Commissioning Misleading Core i9-9900K Benchmarks

9900K pricing was announced today and boy it’s expensive. My prediction is that it reviewers will slam it for its price but despite this it will sell like no tomorrow. Because reviewers don’t understand that not everyone out there are value buyers. A Renault is better value for money than a BMW but driving enthusiasts would pay more for the BMW because it’s a better vehicle. Same thing goes on in the CPU world. Why have AMD when you can have Intel?

Of course regarding this, Intel will exaggerate the results, they have a poor marketing department clearly. It may not be 50% faster but it’s still faster as they have better engineers and that’s what’s important. Far more important than price when it comes to flagship products anyway. Value buyers will go further down the product stack on either manufacturer. Although I’m sure the 2700X will now be considered a budget part in the face of these new prices.
Engineers are better?
Uhhhhhh no, they just OC'd the fck out of the chips from the factory and then BS'd a fake TDP (since its only at 3.6ghz) and then unveil a new motherboard with monster VRM's to be able to handle this insane TDP. Which will also require beefy cooling no doubt.
 
Great article. Nice job.

On an unrelated note, I'm starting a new business rating technology blogs and reviewers. If you'd like to be rated 620% better than your nearest competitor, hit me up before they do.
 
One more thing you've missed, used coolers:
Noctua NH-U14S
(Exception: The AMD Ryzen 7 2700X used the included AMD Wraith Prism Cooler.
The other CPU units did not come with CPU coolers.)
That may be the reason AMD went so bad vs Intel :D

This has a very minimal impact on gaming performance, talking 1-2% so margin of error stuff. The 2700X might have been set to gaming mode though which means it was turned into a quad-core. Whatever the case the results are bogus and that's the point of this article.
Yes and no. Maybe in the case of the 2700x it might not have made as much of a difference. But in the case of the Intel chips it can definitely make a difference if they can reach max boost clocks, how long they can hold those clocks.... etc.
Also for the 2700x a better cooler means that PB2 would have better clockspeeds which could help aswell.
 
9900K pricing was announced today and boy it’s expensive. My prediction is that it reviewers will slam it for its price but despite this it will sell like no tomorrow. Because reviewers don’t understand that not everyone out there are value buyers. A Renault is better value for money than a BMW but driving enthusiasts would pay more for the BMW because it’s a better vehicle. Same thing goes on in the CPU world. Why have AMD when you can have Intel?

Of course regarding this, Intel will exaggerate the results, they have a poor marketing department clearly. It may not be 50% faster but it’s still faster as they have better engineers and that’s what’s important. Far more important than price when it comes to flagship products anyway. Value buyers will go further down the product stack on either manufacturer. Although I’m sure the 2700X will now be considered a budget part in the face of these new prices.

They both perform practically on par. Intel leads by a slight margin but does that ultimately justify the extra cost? Even for people who want the best, the better deal will win when the competition is $200 more while providing marginal improvements.

Hey don't know if you read the article or not, but it was the 8700K that was just outperforming the Ryzen chip. The 8700K is performing better and costs $20 less right now so it is currently the better option from the metrics TechSpot used.

Also, it's weird to me that the original article was comparing the 9900K to the ryzen and not the threadripper as those are the "top of the line" chips. People looking for a gaming card should be looking at the 9700K.

Well remember that the gaming performance on a 2600x can actually be better than on the 2700x and the price is far lower than the 8700k :)
 
This kind of paid review/research/marketing happens in every industry - even the medical industry. When looking at anything like this, if the entity funding the research/report/review has an interest in the product/drug/whatever, then the results, IMO, should be immediately suspect.
Medical industry is the biggest industry to use these sort of slimy tactics.
 
This story really went viral. It is all over the Hardocp and TPU forums.

PCN or whatever deserves some praise for retracting the claims. Too often we see tech sites doubling down after they are called out on their BS.
 
This story really went viral. It is all over the Hardocp and TPU forums.

PCN or whatever deserves some praise for retracting the claims. Too often we see tech sites doubling down after they are called out on their BS.

Doing what's right after wide-spread controversy doesn't deserve credit. The only thing they've earned is the right for every article to be scrutinized before anyone can take their word for it.

The websites that double down on their BS no longer get my ad revenue and I'm sure others.
 
