Tested Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K

The latest range of Intel Desktop Processors brings a number of modifications designed to appeal to performance enthusiasts. These new parts offer Intel's mainstream processors up to eight cores, with higher frequencies, improved thermal connectivity, and additional hardware security updates for Specter and Meltdown. The only problem is that you are going to need a big wallet and a big cooler: the price and the energy consumption reach new heights this time.

Coffee Lake Refresh: A Refreshment

Our coverage of Intel's announcement last week detailed the three new processors launched today. But here's a quick reminder of the latest silicon on the market.

Three processors are currently launched: the core i9-9900K 8-core capable of moving to 5.0 GHz, a Core i7-9700K 8-core a little cheaper, and a core i5-9600K 6-core paper looks like a buying that kills.

The new halo product is the Core i9-9900K, Intel's first mainstream plug-in processor to be named Core i9. It is a six-core eight-thread processor, Intel's first in this product line. It offers a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and a peak turbo frequency of 5.0 GHz – which is actually a two-core turbo, as we will see later. This is an overclockable processor, which allows users to push the frequency if enough cooling, and despite the memory controller still rated at DDR4-2666, a higher speed memory should work in almost every chip. The Core i9-9900K also has a fully activated cache, with 2 MB available by heart for a total of 16 MB at the chip scale. There are also integrated graphics, the same UHD 630 graphics as those of the previous generation. All this at a suggested retail price of $ 488, although no cooler is provided.

The Core i7 is now in the center of the configuration, but the Core i7-9700K is apparently not left out. Intel ended the hyper-threading on this part, giving it only eight cores and eight threads. However, the base frequency is 3.6 GHz and the turbo frequency 4.9 GHz. For this part, Intel has reduced the L3 cache by 1.5 MB, which may affect some software, but the processor is overclockable and offers the same support DDR4-2666 as the Core i9. The suggested retail price of $ 374 is certainly a little easier to digest, with the user being assured that no other thread is sharing resources on a single heart. This chip will be an interesting comparison with the latest generation of Core i7-8700K, which has two cores less, but a hyper-threading.

The Core i5-9600K suddenly becomes the baby overclocking chip, but still commands a price of $ 262, a few dollars more than the Core i5-8600K, but in exchange for extra frequency and all the extras listed later in this article. For the price, this chip has a base frequency of 3.7 GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.6 GHz, as well as the same support DDR4-2666 and UHD 630 graphics.

The three parts are the first entries in the 9^th The Generation Core product line, and they present under the hood a refresh of the Coffee Lake architecture that we saw in the 8th^th Core Generation Products. They are built on Intel's 14+ manufacturing node, the latest to prioritize high frequencies and performance. The strengths of this set of three processors, aside from the fact that they are all overclockable, boil down to what Intel did under the hood.

Turbo Ratios by heart

In our information getaways, we were able to get the turbo values ​​by heart for each processor. Intel always classifies this information as "proprietary", so does not distribute it. However, Intel's partners are more than happy to provide us with this information because they must be coded in the system BIOS anyway.

The big uplift here is that the 5.0 GHz turbo. In our review of the Core i7-8086K, where Intel was pleased to promote this chip as the first product at 5.0 GHz, the fact that the 5.0 GHz value belongs to a single heart was actually a drawback – does not matter how we tested the processor, usually enough on multiple cores so that no user actually sees 5.0 GHz. We only managed to see him stand up momentarily while waiting in slow motion. But the fact that the Core i9-9900K now has two cores means that we are more likely to see this high frequency in our single-threaded tests.

More coffee, less caffeine: Hyper-Threading and L3 cache

All this aside, it would seem that Intel is also giving up hyper-threading on most of its processors. The only Core processors to do hyper-threading will be the Core i9 components, and possibly the Pentium as well. This helps in part to make the stack of products more linear, and cheaper chips do not work on the expensive feet (for example, although unlikely, a quad-core with hyper-threading could outperform a 6 core without). The other angle is one of the newly discovered secondary channel attacks that can occur when hyper-threading is in action. By disabling hyper-threading on volume production chips, this security problem is no longer present. This also ensures that not all threads on this chip compete for resources by heart.

One of the most interesting dissections of the new 9^th The Generation product is in the L3 cache by heart for the different models. In previous generations, the Core i7 parts had 2 MB of L3 cache per core, while the Core i5 had 1.5 MB of L3 cache per core, and Core i3 was split between some with 2 MB and the others with 1.5 MB. This time, Intel puts only the full cache on the most powerful Core i9 components and reduces the Core i7 to 1.5 MB N3 per core. This will have a slight effect on performance, which, when we have the processors, will be an interesting metric to test.

