Intel Core i9-9900K CPU Review: 8-Core 9th Gen Coffee Lake Benchmarks

For our next series of tests, we moved on to some game-related metrics with 3DMark, specifically the physics benchmark that's part of the Fire Strike test, along with a couple of actual games. For the 3DMark Physics test, we simply create a custom 3DMark run consisting solely of the physics test, which is CPU dependent, and report the results...

Gaming: 3DMark Physics Taking the GPU out of the Equation

The Core i9-9900K put up a strong number in the 3DMark Physics test. Though this test is multi-threaded, it doesn't seem to play well with the different cache hierarchy and mesh configuration of Core X processors, but it excels on the Core i9-9900K. The 8-core Core i9-9900K actually catches a 16-core Threadripper and pulls ahead of the Core i9-7980XE.

High Resolution Gaming And Graphics Tests 1080P and 4K Gaming With GeForce GTX 1080

We also ran some high-resolution game and graphics tests on our test rigs 3DMark, Middle Earth: Shadow Of War and Rise Of The Tomb Raider. We used 3DMark's Fire Strike Extreme preset, and both of the games were run in two different configurations -- either 1080p with Medium details, or 4K with High/Very High details. The lower resolution tests are more CPU bound, while the higher resolution tests are more GPU bound.


The Core i9-9900K took the pole position in both of our 1080P game tests, outpacing the previous leader -- the Coffee Lake-based Core i7-8700K -- by a few percentage points. The processor's combination of high clocks, high IPC relative to the competition, and larger cache are very well suited for gaming.

Cranking the resolution up to 4K and increasing in-game image quality levels the playing field, however, as you would expect. As we shift the bottleneck onto the GPU, high-end CPUs are typically waiting around while the GPU catches up, and as such, framerates level off.


3DMark Fire Strike jibes with our high resolution game tests. The Core i9-9900K performs near the top of the charts, but because this benchmark is almost completely GPU-bound (save for the Physics portion of the benchmark), the deltas separating the high-end processors are relatively small.