Benching the 9th-gen

We’ve been running the numbers on our early sample 9th-gen i7-9700K, stacking it up against the equivalent CPU from the previous two generations of Intel CPUs.

Now that we’ve gone over the ranging, let’s take a look at how our sample i7-9700K compares to its predecessors, the i7-8700K and i7-7700K. We ran a few simple benchmarks to compare them. To be honest, we expected the 8700K to maintain a lead in multithreaded benchmarks due to its twelve logical cores vs the eight physical cores of the 9700K. We were surprised to see that the 9700K maintained a healthy lead in every circumstance.

Less surprising was the single threaded Cinebench test, where the superior boost clocks of the 9700K saw it take the lead. This strong single threaded performance bodes well for gaming, which will make use of the strong single thread performance on offer.

At the time of writing we didn’t have the pricing of the 9700K, so any real conclusion is impossible, but it seems clear that the 9700K will make for a very good CPU, with its mix of strong multithreaded performance and gaming performance. As long as its priced right!

Intel’s switch from a standard Thermal Interface Material to a solder-based TIM has delivered clear thermal benefits. Pushing our sample to 5.1GHz was exceptionally easy, but once you start moving to 1.35v and beyond, temperatures still start to ramp up very quickly. We can’t draw too many conclusions from one sample but the early indicators are that Intel’s 8-core CPUs have a lot of headroom. If you have a good quality all-in-one CPU cooler, or even better, a custom loop, it appears as though you’re in for some fun.

“Pushing our sample to 5.1GHz was exceptionally easy, but once you start moving to 1.35v and beyond, temperatures still start tp ramp up very quickly. “