Integrated graphics

One theme on which Intel has not focused much for generations (since Broadwell, in fact) is integrated graphics. All the chips announced for the 9th^th generation family will always have the same GT2 configuration as the 8^th generation, including new Core i9 parts. Officially, they fall under the 8 + 2 designation. Intel is still convinced that having an integrated graphical form on these high-end, overclockable processors, is still an added value for the platform. The only drawback is the performance, and it will not win any prize soon.

The graphics will always bear the UHD Graphics 630 label and use the same drivers as the driver 8.^th family gen.

Coffee Lake Refresh: Learn from GPU Enterprises

Intel 9^th The Generation Core family revolves around the Coffee Lake platform and, as the processors have not undergone any microarchitectural changes, they are an update of the^th generation parts but with the stack of products arranged a little differently. For those who stay the course, Coffee Lake was already a rehash of Kaby Lake, which was an update for Skylake. So we are on Skylake Refresh Refresh Refresh. To arrive at what is essentially the same microarchitecture of processors 2015, in 2018 (and beyond).

Intel has promised that its 10nm manufacturing process would increase until 2019 and has already announced its intention to introduce Ice Lake for servers to 10nm by 2020, after a further 14nm pass with Cooper Lake in 2019. On the consumer side, the status remains in limbo – hopefully, the next generation of consumer components will be an appropriate update of the microarchitecture, regardless of the process node.

I've had an 8-Core for years!

Depending on where you draw the line for "mainstream" processors, we have technically installed Intel 8-core processors on high-end office space for several years. The Core i7-5960X was released in August 2014 and includes eight Haswell cores on the HEDT platform, with four-channel DDR4-2133 memory and 44 140-bit PCIe channels. At the time, on Intel's 22 nm process, the size of the array was about 355.52 mm2.

At the time of the launch of Intel's first Coffee Lake processors, the design of the i7-8700K's 6 + 2 dies was about 151 mm2, an increase of about 26 mm2 from the previous year. 4 + 2 design of the i7-7700K (~ 125 mm2). At the time, it was a leap from the official Intel 14+ to 14+ manufacturing nodes, which, due to a relaxed flip-flop, made it a little bigger.

But if we take 26 mm2 to add a pair of cores to the size of the matrix, we can predict that the 8 + 2 version of the Core i9-9900K should be about ~ 177 mm2, a 17% matrix bigger. Cut. With a resolution of 177mm2, including integrated graphics, the size of the Core i7-5960X would be halved, but with only half of the memory controllers and PCIe tracks. Even with that, it's a significant decrease.

Naively, one could think that a 17% increase in the value of the sector would directly result in a 17% increase in the price. A 17% increase in the price of the Core i7-8700K platform puts it at around $ 420, while the official price is $ 488 for the equivalent K processor. Given how Intel ranks its chips (one die can be sold half as much as another), it's hard to say how much this $ 488 increases profit margins, although this is widely expected.

Wikichip Size Formats

If we look at the size of the upper end chips, we find that in fact, the size of the chips has decreased over the decade, from the Nehalem quadrilateral nucleus to more than 260 mm2 to Kaby Lake at 125 mm2. It has now increased steadily as more and more kernels have been added. It might be crazy to think that Intel would happily spend more than 260 mm2 in a mainstream silicon die today for its latest manufacturing process.

On the next page, we'll discuss Spectrum / Meltdown patches and discuss updates to Intel's STIM strategy.

Pages in this review

1. Lake Coffee Refreshment
2. Spectrum, fusion and STIM
3. Test bench and configuration
4. Reference Suite 2018 and 2019: Spectrum and Enhanced Fusion
5. Processor Performance: System Tests
6. Processor performance: rendering tests
7. Processor performance: Office tests
8. Processor performance: encoding tests
9. Processor performance: Web and legacy tests
10. Games: World of Tanks enCore
11. Games: Final Fantasy XV
12. Games: Shadow of War
13. Game: Civilization 6
14. Games: Ashes Classic
15. Game: Strange Brigade
16. Games: Grand Theft Auto V
17. Games: Far Cry 5
18. Games: Shadow of the Tomb Raider
19. Games: F1 2018
20. Games: integrated graphics
21. Energy consumption
22. Overclocking
23. Conclusions and last words