A
couple of years ago, we were expecting Intel’s
10th-generation CPUs to sport a 10nm
manufacturing process, but we’re still sat at 14nm
and using the ageing Skylake-based architecture with minimal
revisions. Core counts have improved by a fraction of what
AMD has managed too, rising from four to ten cores with the
stack-topping Core i9-10900K we’re reviewing here, whereas
AMD offers up to 16 cores on its mainstream desktop platform.
However, while we’re only seeing a shift from eight to
ten cores with the flagship CPUs compared with the last
generation, Intel has also made the interesting move of adding
Hyper-Threading to its entire product stack.
Previously, CPUs such as the Core i5-9400F
and Core i5-9600K were massively held
back in multi-threaded performance thanks
to a lack of available threads compared with
AMD chips, but the new Core i5 CPUs now
have much more grunt for content creation
and multi-threaded games, in addition to the
excellent gaming performance that comes
from fast clock speeds.
What’s more, the Core i9-10900K’s price
is similar to that of the Core i9-9900K when
it launched 18 months ago, but with two
extra cores and higher frequencies.
With ten cores and 20 threads,
the Core i9-10900K offers
two more cores and
four more threadsthan the Core i9-9900K, and the amount of L2 cache has also
gone up accordingly.
Thanks to Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost, which increases
CPU frequency according to thermals and motherboard
capabilities, the Core i9-10900K can also hit 5.3GHz across up
to two cores at the same time, which is 600MHz higher than
the top boost clock of any current AMD CPU.
This was a bit of an issue at launch, though, as motherboard
manufacturers struggled to hit this frequency at all, and even
when the chip did boost, just having a couple of low-key
programs open in the background would see the frequency
top out at 5.1 or 5.2GHz. At stock speed, the all-core boost
sat at around 4.9GHz, which is just short of the 5GHz all-core
boost achieved by the Core i9-9900KS. It’s much faster
than the 4.3GHz all-core boost we observed with the Core
i9-10900X – Intel’s other 10-core CPU for its X299 platform.
There’s also the issue of power consumption. Rumours
before the launch painted concerning pictures, but while
we saw our test system hit 300W under load with the Core
i9-10900K installed, that’s only 67W more than with the Core
i9-9900K, and 60W more than the Ryzen 9 3900X, although
the latter admittedly has two more cores and costs around
£90 less than the Core i9-10900K.
Intel has at least attempted to solve the issue of
heat, which could be a real issue with the Core
i9-9900K, especially when overclocking. The
Core i9-10900K sports some tweaks here
compared with its forebear, with a
die that’s 0.3mm thinner than itsREVIEWS / PROCESSORS
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INTELCORE i910900K / £530 inc VAT
LGA1200 CPU
SUPPLIER ebuyer.com
SPEC
Base frequency
3.3GHz
Max boost frequency
5.3GHz
Core
Comet Lake
Manufacturing process
14nm
Number of cores
10 x physical (20 threads)
Hyper-Threading
Ye s
Cache
19MB L3 cache, 10 x 1MB L2 cache
Memory controller
Dual-channel DDR4, up to
2933MHz
Packaging
LGA
Thermal design power (TDP)
125W
Features
Thermal Velocity Boost, Turbo Boost
Max Technology 3, Turbo Boost 2,
FMA3, F16C, SHA, BMI / BMI1 + BMI2,
AVX-512, AVX2, AVX, AES, SSE4a,
SSE4, SSSE3, SSE3, SSE2, SSE, MMX