Intel's 9th Gen Core Gaming Benchmarks Flawed and Misleading

[londiste]

Didn't Intel uses a Noctua NH14S cooler while AMD had to content with stock? Not that stock AMD cooler is bad, but compare the free cooler with a premium one is a dick move.

They did not compare temperatures or noise. 2700X at stock doesn't throttle under Prism.

Why so much noise about a stupid manufacturer "test results"? These have always been marketing and little else.

 

[Patriot]

It's not like AMD didn't "leak" those video processing benchmarks over and over before the Zen release, making it look like it will destroy Intel in IPC.
As I have said before, absolutely no reason to be shocked. Apply the mandatory grain of salt or disregard these "leaks" entirely. Goes a long way preserving one's sanity

AMD presented best use case for their chips, but they didnt fuck over the intel setup it compared against. The results were real and repeatable. They have continued to push a mixed use case for their chips.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

People fail to understand that SOFTWARE is the bottleneck, not hardware. If it was hardware we'd see much more gains than this - AMD is doing it correctly since the future is applications actually using all the cores since not all of them do yet.

 

[ShurikN]

Update from Hardware Unboxed...

The benchmarks carried out by Principled Technologies are even more bogus than we first thought. A few viewers pointed out that the Ryzen 7 2700X was listed as tested in the “Game Mode” within the Ryzen Master software and I foolishly thought they might have just made a simple copy and paste error in their document as they would have used this mode for the 2950X. This does explain why the Threadripper CPUs were faster than the 2700X in every test.

What this means is a CCX module in the 2700X was completely disabled, essentially turning it into a quad-core. I’ve gone ahead and re-run the XMP 2933 test with Game Mode enabled and now I’m getting results that are within the margin of error to those published by Principled Technologies.

Rest of the update: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21950120

I'm laughing so hard right now

This has to be the best thing ever.

 

[R0H1T]

They matter in the context of a civil conversation.

Sure I get that, next time I'll try better words to highlight Intel's skulduggery.

 

[Vayra86]

The main thing you can take away from their "tests" is that the 9900K only achieved 5.5% higher FPS on average than the 8700K.

Good point and its not even like we need a test for that. Its well known games don't scale across higher core counts too well. I think the 9900K is far from the gamer's choice, not only due to price, but mostly due to HT, which is adds cost that brings zero performance.

A more interesting result/test is the 8700K versus 9700K, and getting some data on the average achieved ambient overclocks on each one. I'm really curious if the 9700K will clock higher in some sort of reliable way, it being a soldered CPU and non-HT @ 8c. Even though its not apples/apples, it will be nice to see how much the 'toothpaste' *truly* mattered for all these years and infinite number of whine topics about it. Honestly I think its going to be 100-200mhz at best and it might not even be a consistent/reliable improvement at that.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

It becomes a problem when Intel posts these numbers 11 days before independent reviewers are allowed to post theirs, and solicits pre-orders. This is a big deal because Intel paid a third-party to obtain these numbers. If they'd only posted their "internal" numbers, nobody would have cared about them. They tried to pull off something bad, and got caught.

reminds me of that now forgotten CTS event.

 

[R0H1T]

Alright so after looking at this some more, is it possible that at stock & possibly without exotic cooling, the 9700k & 9900k won't clock high enough to beat 2700x by a huge margin (as highlighted by PT) in games? We have to remember that for 95W TDP we're getting lower base clocks & 2 more cores, so there's no way the 9700k or 9900k clock higher, on avg, than 8700k or even 2700x IMO. I'd be surprised if these latest chips don't consume close to 150W at full load, there's also XFR2 & PBO ~ which are better than anything Intel has atm. IMO at 95W the 9700k & 9900k (at stock) will not beat 2700x consistently across a variety of tasks, including games, except possibly on high end water cooling.

 

[W1zzard]

Updated first post with statement by Intel

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Updated first post with statement by Intel

I smell PR Trout from them

 

[Tonim89]

In stark contrast to this, for the Core i9-9900K machine, the testers simply flicked the XMP profile of the Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR4-3000 memory kit, which ended up running at not just higher clocks, but also tighter timings (which have been tested by Corsair on an Intel platform to obtain the XMP certificate)

This just reinforces how Intel platform is more stable. Most of gaming users just want to throw the hardware inside the case, download the game and play... If you need to fine tune memory timings for the processor deliver the right performance, this is not a gaming/work platform, it's more of an enthusiast.

