Confirmed - i9 9900k will have soldered IHS, no more toothpaste TIM

[jpiniero]

Cascade Lake-X is a different story. Last I heard its sometime Q3 of next year. I assume the client parts are more demanding as they want higher frequency so they need extra time to get faster parts and bin them.

I think it's more because that they needed to be able to unload Skylake-SP dies since that's going to be effectively discontinued once Cascade Lake is available due to Smeltdown.

Cascade Lake-X could be the same deal, Cascade Lake-SP would be impossible to sell once Cooper Lake arrives, especially with Rome also in the mix. I still think it's going to get cancelled.

 

[zinfamous]

They're not entirely wrong in criticizing inflated numbers and rhetoric like "up to 50% faster!!" when it clearly doesn't accurately paint the whole picture. Also promoting criticism over paid reviews is healthy practice irregardless of whether those numbers come from Intel or AMD or anyone who has vested interest in bringing up the product in best possible light. Of course those of us who happen to follow the scene closely already know how the two will compare in gaming thanks to 8700K but when more casual readers come across legit looking review boasting 50% better performance, they might be fooled to think it's something one should really expect.

The i9-9900K will beat Ryzen counterpart(s) in just about anything you throw at it, so they wouldn't even need to resort to cheap tricks like these. I expect that's also something HWUB will show in their benchmarks come the day when embargo lifts.

My guess is that they need to try and present a real difference in performance to try and justify this essentially ~same 8700K over its predecessor and of course the Ryzen chips. I'm guessing the hardware "fixes" for meltdown forced Intel to remove that secret juice that they have depended on for so long, and so this is looking more like the "real" type of performance that this design should have been working from the last decade or so?

Still no doubt faster, but much less of an advantage.

 

[LTC8K6]

My guess is that they need to try and present a real difference in performance to try and justify this essentially ~same 8700K over its predecessor and of course the Ryzen chips. I'm guessing the hardware "fixes" for meltdown forced Intel to remove that secret juice that they have depended on for so long, and so this is looking more like the "real" type of performance that this design should have been working from the last decade or so?

Still no doubt faster, but much less of an advantage.

Won't it be faster with some hardware fixes over the 8700K's software patches?

Gaming overall doesn't really seem to need a lot of threads yet, except for certain games, and even those games seem to perform very well once you get to 6 cores or 4 cores/8 threads.
Gaming benchmarks these days generally seem to look like a lot of close numbers over many different mid to high end CPUs.

The big differences are likely going to be in other areas, like video work and "multi-multi-tasking", and probably smoothness of the system with lots of stuff going on at the same time.

I think at stock, the ability to run 2 cores at 5.0 should make more of a difference than the 8086K's single core 5.0 ability.

 

[coercitiv]

Let's chill a bit with some thoughts on 9900K extreme overclocks. Opinion on solder included!

 

[LTC8K6]

A Sneak Peek at our Core i9-9900K Sample

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13462/a-sneak-peak-at-our-core-i99900k-sample

 

[zinfamous]

Won't it be faster with some hardware fixes over the 8700K's software patches?

Gaming overall doesn't really seem to need a lot of threads yet, except for certain games, and even those games seem to perform very well once you get to 6 cores or 4 cores/8 threads.
Gaming benchmarks these days generally seem to look like a lot of close numbers over many different mid to high end CPUs.

The big differences are likely going to be in other areas, like video work and "multi-multi-tasking", and probably smoothness of the system with lots of stuff going on at the same time.

I think at stock, the ability to run 2 cores at 5.0 should make more of a difference than the 8086K's single core 5.0 ability.

My understanding is that Spectre vulnerabilities are due to the design that ignores micro-caching or whatever to allow quicker access, and so whatever you do--hardware or software, there is going to be a noticeable performance hit. This is known to go back many generations, and from what I've read around here, this really seems to be intentional (capture performance crown while neglecting standard security) and accounts for some percentage of Intel's performance advantage for these 10 years.

I wouldn't claim to know much about this, really, other than the pros that comment here and the articles linked--software sounds like the quick, messy patch that really wrecks performance in certain applications, but if the vulnerabilities are fundamentally due to hardware design that exists explicitly to shave milliseconds off of request numbers, then "fixing" that would, by default, reduce performance, no? Bear In mind that I am not saying this will regress performance compared to previous generation--just that gains are even less substantial and, extrapolating back all these generations, we likely would have noticed somewhat more boring gains from generation to generation.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Let's chill a bit with some thoughts on 9900K extreme overclocks. Opinion on solder included!

