Maximum PC - UK (2020-01)

THIS A MILESTONE for Intel and CPUs,

with the Core i9-9900KS officially being

the first CPU that can do 5GHz on all

eight of its cores, all the time. The Core

i9-9900KS takes everything good about

Intel’s existing ninth-gen refresh, then

cranks the dial up to 11, using binning to

select the best chips and reach the lofty

goal of 5GHz. Is it enough to maintain

Intel’s claim to the gaming throne? Yes,

absolutely. The Core i9-9900K was

already the fastest CPU in games, so

tacking on 300MHz is only going to help.

At the same time, 300MHz more isn’t

going to come close to closing the gap

between Intel and AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9

3900X in multithreaded workloads, never

mind the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X and

third-gen Threadripper. Fifty percent

more cores with relatively similar per-

core performance, and only a 14 percent

advantage in clock speed for Intel, means

AMD unequivocally offers more total

performance in the right applications.

Most people going out to buy a i9-

9900K want the maximum performance

possible, within reason, and with a good

cooler, 4.7GHz shouldn’t be a problem—

and for the Core i9-9900KS, even 5GHz

isn’t a problem. Let’s reiterate that bit

about having a good cooler: Intel doesn’t

include any box coolers with its K-series

CPUs, assuming that most enthusiasts

plan to use something more robust. We

can only guess what would happen if you

tried a basic air cooler on the i9-9900KS,

but it would either overheat and throttle,

or overheat and crash.

Using a high-end motherboard with a

good liquid cooler, temperatures weren’t

With 5GHz on all cores, it’s the new gaming king

Intel Core i9-9900KS

9

VERDICT Intel Core i9-9900KS

HIGH FIVE 5GHz on all cores;

specially binned silicon; leads

all CPUs in gaming performance.

DOWN LOW Slower in multithreaded

workloads; limited overclocking potential;

round six of 14nm.

$525, http://intel.com

SPECIFICATIONS

Base/Turbo Clock 4.0GHz/5.0GHz

Cores/Threads 8/16

Lithography 14nm

Cache 16MB

Memory Support DDR4-2666

Memory Channels 2

Max PCIe Lanes 16

Graphics Intel UHD Graphics 630

TDP 127W

generally a problem. In fact, the 9900KS

sample is clearly superior to our

9900K sample as it has lower idle power

use by about 5W, and even running flat out

at 5GHz, we didn’t see temperatures go

above 81 C in most workloads. The slower

9900K, meanwhile, topped out at 84 C

with peaks of up to 92 C. With extreme

liquid cooling, you can probably push the

Core i9-9900KS up to 5.2–5.3GHz without

overheating, but that’s still a very small

overclock. Ever since AMD became more

competitive, Intel has been pushing clock

speeds closer to the limit at “stock.”

CHART TOPPER

As you would expect, considering the

i9-9900K was formerly the top CPU in

the gaming charts, the i9-9900KS is just

a tiny bit faster. Overall, it’s a 1.2 percent

improvement over the 9900K, which

means that even at 1080p ultra with a

2080 Ti, many games are still mostly

GPU-limited. Basically, though, the top

three CPUs are all effectively tied—no

one is really going to notice the difference

in gaming performance between the

9700K, 9900K, and 9900KS.

Moving our attention to application

performance, the Core i9-9900KS

doesn’t look so potent. Many CPUs

outperform the 9900KS in multithreading

tasks, including pretty much all the

Threadripper 2000 series, and the ninth-

gen Skylake-X Core i9 parts. There’s

a catch, however: How many of these

applications do you regularly use?

Cinebench, POV-ray, and Blender all

test 3D rendering performance. If you’re

not doing that sort of work, it’s more

of a theoretical benefit, rather than

something immediately noticeable.

This is Intel’s highest clocked CPU

to date, finally hitting 5GHz on all cores

without any serious effort on the part

of the user. This is also a limited edition

part, meaning just like the Core i7-

8086K anniversary edition, it won’t be

on sale forever. It also still uses 14nm++

lithography, which is holding Intel back.

But even though it’s built on yesterday’s

lithography, the Core i9-9900KS is

more than fast enough for almost any

non-professional workload. If you were

looking at the Core i9-9900K before, the

9900KS is a barely noticeable bump in

price for 3–6 percent more performance.

It hangs on to the gaming crown as well,

and will likely do so until at least the next

generation of graphics cards arrives.

The i9-9900KS is largely the same chip

as the i9-9900K. The main benefit is that

it comes with some extra binning sauce.

For slightly better performance, our

9900KS sample actually runs cooler than

a lower clocked 9900K, and it still has a

bit of overclocking headroom in a pinch.

Right now, this is as good as it gets for

gaming performance. –JARRED WALTON

BENCHMARKS

Intel Core

i9-9900KS

Intel Core

i7-8700K

AMD Ryzen 9

3900X

Blender 2.80 Beta BMW (pps) 3,281 2,247 4,477

Cinebench R15 Single/Multi (Index) 221 /2,182 205/1,412 210/3,160

POV-Ray 3.7.1 Single/Multi (pps) 629 /5,785 570/3,713 522/6,639

PCMark 10 (Index) 8,316 7,838 7,285

Metro Exodus (fps) 96 95 92

Tom Clancey’s The Division 2 (fps) 154 152 148

Total War: Warhammer II (fps) 112 102 98

Best scores are in bold. Our test bench consists of a MSI MEG Z390 Godlike motherboard, 16GB of G.Skill TridentZ RGB

DDR4-3200, an Nivida GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSD and a Corsair HX850 Platinum PSU.

in the lab

78 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2020 maximumpc.com