Despite Intel's dark behaviour to review its own product, this news just makes me run even farther from AMDs platform.

 

[bug]

Good point and its not even like we need a test for that. Its well known games don't scale across higher core counts too well. I think the 9900K is far from the gamer's choice, not only due to price, but mostly due to HT, which is adds cost that brings zero performance.

A more interesting result/test is the 8700K versus 9700K, and getting some data on the average achieved ambient overclocks on each one. I'm really curious if the 9700K will clock higher in some sort of reliable way, it being a soldered CPU and non-HT @ 8c. Even though its not apples/apples, it will be nice to see how much the 'toothpaste' *truly* mattered for all these years and infinite number of whine topics about it. Honestly I think its going to be 100-200mhz at best and it might not even be a consistent/reliable improvement at that.

An interesting bit (which so far seems to have been overlooked) is that because the 9900k uses HT, one core 5.0GHz turbo means actually two cores run at that frequency. That's a boon for gaming, even if strictly for gaming we may still be better served by other SKUs.

 

[Eric3988]

More like Unprincipled Technologies! Jeez, Intel must be running scared to let this garbage heap out the dumpster. 9900 will be fine albeit very expensive, so why mess with us in the first place?

 

[HD64G]

More like Unprincipled Technologies! Jeez, Intel must be running scared to let this garbage heap out the dumpster. 9900 will be fine albeit very expensive, so why mess with us in the first place?

Might have something to do with preorder hype and sales not going well for Intel in general vs Ryzen sales rising quickly? Panic indeed...

 

[ArbitraryAffection]

World's best gaming processor: 10-15% more FPS at twice the price with no upgradability beyond this generation. Sounds like an amazing deal to me. People here have been pre-ordering the 9900K at £600 in droves. Honestly I don't understand this behaviour. It's not a mainstream processor if the price isn't mainstream.

Either way more people buy Intel because they believe this marketing BS (And yep, Intel is desperate against Ryzen so they have to market their tiny gaming edge as MASSIVE) and they buy Intel because it says Intel on it.

AMD Ryzen cannot win, because it is up against stupidity.*




*Disclaimer: for Super High Refresh rate gaming (144Hz+) and especially in competitive games the advantage intel has in raw FPS in some titles might be worth it for some people. I put this here because some folks are going to go mad at me for even suggesting Intel products aren't worth it.

 

[StrayKAT]

World's best gaming processor: 10-15% more FPS at twice the price with no upgradability beyond this generation. Sounds like an amazing deal to me. People here have been pre-ordering the 9900K at £600 in droves. Honestly I don't understand this behaviour. It's not a mainstream processor if the price isn't mainstream.

Either way more people buy Intel because they believe this marketing BS (And yep, Intel is desperate against Ryzen so they have to market their tiny gaming edge as MASSIVE) and they buy Intel because it says Intel on it.

AMD Ryzen cannot win, because it is up against stupidity.*




*Disclaimer: for Super High Refresh rate gaming (144Hz+) and especially in competitive games the advantage intel has in raw FPS in some titles might be worth it for some people. I put this here because some folks are going to go mad at me for even suggesting Intel products aren't worth it.

Heh, I thought people were slamming Intel for their poor marketing (the ugly box). No? That's all changed within a few days it seems.

 

[ArbitraryAffection]

Heh, I thought people were slamming Intel for their poor marketing (the ugly box). No? That's all changed within a few days it seems.

I've talked to people (IRL) that won't even consider Ryzen. And it's not based on product merit or lack thereof. It's based on brand names. When I am approached to recommend PC parts to family members or other people, all that I ask is they take a moment to just have a look at what AMD is offering and find out that many times they can get a better deal with Ryzen. I'm not a fangirl (well kinda, I do have Ryzen+Radeon T-shirts and other merch) all I want is that people don't blindly buy Intel thinking there is no other option.

I game on a R5 2600 at 4.1 with some pretty mediocre timings on my RAM (its a heavy OC though) and I'm very rarely seeing below 62 fps (my cap) in video games. And at the moment I am playing Fallout 4, Warframe and Far Cry 5. But I have played a lot of games. Sometimes I get dips below 60 in FC5 but it's few and far between and from what i heard Intel CPUs also get these dips.