One of the things that I always liked about LN2/LHe overclocks is that provides (or used to provide) some insight on the technical limits of a uarch, given separation from process limitations. For example, we (once again) see that Skylake/Coffeelake can function close to the 7 GHz barrier. No surprises there, we've seen the same basic range of clockspeeds from LN2 overclocks of Skylake in the past.

Still not up there with Netburst that could probably have scaled to 10 GHz on the "perfect" process, but honestly does anyone today want even a 10 GHz Netburst chip? I don't.

Sadly, what we see from modern process limitations, is that we'll never approach architectural limits again without exotic (and unsustainable) cooling.

 

[Aikouka]

I'll admit that the most tempting part about these new CPUs is the solder-based TIM. Outside of that, I don't know if I'd gain much compared to my i7-8700k -- it really depends on what I'm doing. However, I have been tempted to upgrade my i7-6700k in my VR machine -- especially after adding the Vive Wireless Adapter, which uses CPU resources for encoding. I could swap out my i3-8100 with the i7-8700k, and move that to the VR room.

Although, another consideration is that since they also work in Z370 boards, I'm wondering if there's really that much of a point in upgrading my Z370 to the Z390. I've got a fairly high-end board already, so all I'd really gain is native USB 3.1 10Gbps.

 

[ozzy702]

I'll admit that the most tempting part about these new CPUs is the solder-based TIM. Outside of that, I don't know if I'd gain much compared to my i7-8700k -- it really depends on what I'm doing. However, I have been tempted to upgrade my i7-6700k in my VR machine -- especially after adding the Vive Wireless Adapter, which uses CPU resources for encoding. I could swap out my i3-8100 with the i7-8700k, and move that to the VR room.

Although, another consideration is that since they also work in Z370 boards, I'm wondering if there's really that much of a point in upgrading my Z370 to the Z390. I've got a fairly high-end board already, so all I'd really gain is native USB 3.1 10Gbps.

My thinking is I'll just sell my 8700k, and slap the 9900k right in my current mobo. That will give me many many years on this platform. I doubt I'll notice much difference between the two but I like having nice things and the price difference isn't much.

 

[sze5003]

I'll admit that the most tempting part about these new CPUs is the solder-based TIM. Outside of that, I don't know if I'd gain much compared to my i7-8700k -- it really depends on what I'm doing. However, I have been tempted to upgrade my i7-6700k in my VR machine -- especially after adding the Vive Wireless Adapter, which uses CPU resources for encoding. I could swap out my i3-8100 with the i7-8700k, and move that to the VR room.

Although, another consideration is that since they also work in Z370 boards, I'm wondering if there's really that much of a point in upgrading my Z370 to the Z390. I've got a fairly high-end board already, so all I'd really gain is native USB 3.1 10Gbps.

If I go from i8700k to the 9900k I'm planning on keeping my board. Each time I upgrade boards it's a pain ha.

 

[ozzy702]

If I go from i8700k to the 9900k I'm planning on keeping my board. Each time I upgrade boards it's a pain ha.

Yup. That's that a big part of my reasoning for going with the 9900k.

 

[sze5003]

Yup. That's that a big part of my reasoning for going with the 9900k.

Yea I'll probably do the same and sell the old processor on here or something. Hopefully it's compatible with the corsair h100 I have in there now.

 

[maddie]

My thinking is I'll just sell my 8700k, and slap the 9900k right in my current mobo. That will give me many many years on this platform. I doubt I'll notice much difference between the two but I like having nice things and the price difference isn't much.

Your post makes me smile at the number of times this is stated by individuals who obviously upgrade with each generation. What is it at present? 7700K, 8700K and thinking of upgrading to the 9900K for "many many years". Embrace your desire to be at the top. No apologies or rationalization needed.

 

[sze5003]

Your post makes me smile at the number of times this is stated by individuals who obviously upgrade with each generation. What is it at present? 7700K, 8700K and thinking of upgrading to the 9900K for "many many years". Embrace your desire to be at the top. No apologies or rationalization needed.

No lie I do the same crap! Oh I'll hang on to this for 2 years then pass it to my little bro's PC. Next year, here I am with the latest crap.

 

[ozzy702]

Your post makes me smile at the number of times this is stated by individuals who obviously upgrade with each generation. What is it at present? 7700K, 8700K and thinking of upgrading to the 9900K for "many many years". Embrace your desire to be at the top. No apologies or rationalization needed.

6700k to 8700k was a big jump in performance. 8700k to 9900k is a smaller jump but I can stay on my current mobo. If I had to buy a Z-390 mobo I wouldn't upgrade to the 9900k, there's no point in the hassle.

I doubt I'll jump to whatever replaces the 9900k but will certainly be in the market 4 years from now with whatever platform (AMD or Intel) is top dog for primarily gaming.