Don't they realize that this type of stuff HURTS their brand?? when they're exposed as liars and manipulators, who in their right mind would want to buy their product? It's disgraceful, and quite frankly makes me WANT to buy AMD now. (I've bought Sandybridge and then Haswell, but I'll definitely be looking at AMD's offerings for my next upgrade).
 
Fakes all around these days. 2700X with DDR4-2933 is compared to 8700K with DDR4-2666. And no word on whatever 2700X is XFR-overclocked or stock-clocked. So this one is not less suspicious than another.
 
I'm interested which new exciting security holes does the series 9 introduce. Will someone be able to irrecoverably burn your CPU by simply redirecting you to a web page? Or will they be able to see your screen in TeamViewer-like mode even before you installed Windows (using just the network/screen drivers built into the CPU)?

Intel is the world leader in security holes and weird bugs, I'm sure they have lots of exciting surprises for us.
 
9900K pricing was announced today and boy it’s expensive. My prediction is that it reviewers will slam it for its price but despite this it will sell like no tomorrow. Because reviewers don’t understand that not everyone out there are value buyers. A Renault is better value for money than a BMW but driving enthusiasts would pay more for the BMW because it’s a better vehicle. Same thing goes on in the CPU world. Why have AMD when you can have Intel?

Of course regarding this, Intel will exaggerate the results, they have a poor marketing department clearly. It may not be 50% faster but it’s still faster as they have better engineers and that’s what’s important. Far more important than price when it comes to flagship products anyway. Value buyers will go further down the product stack on either manufacturer. Although I’m sure the 2700X will now be considered a budget part in the face of these new prices.

What Renault-BMW bravado are you trying to bring here? Intel and AMD don't even remotely have such technological difference. And when one behaves like a fraud - why sugar coat it?


1) They disabled HALF OF THE CORES for the opponent CPU.

2) They used the most unrealistic memory combination for the opponent CPU.


This is a complete fraud. They should not get away with it. In reality 9900K is less than 1/10 faster in some games at some settings for +100% price.
 
9900K pricing was announced today and boy it’s expensive. My prediction is that it reviewers will slam it for its price but despite this it will sell like no tomorrow. Because reviewers don’t understand that not everyone out there are value buyers. A Renault is better value for money than a BMW but driving enthusiasts would pay more for the BMW because it’s a better vehicle. Same thing goes on in the CPU world. Why have AMD when you can have Intel?

Of course regarding this, Intel will exaggerate the results, they have a poor marketing department clearly. It may not be 50% faster but it’s still faster as they have better engineers and that’s what’s important. Far more important than price when it comes to flagship products anyway. Value buyers will go further down the product stack on either manufacturer. Although I’m sure the 2700X will now be considered a budget part in the face of these new prices.

Well I don't have a BMW but I have a Hyundai and a motorcycle. The point is that everyone has different needs and value system. If you are gaming at 1440p or 2160p, the extra money you save on the CPU can be spent on a GPU, which has a larger impact on gaming performance. If you are in for productivity, then go with threadripper. I don't see a wide market for the i9 CPUs. But of course, most people aren't rational, hence, the many isheeps roaming the pastures.
 
Fakes all around these days. 2700X with DDR4-2933 is compared to 8700K with DDR4-2666. And no word on whatever 2700X is XFR-overclocked or stock-clocked. So this one is not less suspicious than another.

Yeah, nobody is buying your BS. Show me a reputable site that shows such poor testing methodology as this one to include memory timings, fps analysis, and using only half the cores.

Funny you mention XFR as it is a CPU boost function. No mention of MCE, which is a motherboard overclock that requires aftermarket cooling and how several reviewers got called out on it.

But hey, let's call everyone a dirt bag, so when our favorite company does something dishonest, we will just dismiss it.
 
The whimpers of desperation from sIntel. Karma, or should I say competition, is a b!tch. That's what they get for milking their customers for so long.
 
9900K pricing was announced today and boy it’s expensive. My prediction is that it reviewers will slam it for its price but despite this it will sell like no tomorrow. Because reviewers don’t understand that not everyone out there are value buyers. A Renault is better value for money than a BMW but driving enthusiasts would pay more for the BMW because it’s a better vehicle. Same thing goes on in the CPU world. Why have AMD when you can have Intel?

