Blender benchmark results are presented separately from the rest of our tests due to the size of the graph.

The Core i9-9900KS is 5-8 percent faster than the Core i9-9900K in this series of rendering tests. The Ryzen 7 3700X is still ahead of the Core i9-9900KS in virtually every case, though the difference has narrowed and the 9900KS is now on-top in the barbershop_interior render. The Ryzen 9 3900X is still much faster than the 9900KS — the extra cores aren’t something some extra clock can challenge.

Our non-gaming test results are embedded in the slideshow below.

In Cinebench R15, the 9900KS is 3 percent faster than the 9900K in single-threaded and 5 percent faster in multi-threaded. The 9900KS basically ties with the Ryzen 7 3700X in multi-threading. The 3900X again demonstrates overall performance dominance.

In R20, the 9900KS again ties up with the 3700X in multi-threaded and wins past it in single-threaded. The 3900X continues to excel in overall threaded workloads.

Our Dolphin results show a lopsided speed improvement for the 9900KS that's larger than expected. This Gamecube emulation test can be sensitive to memory bandwidth, but the result here showed surprising gains. We've updated our UEFI, swapped RAM, and increased RAM clock, however, so these may be explanations.

Our 7zip compression/decompression test shows the 9900KS somehow slower than the 9900K in compression, while substantially faster than it in decompression. This is another result we're checking in to. Again, the Core i9-9900KS nearly matches the Ryzen 7 3700X in decompression, but the Ryzen 9 3900X wins the overall test.

Handbrake 1.22 offers improved performance for the 9900KS over the 9900K, but the Ryzen 7 3700X still narrowly leads in both tests, while the Ryzen 9 3900X stretches its legs.

Our Visual Studio 2019 compiler test shows the Core i9-9900KS a bit faster than we would've expected relative to the 9900K. The 9900KS can once again claim a win over the Ryzen 7 3700X, so long as you don't look at the Ryzen 7 3900X.

At this point, it's just getting dull. The Core i9-9900KS puts Intel back in a narrow lead over the 3700X, but doesn't do much against the Ryzen 9 3900X.

The Benchwell render from Maxwell Render 4.2. Maxwell Render 4.2 shows smaller gains than other applications, and the 9900KS doesn't quite close the gap here. The Ryzen 7 3700X holds on to the win in the 8-core bracket, while the 3900X wins overall.

Gaming Benchmarks

Our gaming results are presented in the slideshow below, but I’m going to go ahead and spoil them for you. Despite a bare 1fps pickup in a couple of 1080p results, the 9900KS and the 9900K are within 1 percent of identical at the detail levels that people practically play with.

For all intents and purposes, the game situation is exactly what it was in July. The 9900KS gives Intel an extra frame per second in a few titles and nothing else. You don’t need the highest-end CPU to hit top frame rates in games and Hyper-Threading actually seems to hurt titles by a few percent compared with non-HT, in at least some cases.

Conclusion: There’s a Limited Amount of Gas in This 8-Core Tank

In 2017, Intel’s 8700K won accolades for a great balance between core counts and clock speed. Last year, the 9900K established itself as the premium chip to beat, even if the 2700X had significant competitive strengths of its own. This year, the tables have turned. While the Core i9-9900KS does indeed manage to beat the Ryzen 7 3700X core-for-core in a number of tests where the Core i9-9900K came up just short, the Ryzen 9 3900X is there to challenge it, every step of the way.

The truth is, Intel is in a tough competitive spot right now. There are no desktop 10nm chips coming in the near future and while we’ve heard rumors of 10-core Comet Lake CPUs arriving in 2020, for now, the company has to hold the eight-core desktop line. Outside of 1080p gaming, it’s hard to point to very many price/performance wins for Intel at this point. If the 9900KS could hold an all-core 5GHz boost it would undoubtedly help, but it still wouldn’t be enough in and of itself to completely close the gaps. Thus far, Intel has chosen to maintain its higher prices rather than slash desktop pricing. Lower prices are coming to the HEDT family, however, with the launch of Cascade Lake X.

The 9900KS does give Intel a slightly better competitive position versus AMD right now, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issues that are making Ryzen CPUs strong competitive options in the first place. That kind of realignment will have to come with Comet Lake, if it can be achieved at all.

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