PC World - USA 2020-07)

56 PCWorld JULY 2020

REVIEWS INTEL 10TH GEN

increasingly GPU-bound.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, long

The Core i9-10900K’s gaming advantage over the

Ryzen 9 3900X creeps higher when the game is

less bound by the GPU.

Far Cry NewUltra 25x14 Dawn

Far Cry NewUltra 19x10 Dawn

Ryzen 9 3900x Matisse (12/24) Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S (10/20)

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

101

110

106

114

115

131

49.5

53.2

Far Cry NewNormal 19x10 Dawn

AoS: Escalation Crazy CPU Focused 19x10

147.8

159.6

129.17

133.77

Chernobylite High 19x10

Chernobylite Ultra 19x10

98.1

100.7

Civilization VI Gathering Storm

AI 19x10

Q19x10uake II RTX

124.15

132.53

58.6

MHigh 19x10etro Exodus

MExtreme 19x10etro Exodus

60.4

84.6

88.28

80

83.1

MRTX 19x10etro Exodus

Red Dead Redemption II

Ultra Vulkan 19x10

227

307

107.4

159.8

Gears of WUltra CPU Frame Rate 19x12ar

Gears of WMedium 19x12ar 5

108.4

127.1

94.1

Gears of WUltra 19x12 ar 5

Gears of WMedium 25x16ar 5

Core i9-10900K

vs. Ryzen 9 3900X

Gaming Performance

100

32.11

30.35

the poster child for DX12 performance, is

hailed for actually using the extra CPU cores

available to gamers today. For this run, we use

the Crazy quality preset and select the CPU-

focused benchmark, which is supposed to

throw additional units into the game. The

result: about a 7.5-percent advantage for the

Core i9-10900K.

Chernobylite, an early-access game,

features a benchmark to showcase its

beautiful graphics. Set to high, where the

game is not limited by GPU performance, we

see that familiar 7.9-percent advantage for the

Core i9 over the Ryzen 9. As we crank up the

graphics from high to ultra, it becomes an

increasingly GPU-bound test.

The only red (AMD) bar longer than a blue

(Intel) bar is in Civilization VI Gathering

Storms—but unfortunately for the Ryzen 9, this

particular test measures how long it takes for

the computer to make a move, and shorter

time is better. The Core i9 is about 6.5

percent faster.

For Metro Exodus, we run the game at

19x10 resolution using the built-in benchmark

presets for High, Extreme, and RTX. On High,

when the game is less of a GPU test and more

of a CPU test, the Core i9 has about a

6.7-percent advantage over the Ryzen. On

Extreme, where the GPU is the bottleneck,

the gap closes to about 3 percent. When the

RTX preset is used, the Core i9’s advantage is

about 4.3 percent, which is a surprise—we

assumed performance differences would