The Intel Core i9-9900KS Review: The 5 GHz Consumer Special
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 31, 2019 10:45 AM EST
Intel likes 5.0 GHz processors. The one area where it claims a clear advantage over AMD is in its ability to drive the frequency of its popular 14nm process. Earlier this week, we reviewed the Core i9-9990XE, which is a rare auction only CPU but with 14 cores at 5.0 GHz, built for the high-end desktop and high frequency trading market. Today we are looking at its smaller sibling, the Core i9-9900KS, built in numbers for the consumer market: eight cores at 5.0 GHz. But you’ll have to be quick, as Intel isn’t keeping this one around forever.
The Battle of the Bits
Every time a new processor comes to market, several questions get asked: how many cores, how fast, how much power? We’ve come through generations of promises of many GHz and many cores for little power, but right now we have an intense battle on our hands. The red team is taking advantage of a paradigm shift in computing with an advanced process node to offer many cores at a high power efficiency as well as at a good frequency. In the other corner is team blue, which has just equipped its arsenal by taking advantage of its most aggressive binning of 14nm yet, with the highest frequency processor for the consumer market, enabled across all eight cores and to hell with the power. Intel’s argument here is fairly simple:
Do you want good all-around, or do you want the one with the fastest raw speed?
The Intel Core i9-9900KS is borne from the battle. In essence it looks like an overclocked Core i9-9900K, however by that logic everything is an overclocked version of something else. In order for Intel to give a piece of silicon off the manufacturing like the name of a Core i9-9900KS rather than a Core i9-9900K requires additional binning and validation, to the extent where it has taken several months from announcement just for Intel to be happy that they have enough chips for demand that will meet the warranty standards.
At the time Intel launched its 9th Generation Core desktop processors, like the Core i9-9900K, I perhaps would not have expected them to launch something like the Core i9-9900KS. It’s a big step up in the binning, and I’d be surprised if Intel gets one chip per wafer that hits this designation. Intel announced the Core i9-9900KS after AMD had launched its Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 family, offering 12 cores with an all core turbo around 4.2 GHz and a +10% IPC advantage over Intel’s Skylake microarchitecture (and derivatives) for a lower price per core. In essence, Intel’s Core i9-9900K consumer flagship processor had a chip that was pretty close to it in performance with several more cores.
Intel is pushing the Core i9-9900KS as the ultimate consumer processor. With eight cores all running at 5.0 GHz, it is promising fast response and clock rates without any slowdown. Intel has many marketing arguments as to why the KS is the best processor on the market, especially when it comes to gaming: having a 5.0 GHz frequency keeps it top of the pile for gaming where frequency matters (low resolution), and many games don’t scale beyond four cores, let alone eight, and so the extra cores on the competition don’t really help here. It will be interesting to see where the 9900KS comes out in standard workload tests however, where cores can matter.
Intel’s 9th Generation Core Processors
The Intel Core i9-9900KS now sits atop of Intel’s consumer product portfolio. The processor is the same 8-core die as the 9900K, unlocked with UHD 620 integrated graphics, but has a turbo of 5.0 GHz. All cores can turbo to 5.0 GHz. The length of the turbo will be motherboard dependent, however.
Intel 9th Gen Core 8-Core Desktop CPUs | ||||||||
AnandTech | Cores | Base Freq |
All-Core Turbo | Single Core Turbo Freq |
IGP | DDR4 | TDP | Price (1ku) |
i9-9900KS | 8 / 16 | 4.0 GHz | 5.0 GHz | 5.0 GHz | UHD 630 | 2666 | 127 W | $513 |
i9-9900K | 8 / 16 | 3.6 GHz | 4.7 GHz | 5.0 GHz | UHD 630 | 2666 | 95 W | $488 |
i9-9900KF | 8 / 16 | 3.6 GHz | 4.7 GHz | 5.0 GHz | - | 2666 | 95 W | $488 |
i7-9700K | 8 / 8 | 3.6 GHz | 4.6 GHz | 4.9 GHz | UHD 630 | 2666 | 95 W | $374 |
i7-9700KF | 8 / 8 | 3.6 GHz | 4.6 GHz | 4.9 GHz | - | 2666 | 95 W | $374 |
The Core i9-9900KS has an tray price of $513 (when purchased in 1000 unit bulk), which means we’re likely to see an on-shelf price of $529-$549, depending on if it gets packaged in its dodecanal box that our review sample came in.