I skipped Haswell and went from Ivy to Kabylake so I don't need an upgrade "every generation" but yeah, many of us just don't care so much about price and sell our "old" stuff while it's viable and recoup a lot of the cost.

 

[Indus]

Is the price bump to $510 (not counting tariff increases just yet) justified over an 8700k price to performance?

Personally I think 8700k is still the sweet spot for gamers. What do you guys think?

 

[epsilon84]

I would agree, 8700K or 9700K represents better value than a 9900K from a purely gaming perspective. By that token, you could also argue that a 8600K/9600K is actually the 'sweet spot' considering they are within 5% of the i7s but cost over $100 less. Personally I would still opt for the 8700K/9700K as I think a 6C/6T chip will end up thread limited sooner rather than later.

The 9900K would be better for a gamer/streamer where the extra threads can help reduce dropped frames while streaming.

If you were a professional streamer who wants the best possible in game experience as well as viewer experience, then a 9900K is probably worth it.

 

[phillyman36]

I'll admit that the most tempting part about these new CPUs is the solder-based TIM. Outside of that, I don't know if I'd gain much compared to my i7-8700k -- it really depends on what I'm doing. However, I have been tempted to upgrade my i7-6700k in my VR machine -- especially after adding the Vive Wireless Adapter, which uses CPU resources for encoding. I could swap out my i3-8100 with the i7-8700k, and move that to the VR room.

Although, another consideration is that since they also work in Z370 boards, I'm wondering if there's really that much of a point in upgrading my Z370 to the Z390. I've got a fairly high-end board already, so all I'd really gain is native USB 3.1 10Gbps.

I am thinking of doing the same thing with my i7 7700k and mobo(Maximus IX Hero). My main rig is the 8700k and a Asus 370. My second rig is the 7700k and Asus z270. I think im going to sell the 7700k/mobo to reduce the cost of the 9900k and z390.

One thing im think about is with Amazon if you apply for their credit card and you get approved you get like a 70 dollar gift card or their Amazon store card which will get you a 60 dollar gift card to reduce the price.(according to their website)

 

[TheELF]

Personally I think 8700k is still the sweet spot for gamers. What do you guys think?

Just for gaming?! Way overpowered.
The i5 8600k is the highest you would need for just gaming,while already overpowered for the vast majority of games.
Sweet spot between performance and price is the i3-8350k it's very close to the top dogs at stock and can be overclocked another 20-25%.

 

[Brahmzy]

I’m keeping my Max X Hero, selling my 8086K and getting 9900K.
ZERO need to upgrade to a Z390 ever. Huge win there.

Keep in mind, 9900K still needs both hardware and software fixes. This means we’ll still see performance hits. Only like 1 of 5 vulnerabilities has been “fixed” in hardware. With the 9900K we won’t be able to do a before after comparison on the fixes though. The BIOS just to run the 9900K will already have the fixes in place.

For those of us with 8700Ks/8086Ks, we need to do some serious single-core IPC baseline benchmarking before we drop in the 9900Ks. Also, Optane testing/NVMe testing before and after - I’ll be testing my 900p’s and 970Pros. This will really help identify if the hardware fixes in 9900K bettered performance or not. Keep in mind to benchmark with same exact speeds. I’m all cores 5.0/AVX 5.0 now with my 8086K - I’ll test 9900K at the same exact speeds - assuming it lets me. I’ve heard rumors of all cores 5.3 @ 1.4v. I just want a lower volt 5.0/5.0AVX OC. 4.8/4.8 all cores wouldn’t be a bad idea either, just to make sure single-core performance can be tested without risk of issues related to overclocks.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Upgrading from 8700K to 9900K, keeping my Maximus X Hero board. Pretty stoked at this upgrade, especially looking forward to overclocking the 9900K without being held back by the paste TIM.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Cascade Lake-X could be the same deal, Cascade Lake-SP would be impossible to sell once Cooper Lake arrives, especially with Rome also in the mix. I still think it's going to get cancelled.

Older generations of products continue to be sold in the server market long after the latest gen comes out.

 

[jpiniero]

Older generations of products continue to be sold in the server market long after the latest gen comes out.

Normally this is the case, but Smeltdown is going to make Skylake Server unsellable as soon as Cascade Lake is available.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Normally this is the case, but Smeltdown is going to make Skylake Server unsellable as soon as Cascade Lake is available.

How does that support your claim that CLX-SP wouldn't be salable following the launch of CPL?

 

[jpiniero]

How does that support your claim that CLX-SP wouldn't be salable following the launch of CPL?

Intel is going to have to be very generous with the core counts with Cooper Lake because of Rome to the point where even the Cascade Lake 28 core might not be competitive enough to sell.