Review: 9th Gen Intel Core 9 i Gen 9900K Processor Goes to 5 GHz – At a Reasonable Price

Let's be honest: Modern processors are not exciting. The slowdowns are no longer fun, and we are bored by the addition of new hearts. But we live in a time when computers typically offer a lot of processing power that would have made previous generations pale.

It's also a time of competition, mainly with two companies competing for your silicon expenses and giving you excellent computing performance. On one side, we have Intel, the 800-kilogram gorilla of the world of processors. On the other side, we have AMD, the upstart who sometimes steals the crown by doing something unexpected that changes the rules.

The Intel 9th ​​Gen Core i9 9900K processor, valued at $ 580, is Intel's game for the players processor connector. This is the top model of the S series, designed for speed with eight cores. With hyperthreading (which divides work on a single kernel into two parts), the number of threads is doubled to 16 threads, each of which can be executed at a different task. There are two other chips in this series, the 410 i7-9700K at 3.6 GHz with 8 cores and the 280 i5-9600K with 6 cores at 3.7 GHz. These are similar, but they avoid hyperthreading, a technology that seems to be losing popularity at Intel as the number of real processor cores increases in mainstream processors and as the company looks for ways to justify the price of high-end models. Although this new Intel offer increases your speed according to our tests, it will cost you dearly.

The coffee lake revisited

So, what about the 9th generation? Intel is a little vague about the concept and the i9 9900K does not present any new manufacturing technology. It uses the same 14-nm manufacturing process as that used by the 8th generation of chips, as Intel would have a hard time manufacturing chips with a new 10-nm process that would make enterprise chips faster and more efficient . The Core i9 9900K does not have a new architecture either: it uses the same Coffee Lake architecture as the 8th generation.

The substance of the 9th generation means that this is a slightly new modification of the same fundamental processor, with some slowdowns and internal changes that make it more flexible. Although most of these changes are somewhat obscure, some of them are noteworthy, including improved turbo performance and a new way of removing heat from the processor.

The eighth-generation processors introduced the turbo mode, in which one of the processor's cores could receive a retarder that gave it an added advantage. The eighth generation i7-8086K could, for example, move a single kernel out of the six that it had at 5 GHz. The 9th generation makes it a bit more flexible; Although it comes with a standard clock speed of 3.6 GHz, the i9-9900K can pass a processor core at 5 GHz, four cores at 4.8 GHz and every eight to four , 6 GHz. If an important task is performed on one kernel, it will reach 5 GHz, while the others will slow down to minimize heat generation.

This scenario rarely occurs outside synthetic tests, most modern programs are designed to be multithreaded, which means that they can be run simultaneously on multiple different cores. So, in practice, you will rarely see the speed of 5 GHz. Instead, you will most likely see this processor running at multicore speeds of 4.8 and 4.6 GHz, with each core continually changing as tasks start and end. All this aggressive clock management is designed to do one thing: limit the amount of energy (and therefore the heat emitted by the processor).

This brings us to the second major improvement of the ninth generation: STIM. Intel has added a feature called Thermal Welding Interface Material (STIM), a layer of metal above the silicon chip that vents heat. According to the theory, this drives heat better than the thermal glue that Intel used on previous processors under the metal heat sink that covers and protects the chip. Some overclockers, frustrated by their inability to cool Intel chips, had tried a rather perilous technique called debinding of removing the metal heat sink that protects the processor, removing the thermal conductor and attaching a heat sink directly to the chip . Intel claims that STIM will eliminate the need, but we found that the feature was not as effective as many would have hoped. When tested, it is a very hot little chip that requires a lot of cooling to work effectively.

Inscription image of Richard Baguley