Intel Core I9 9900k Processor Review

Gaming Benchmarks

For gaming benchmarks, I chose 4 games, and mostly new titles. Games were tested with an both the MSI Gaming x Trio RTX 2080 and the Founders Edition RTX 2080. The MSI Gaming X Trio was used in both Intel system and the Founders Edition was used in the Ryzen 2700x system. This was only because the Gaming X Trio wouldn’t fit in the In Win 101c that the Ryzen system is in. I tested the new Assassins Creed Origins, Far Cry 5, Grand Theft Auto 5 and the newest game in my test suite, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Each of the were tested in 1080p, 1440p and 4k.

Assassins Creed Origins is the newest game in my suite, having been releases at the end of October. The game is set in ancient Egypt. Ubisoft built a gorgeous open world that’s fun to explore. The game looks amazing. With so much detail, it’s no wonder the game puts a serious strain on your GPU. Although GTA V is the oldest game in the suite, it’s still a very demanding game, especially with the Advanced Graphics on. Far Cry 5 is the latest in the Far Cry series, built on the Dunia engine. In this game, you explore the fictional Hope County in an attempt to take out a violent Cult Leader. Like other Far Cry games, Far Cry 5 is beautiful and demanding as well. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the third title in the recently rebooted series in 2013. The reboot was simply called Tomb Raider. Both it and its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider are beautiful games and made for great benchmarks. Rise of the Tomb Raider was one of the first games to support DX12.  Shadow of the Tomb Raider is absolutely beautiful and will eventually be one of the first games with real time ray-tracing support. Seeing the 2080 is more than capable of running the game on its ultra-preset, that’s what we did. In fact, all games were run at their highest presets. The one exception was GTA V. For GTA V, all of the advanced graphics for GTA V were maxed out, with one exception. Frame Scaling mode was set to 3/2, or x1.500. This increases the internal resolution the game runs at. It’s essentially down scaling. Other than that, setting, all advanced graphics settings were set to max. Also, in the normal graphics menu, every setting was on and also set to max with the exception of MSAA which was kept off.

So, if you’re playing the game at 1920×1080 and you set the frame scaling to 200%, the game will be rendered at 3840×2160 (which is 4K) then down scaled to 1080p. It essentially multiplies the horizontal and vertical resolution by whatever value you set. In this case, 3/2 or 1.5. The 3/2 setting was the highest setting the game would run in 4k with. So, this is the setting I went for all resolutions. If I went any higher, the game instantly crashes. Since this isn’t a GPU review and rather a CPU, I left out 3440 x 1440 resolution as to not have to move that monitor around. All testing was done on the LG 27UK600. This is a 27 inch, 75 Hz 4k monitor with HDR or high dynamic range. A quick side note. Due to the delay of Windows 10 version 1809, there were issues with Shadow of the Tomb Raider in DX12. As in it wouldn’t run at all. So the Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested in DX11 mode which may have affected this results.  Once 1809 is rolled out, we’ll retest Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

This first thing I can say is the RTX 2080 is way overkill for 1080p gaming,. It’ll do an amazing job in 1440p and would be perfect if you like high refresh rate gaming. For example 1440p at 144Hz. However, the RTX 2080 is really designed with 4k gaming in mind. With that, let’s get into how each processor did in gaming with the RTX 2080. All systems were run at their stock settings, both CPU and GPU. Every system ran every game in 1080p at well over 60 FPS. In Assassins Creed Origins, the 8700k came out on top with an average of 103 FPS. Next was the 9900k with 97 FPS. Last was the 2700x 88 FPS. Far Cry 5 the 9900k and 8700k were only off by 1 FPS. The 9900k ended up with an average of 133 FPS and the8700k with 132 FPS. The 2700x averaged 102 FPS in Far Cry 5. In GTA V, the 9900k was best with 101 FPS. This was followed by the 8700k with 99 FPS and the 2700x with 96 FPS. GTA V was a close one. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The 8700k did best with 99 FPS followed by the 9900k with 97 and the 2700x with 78.

In 1440p, AC Origins ran best with the 8700k with an average of 88 FPS. nest was the 2700x with 78 FPS followed by the 9900k with 76 FPS. The 8700k did best with Far Cry 5 at an average of 106 FPS. next was the 9900k with 100 FPS and the 2700x with an an average of 82 FPS. In GTA V, the 2700x did best by a fair amount. The 2700x averaged 84 FPS followed by the 8700k with 75 ad the 9900k with 70. The 8700k came out on top in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with an average of 79 FPS. The 9900k was nest with 74 FPS and the 2700x was last with 68 FPS.

The RTX 2080 was built for 4k. But even with the RTX 2080, 4k resolution hammers your system. The 8700k did best in AC Origins at 4k resolution. with an average of 55 FPS. AC Origins averaged 51 FPS in 4k with the 2700x and 50 FPS with the 9900k. In Far Cry 5, the 9900k came our far ahead of the pack with an average of 71 FPS. Next was the 8700k with 59 FPS and last was the 2700x with 43 FPS. I wasn’t expecting that big a difference between the 9900k and 2700x. GTA V like the 2700x best with an average of 49 FPS. The 8700k was second with 34 FPS. This was only 1 frame above the 9900k. The 99ok averaged 33 FPS on GTA V in 4k. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the three games were close. The 8700k was best with 46 FPS. The 2700x landed second with 45 FPS and the 9900k averaged 43 FPS.