Compared to the Core i9-9900K or Core i9-9900KF, the Core i9-9900KS extends its 5.0 GHz all through from when 2 cores are active to 8 cores are active. There is still no Turbo Boost Max 3.0 here, which means that all cores are guaranteed to hit this 5.0 GHz number. The TDP is 127 W, which is the maximum power consumption of the processor at its base frequency, 4.0 GHz. Above 4.0 GHz Intel does not state what sort of power to expect. We have this testing further in the review.
Competition
At present, Intel is competing against two major angles with the Core i9-9900KS. On the one side, it already has the Core i9-9900K, which if a user gets a good enough sample, can be overclocked to emulate the 9900KS. Intel does not offer warranty on an overclocked CPU, so there is something to be taken into account – the warranty on the Core i9-9900KS is only a limited 1 year warranty, rather than the standard 3 years it offers to the majority of its other parts, which perhaps indicates the lengths it went to for binning these processors.
From AMD, the current 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X that is already in the market has become a popular processor for users going onto 7nm and PCIe 4.0. It offers more PCIe lanes from the CPU to take advantage of PCIe storage and such, and there are a wealth of motherboards on the market that can take advantage of this processor. It also has an MSRP around the same price, at $499, although is often being sold for much higher due to availability.
AMD also has the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X coming around the corner, promising slightly more performance than the 3900X, and aside from the $749 MSRP, it’s going to be an unknown on availability until it gets released in November.
The Competition | ||||||
Intel i9-9900KS | Intel i9-9900K | Anand Tech |
AMD 2920X |
AMD 3950X |
AMD 3900X |
AMD 3800X |
8 | 8 | Cores | 12 | 16 | 12 | 8 |
16 | 16 | Threads | 24 | 32 | 24 | 16 |
4.0 | 3.6 | Base | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.8 | 3.9 |
8 x 5.0 | 2 x 5.0 | Turbo | 4.3 | 4.7 | 4.6 | 4.5 |
2 x 2666 | 2 x 2666 | DDR4 | 4 x 2933 | 2 x 3200 | 2 x 3200 | 2 x 3200 |
3.0 x16 | 3.0 x16 | PCIe | 3.0 x64 | 4.0 x24 | 4.0 x24 | 4.0 x24 |
127 W | 95 W | TDP | 180 W | 105 W | 105 W | 105 W |
$513 | $486 | Price | $649 | $749 | $499 | $399 |
It’s worth noting here that while Intel has committed to delivering ‘10nm class’ processors on the desktop in the future, it currently has made zero mention of exactly when this is going to happen. Offering a limited edition all-core 5.0 GHz part like the Core i9-9900KS into the market is a brave thing indeed – it will have to provide something similar or better when it gets around to producing 10nm processors for this market. We saw this once before, when Intel launched Devil’s Canyon: super binned parts that ultimately ended up being faster than those that followed on an optimized process, because the binning aspect ended up being a large factor. Intel either has extreme confidence in its 10nm process for the desktop family, or doesn’t know what to expect.
This Review
In our review, we’re going to cover the usual benchmarking scenarios for a processor like this, as well as examine Intel’s relationship with turbo and how much a motherboard manufacturer can affect the performance.