Of course regarding this, Intel will exaggerate the results, they have a poor marketing department clearly. It may not be 50% faster but it’s still faster as they have better engineers and that’s what’s important. Far more important than price when it comes to flagship products anyway. Value buyers will go further down the product stack on either manufacturer. Although I’m sure the 2700X will now be considered a budget part in the face of these new prices.

They both perform practically on par. Intel leads by a slight margin but does that ultimately justify the extra cost? Even for people who want the best, the better deal will win when the competition is $200 more while providing marginal improvements.

Hey don't know if you read the article or not, but it was the 8700K that was just outperforming the Ryzen chip. The 8700K is performing better and costs $20 less right now so it is currently the better option from the metrics TechSpot used.

Also, it's weird to me that the original article was comparing the 9900K to the ryzen and not the threadripper as those are the "top of the line" chips. People looking for a gaming card should be looking at the 9700K.

Almost as bad as the article as far as representations. Amazon- 2700X $299, 8700K $379
My math shows $79 more, not $20 less.
 
2) They used the most unrealistic memory combination for the opponent CPU.

Gamers Nexus points out that simply enabling XMP or DHCP can have widely different timings on different motherboards. I know tRFC alone has a big performance impact. But yeah, 64gb is retarded.
 
Worth repeating:

Intel = best IPC, best single-core scores, good multi-core scores, highest FPS, highest cost; milked the market for ten years.

AMD = very good IPC, good single-core scores, best multi-core scores, good FPS, highest value; bet the farm and made a miraculous comeback, reigniting competition and forcing Intel to produce, ensuring we will have great choices now and tomorrow - if and only if AMD survives.

Considering that the differences in single-core / FPS are almost undiscernable both in apps and games - who are you going to support with your next CPU purchase?

As long as AMD can even come close to Intel's product - I'll buy AMD. To do otherwise would be a vote for the past, which none of us liked.
 
Registered just so I can say this... I have been an Intel user in multiple systems and laptops since 1999 but in last 4 years I have started to be skeptical due to rehashed designs and practicality same processors over and over again.
Add artificially inflated prices, hardware based backdoors (the management engine saga), patches who destroy chip performance and ban on reviewers to give post patch performance and now fake reviews.
Finally going to try AMD just because I dont trust Intel anymore.

Great work Steven, this is the type of integrity and truthfulness which are the need of the hour otherwise we are entering an era of Tomshardware (buy RTX cause you only live once....) like paid recommendations. Cheers to you.
 
Thank you so much for this informative article on benchmarking and comparisons. I always felt that much of this stuff is hype. You have shown it.
 
I dont like them removing hyper threading, only have 8 cores sounds nice but it's going to come back in the very near future. games like Battlefield V already are set up to utilize 12 threads to properly handle other players in your in-game match. users with fewer threads experienced stuttering when playing. this comes just as more then 2 dozen games are making a move and transitioning or announcing that they are going to be relying on or utilizing more then 4 or even 8 threads.
This may lead up to AMD's Ryzen 2 (3000 series) coming in with a advantage, they are already promising 15-25% improvement in IPC along with improvements in power consumption, clock speed and optimization.
 
Well, you can call the company anything you want, but they are at least willing to answer the questions about their testing. Looking at their resume I would say this is a company that does corporate testing, and they were out of their element testing enthusiast gear. I think it is wrong to accuse anyone outright with at least getting their side of the story though.

https://www.principledtechnologies....ng_PC_gaming_processor_study_interim_1018.pdf
 
I dont like them removing hyper threading, only have 8 cores sounds nice but it's going to come back in the very near future. games like Battlefield V already are set up to utilize 12 threads to properly handle other players in your in-game match. users with fewer threads experienced stuttering when playing. this comes just as more then 2 dozen games are making a move and transitioning or announcing that they are going to be relying on or utilizing more then 4 or even 8 threads.
This may lead up to AMD's Ryzen 2 (3000 series) coming in with a advantage, they are already promising 15-25% improvement in IPC along with improvements in power consumption, clock speed and optimization.

Who's promising 15-25% improvement in IPC? That won't happen any time soon IMO. If it's as big as 5%, I'll be impressed as that'll catch them up to Intel and then only clock speed will be the distinguishing factor.

Oh yeah, and AMD's actually reasonable prices.
 
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