The Intel 9th Gen Review: Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K Tested
by Ian Cutress on October 19, 2018 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Coffee Lake
- 14++
- Core 9th Gen
- Core-S
- i9-9900K
- i7-9700K
- i5-9600K
Gaming: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
The latest instalment of the Tomb Raider franchise does less rising and lurks more in the shadows with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As expected this action-adventure follows Lara Croft which is the main protagonist of the franchise as she muscles through the Mesoamerican and South American regions looking to stop a Mayan apocalyptic she herself unleashed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to the previous Rise of the Tomb Raider and was developed by Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics and was published by Square Enix which hit shelves across multiple platforms in September 2018. This title effectively closes the Lara Croft Origins story and has received critical acclaims upon its release.
The integrated Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark is similar to that of the previous game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which we have used in our previous benchmarking suite. The newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses DirectX 11 and 12, with this particular title being touted as having one of the best implementations of DirectX 12 of any game released so far.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Action | Sep 2018 |
DX12 | 720p Low |
1080p Medium |
1440p High |
4K Highest |
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| *Strange Brigade is run in DX12 and Vulkan modes | ||||||||
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| SoTR | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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Diving into Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we have another game that’s mostly GPU-bound at its 1080p settings. At 1080p Medium the 9900K is actually a step behind the 7900K – noisy results in their purest form – while at 720p Low it’s still technically behind the 9700K. Either way, once we turn down our settings low enough to remove the GPU bottleneck, its overall another typical showing for the new CFL-R processors. Intel’s latest and greatest is several percent ahead of its predecessors, but none of these games are in a position to really take advantage of the extra two cores. So instead it’s all about frequency and L3 caches.
Though this game (like so many others) does seem to reinforce the idea that the 9600K is the new 8700K. The 8700K is still ahead by a few frames at CPU-bound settings, but despite losing HT, the 9600K is still hanging in the fight for a noticeably lower price.
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Ryan Smith - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
For once, we're going to do the first comment!(What does everyone think of the article, and Intel's new CPU?)
DanNeely - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
[thoughts]Ryan Smith - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Okay. That's well-played...nathanddrews - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
My take on your data: worth it if you have something a lot faster than a GTX 1080 since it looks GPU-bound for most of the gaming benchmarks at med-high resolutions. 2080Ti users and SLI users will probably get the most out of it from a gaming perspective.Skylake-X with that AVX512 perf, though...
Ian Cutress - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
One issue we always have every generation is sourcing GPUs. Going up to a vendor and asking for 3-4 cards is typically a no go. This is why I've done a range of resolutions/settings for each game, so cover everyone who wants to see CPU limited scenarios, and others that might be more real-world oriented.3dGfx - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Ian, how can you claim 9900k is the best when you never tested the HEDT parts in gaming? Making such claims really makes anandtech look bad because it sounds like a sales pitch and you omitted that entire HEDT platform from the results. I hope you fix this oversight so skyX can be compared properly to 9900K and the upcoming skyX refresh parts! And of course, AMD HEDT parts.There was supposed to be a part2 to the i9-7980XE review and it never happened, so gaming benchmarks were never done, and i9-7940X and i9-7920X weren't tested either. HEDT is a gaming platform since it has no ECC support and isn't marketed as a workstation platform.
IF intel says the 8-core part is now "the best" you ought to be testing their flagship HEDT parts which also were claimed to be the best.
3dGfx - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
p.s. It would be nice if you can also do Zbrush benchmarking for all the cpu reviews. it runs entirely on the CPU with no GPU accelerations and it comes with a benchmark test/score built into the app. Zbrush is a very common 3d app these days. Also its useful to mention in a review how many polygons or subdivision levels can be displayed in zbrush by the cpu before you see a slowdown. thanks.Ryan Smith - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
"Ian, how can you claim 9900k is the best when you never tested the HEDT parts in gaming?"Beg your pardon? We have the 7900X, 7820X, and a couple of Threadrippers for good measure. Past that, the farther up the ladder you go in Intel HEDT, the lower the turbo clockspeeds go, which diminishes gaming performance.
3dGfx - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
sorry, I was mainly just looking for the flagship products and they have no gaming benches at all, 2990WX, 2950X, and 7980XE, these top end "best" parts have no gaming benchmarks. I wanted to see how they compare to the 9900k or to the refreshed skylakeX which will come out. if for example someone wants to buy a chip that is good for both raytrace rendering and games (game developers, etc.) they will want to see all these benches.Makaveli - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link
Why would you buy a 2990WX, 2950X, and 7980XEto play games on?