All tests are 'real-world' applications that are publicly available, and these tend to be skewed toward multithreaded workloads. The goal is to emphasize CPU limits in gaming performance, while still using reasonable settings for the hardware.įor non-gaming tests, I've updated to the latest versions of all the software suites. (I manually updated before Microsoft pulled the release, and thankfully haven't encountered any issues.) I've tested 10 games at 1080p 'ultra' quality, which is typically maximum quality, but sometimes with AA or some other settings stepped down a notch.

It includes the latest Nvidia's 416.34 drivers for the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, all the current versions of the games, and Windows 10 October 2018 update. My Core i7-9700K testbed is the same as for the Core i9-9900K. GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FE (opens in new tab) If you prefer air-cooling solutions (like the popular Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo), they should remain viable for the Core i7-9700K, though your maximum overclock might drop a bit.ġ6GB G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 (opens in new tab) It's only AVX-heavy workloads that push it into the 115W range-still a far cry from the 150W such workloads showed on the 9900K. I wouldn't even consider using an air-cooler with the i9-9900K, but at stock the i7-9700K normally respects the 95W TDP. For one, it doesn't use as much power, which in turn means it doesn't get as hot. With the slowing down of process node advances, 5-10 percent improvements in core performance each generation is the expectation.Ĭore i7-9700K does hold a few advantages over the beefier i9-9900K, though. That might not seem true if you look at AMD's Ryzen processors, which were a huge upgrade over the company's previous processors, but the jump was aided by the fact that the AMD FX-series had fallen far behind Intel's Core processors. Slightly better performance, in the same socket, for the same price? Yeah, that's not super exciting, but then advances in CPU performance are becoming increasingly difficult.

Intel i7 9700k drivers