Intel Core i9-9900K
Even more mainstream cores from Intel for to mine his steadily growing collection of Monero coins.
It’s the most radical increase in mainstream processor cores from Intel. Jeremy Laird rubs his grubby hands together and starts to mine a trove of Monero coins.
Back in late 2006, Intel introduced its first desktop quad-core CPU. Fast-forward nearly 11 years later to summer 2017, and what had changed? In terms of core counts, not much. Intel’s mainstream desktop socket was still limited to just four cores.
OK, you could buy so-called desktop chips with more than four cores, but they were part of what was and remains today a series of rebadged server platforms, complete with costly multi-channel memory controllers, and other features that increase the price, but do little to enhance the desktop computing experience. Yet here we are in late 2018, reviewing a mainstream eight-core CPU from Intel, just a year after it unveiled its first sixcore mainstream chips. What, exactly, is going on?
The answer is Ryzen. The new Core i9-9900K wouldn’t exist without AMD’s Ryzen CPU last year. Ryzen isn’t perfect, but it’s been good enough to wake Intel from its slumber. The result is a rapid acceleration of Intel’s road map, and a doubling of its mainstream desktop core count in little more than a year.
The new 9900K fits into a larger refresh of CPUs for the mainstream LGA1151 socket. With this new 9000 series of CPUs, Intel has rejigged its HyperThreading implementation. Put simply, HyperThreading is gone, save for the top-end eight-core 9900K processor with 16 threads. That’s frustrating, because the feature remains present in all the chips: Intel has simply disabled it to create an artificial product hierarchy.
Epic performance
How does this range-topping member of the new ninthgeneration series perform? Intel rates it at 3.6GHz base clock, and has set the maximum Turbo frequency at 5GHz (note: the latter isn’t an all-cores frequency). Nevertheless, it does ensure the new 9900K delivers epic single-threaded performance. It’s on a par with the existing single-thread king, the Core i7-8086K.
Predictably, the 9900K sets a new standard for mainstream chips when it comes to multithreaded performance, too. Yes, it duly tears AMD’s top Ryzen chip, the 2700X, a new one across the board. In fact, in a desktop context, it’s quick enough to make the likes of Intel’s 10-core 7900X, a server-derived CPU for the LGA2011 socket, look redundant.
Inevitably, the 9900K’s one weakness involves overclocking. At stock settings, it typically runs at 4.7GHz across all eight cores when under heavy load. We managed to crank that up to 5GHz on all cores. That’s a six-and-a-bit percent overclock, and not enough to affect your subjective computing experience in the real world. Given the number of cores and the already high clock speeds Intel has enabled as standard for the 9900K, the limited scope for overclocking is no surprise.
The 9900K and the rest of the new ninth-generation gang are compatible with existing 300 Series motherboard chipsets, although mileage will vary from board to board.
In isolation, then, the new 9900K is a fantastic chip. It’s the quickest true desktop CPU yet. But it’s with the other members of the new ninth-generation range that our doubt resides. How will an eight-core, eightthread chip like the new Core i7-9700K compare with the six-core, 12-thread Core i7-8700K? Now, that’s an interesting question.