Core i9 articles

Do you need to buy a Core i9 for gaming, and is a Core i3 sufficient for general desktop work? How about upgrading to a Core i5, how much faster is that? Our CPU reviews provide more than enough data to answer those questions, but this review will serve as a great reference for those wanting to compare Intel Core i3, i5, i7 and i9 processors directly.

The Core i9-10980HK is Intel's flagship mobile processor in their 10th generation line-up. This is the third CPU we've looked at in the Comet Lake H-series, after the Core i7-10875H and Core i7-10750H, so we're starting to get a pretty comprehensive outline of where Intel is positioned in the market right now. This Core i9 chip is typically found in the most expensive laptops you can get, but it also promises to be the fastest.

The Core i7-10700K is an 8-core, 16-thread CPU which is essentially a Core i9-9900K at a 25% discount, as Intel has set the MSRP at $375. It's a reasonable discount over the previous gaming king, but will that be enough?

Today we're checking out Intel's new enthusiast and gaming flagship CPU, the Core i9-10900K. This is a 10-core, 20-thread processor sporting a base frequency of 3.7 GHz and a single core turbo of 5.3 GHz. As the successor of the i9-9900K, Intel's latest flagship is set to go head to head against AMD's Ryzen 3900X.

#ThrowBackThursday Expanding upon all the testing we performed in our day-one 3rd-gen Ryzen coverage, today we'll be running a clock-for-clock comparison benchmark. IPC can be a good indicator of a processor's architecture efficiency, so we're pitting the new Ryzen 3900X and 3700X against Intel's Core i9-9900K.

Today we're comparing the Ryzen 9 3950X and Core i9-9900KS in a massive number of games, using one of G.Skill's most premium 16GB memory kits, the Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 CL14. For those of you spending $600+ on a CPU, purchasing top end DDR4 memory doesn't seem like a stretch, so here's a head to head comparison between AMD and Intel processors using manually tuned timings.

Intel launched today the "new" Core i9-9900KS processor which appears to be a pointless release, similar to the Core i7-8086K that we never bothered to look at. Intel says this new processor delivers up to a 5.0 GHz all-core turbo frequency. It's a limited special edition set to become available starting today for $513.

Having tested 3rd-gen Ryzen processors with the RTX 2080 Ti extensively, our idea behind this new feature is to add mainstream and budget GPUs to the mix in a benchmark run that reflects more settings and resolutions gamers will likely use when tuning their PCs for gaming: we've picked the RTX 2070 Super, RX 5700 and Radeon RX 580.

A battle that needs no further introduction, we're pitting the new Ryzen 9 3900X head to head against the Core i9-9900K in 36 games. There's loads of results to go over and this article is solely focused on PC gaming performance.

Having already tested graphics performance in Battlefield V covering a massive range of graphics cards, including a look at real-time ray tracing, we're now focusing on CPU performance. Battlefield V's 64-player multiplayer really puts the hurt on processors, so we threw ourselves at the task.

First things first, you need to choose sides. Whether you're going AMD or Intel, there are loads of motherboards to choose from. If you've followed our previous motherboard buying guides covering Z370, B450 and X470 motherboards, you're probably in for a surprise once you see how this one turned out.

Today we're revisiting our original Core i9-9900K review and updating it with 95 watt TDP limited results, basically results based on the official Intel specification. For better context about this please read our opinion article from earlier this week titled "Do We Need to Re-Review the Core i9-9900K?".

Benchmarking the i9-9900K with unlimited and 95-watt limited results might show two very different sides of the same CPU. Since the Core i9-9900K reviews went live, a few strange anomalies have been spotted, mostly relating to its power and thermal performance...

Having reviewed Intel's latest Core i9-9900K and Core i7-9700K processors, we saw very high stock temperatures using high-end coolers, basically killing their overclocking potential. We know that soldering CPUs works a lot better than the paste method Intel's been using to cut costs, so we wanted to know how much better is the solder method used by the 9900K than the paste of the 8700K/8086K?

Today we can finally show you how Intel's new octa-core 9th-gen processors perform. On hand for testing we have the Core i9-9900K, an 8 core/16 thread processor that operates at 3.6 GHz, boost as high as 4.7 GHz on all cores with a max single core frequency of 5 GHz. We also have the i7-9700K which is essentially the same CPU, but crucially, with Hyper-threading disabled.

When a PC gaming site published early Core i9-9900K results today we were a little surprised. The title read "Intel's Core i9 9900K is up to 50% faster than AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X in games," right away many of the results looked very suspect to me, having spent countless hours benchmarking both the 2700X and 8700K, so we looked into it some more.