Why does it bother me so much? It is because by nature I am a passionate person. I don't care just about AMD as a company, I care about a free and open market with good consumer choice and fair prices for all people. Blindly supporting one company because of brand name is damaging that. And the tech market is something I care about as it is one of my hobbies.

Sorry for the long post.

 

[StrayKAT]

I've talked to people (IRL) that won't even consider Ryzen. And it's not based on product merit or lack thereof. It's based on brand names. When I am approached to recommend PC parts to family members or other people, all that I ask is they take a moment to just have a look at what AMD is offering and find out that many times they can get a better deal with Ryzen. I'm not a fangirl (well kinda, I do have Ryzen+Radeon T-shirts and other merch) all I want is that people don't blindly buy Intel thinking there is no other option.

I game on a R5 2600 at 4.1 with some pretty mediocre timings on my RAM (its a heavy OC though) and I'm very rarely seeing below 62 fps (my cap) in video games. And at the moment I am playing Fallout 4, Warframe and Far Cry 5. But I have played a lot of games. Sometimes I get dips below 60 in FC5 but it's few and far between and from what i heard Intel CPUs also get these dips.

Why does it bother me so much? It is because by nature I am a passionate person. I don't care just about AMD as a company, I care about a free and open market with good consumer choice and fair prices for all people. Blindly supporting one company because of brand name is damaging that. And the tech market is something I care about as it is one of my hobbies.

Sorry for the long post.

No prob.. I get it. I think it is a better buy, for most people. OTOH I myself am inclined to go Intel simply because I like their ecosystem in general. I also use Optane stuff, so Intel CPUs are just a better fit (and funnily, why I use AMD's GPUs.. because I like Freesync. Where I gravitate is more about a combination of products). But most people wouldn't buy things these way and could just judge something on it's own merits.

 

[medi01]

10%? Source pls. I csn show you sources I can dig out outlandish tests where Intel extracts FPS precisely relative to its clockspeed advantage and its no secret either...

FTFY

PS

 

[londiste]

Looking at these graphs, i5-8400 is awesome bang-for-buck. At least was, with MSRP.

 

[Vya Domus]

At first I was wondering why they'd go through the trouble of paying third parties for this garbage. It's not like we don't know that the 9900K will be touch faster than the 8700K which is in return a touch faster than the 2700X.

But then I realized, it's not AMD that they necessarily have to discredit in order to win customers, it's their own products that they target. They have to convince somehow 8700K and 7700K users that is time to upgrade.

Intel is being hilarious and pathetic as always.

 

[bug]

At first I was wondering why they'd go through the trouble of paying third parties for this garbage.

It's a good thing you weren't wondering if they went through the trouble of paying third parties*. Because, you know, there's no published proof that they did.

*fanboy rears his head by making one party into several

 

[Vayra86]

FTFY

PS

Don't worry, you can stay in your little bubble and believe what you want to believe. Ryzen is super awesome and fits every use case, nobody needs Intel anymore. There

 

[Xaser04]

This just reinforces how Intel platform is more stable. Most of gaming users just want to throw the hardware inside the case, download the game and play... If you need to fine tune memory timings for the processor deliver the right performance, this is not a gaming/work platform, it's more of an enthusiast.

Despite Intel's dark behaviour to review its own product, this news just makes me run even farther from AMDs platform.

Or you know, you could just enable XMP within the bios on the AMD board??

I did this on both of my Ryzen systems and presto, magic! RAM speed and timings matching the XMP profile....

Amazingly these steps also had to be followed on my Intel system as well..

The result... Identical memory speeds / timings on both systems when the same RAM is used.

 

[bug]

Or you know, you could just enable XMP within the bios on the AMD board??

I did this on both of my Ryzen systems and presto, magic! RAM speed and timings matching the XMP profile....

Amazingly these steps also had to be followed on my Intel system as well..

The result... Identical memory speeds / timings on both systems when the same RAM is used.

I believe the assertion in the article was that Zen must loosen timings with all four RAM banks populated. It's not inconceivable that some XMPP timings might not work here. Though if you buy RAM built for AMD, this scenario should be covered.

Anyway... it's just one benchmark. Whoever buys based on one benchmark, gets just what they deserve.