235 Comments
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mattkiss - Friday, November 1, 2019 - link
The Processor Specification field in the CPU-Z screen shot has "(ES)" after the cpu name. Did you test and engineering sample or an actual retail sample?GreenReaper - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
It was only launched a couple of days ago, so they'd have to have had a sample, you couldn't run the tests and write the article having bought it at retail.BAF2782 - Friday, November 1, 2019 - link
Nice to see a 10+year old Thermalright True Copper: 2kg for a CPU that has a mini-nuclear thermal reactor powering itself. LoL. I can't really say much. I'm using a 11year old ZALMAN CNPS 9900MAX (300watt) AIR cooler on a 5.3GHz Golden 8700K with 1.380v in a z370 Aorus Gaming 7. I thought about getting a new cooler with the $400 open-box 9900K that i just found. But, after seeing the 9900KS running on the 10year old Thermalright True Copper: 2 kg. I don't have a doubt the ZALMAN 9900MAX (300watt) cooler will have any problems running a 5GHz (PO) 9900K.crotach - Saturday, November 2, 2019 - link
So, this is a direct competitor to 2700X, but costs twice as much?I wonder if we'll see intel as a budget offering in a couple of years, cutting the price of their 14nm tech to half of what AMD charges just to get some sales.
My my, how the tables have turned :)
Dragonstongue - Saturday, November 2, 2019 - link
if they can say 4ghs base, but 5ghz all core turbo, why not just have as 5ghz directly ??I confused, seems another marketing ploy of some sort (no real surprise there)
that being said, likely good for AMD as well as sets a new target for them TSMC et al.
Orkiton - Saturday, November 2, 2019 - link
It's like a Caterpillar engine that will need hydrogen fuel to beat most benchmarks. That means expensive Mobo, GPU, PSU, Mem, Cooler, Case.It's Intel stretching to the limits for PR purposes, yet much bellow AMD, in terms of value for money.
liquid_c - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
It's unbelievable, i swear. Even Anandtech's comment section has turned into a pcgamer shit show. Instead of just trying to take the article as it is - a piece of info, most of the people here either start a revolution against Intel or just plain dismiss it as "fake information" in regards to TDP. But i see nobody here admitting that Intel's 14nm is ON PAR with AMD's 7nm (i've heard they have the same density but don't quote me on that). Or that said products is not geared towards you or your acquaintances. I swear to God, it's like Intel has raped some family member or something. Just buy whatever you think is fit for you and leave others to enjoy proper journalism (which is so f*cking rare nowadays).liquid_c - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
*are not geared.Sigh, i miss an edit button :(
Korguz - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
cause it is fake info, 127 watts ?? nope, 200+ more then likely. and some i think, are tired of the lies, BS, and over charging intel has had us pay over the years. face it, if amd didnt bring out zen, the chances are we would still be stuck at quad core for the mainstream, and anything above that, would be HEDT. FYI, it may be on par, but intel should also be on 10nm by now... maybe even the next node size, and yet, intel kept saying, 10nm is on track. there are better, less expensive options then this cpu, this is just intel being intel, last ditch effort to try to save face.The Garden Variety - Sunday, November 3, 2019 - link
Thank you, liquid_c. This needs to be repeated over and over again. You have this stellar quality content, painstakingly researched and presented, and it's clear many of the readers (or at least the ones that comment) are neither understanding it, reading it in context, or even trying to think about it. The smartphone reviews are identical. It's all just "how do I read what I want so I can wage my emotional holy war because I have literally nothing else going for me."Here, I'll go one step further: there's zero reason for a site like Anandtech to have comments following articles at all. You could delete 9 out of 10 attached to this article and zero of value would be lost. Given how terribad the comment system is (no editing, tiny and unscalable input window, spam posts that go undetected for days, etc.) and the effort/investment it would likely take Anandtech's limited team to improve it, just getting the hell rid of it would be a far more sensible solution. Let the content be the star. Send people to the forums in a special board requiring a 500 post barrier in the broader community to contribute to article discussions.