9900KS versus 5960X in Time Spy/3DMark (Paired with a 2080 Ti FE)

sk3tch

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Hey guys, I just picked up a 9900KS and built a new Z390 box (the only thing I brought over was my 2080 Ti FE) so I wanted to share some comparison numbers from my old box on X99 to the new one.

The 2080 Ti is OC'd the same. The 5960X is OC'd to 4GHz, the 9900KS is stock clocked (so far).

Specs:

OLD (build shot here)
Intel i7-5960X CPU @ 4GHz (Corsair H110 280mm Liquid CPU cooler with 2x Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000), G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 series 32GB 2800MHz DDR4, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE (+80 Core Voltage, 123% Power Limit, 88C Temp Limit, +160 Core Clock, +500 Memory Clock), Samsung 950 Pro SSD (512GB), Samsung 850 Pro SSD (1TB), and a 4TB Western Digital Black WD4003FZEX 7200RPM HDD on an MSI X99S XPOWER AC motherboard inside of a Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper full tower – powered by a Corsair AX1500i power supply (1500W; fully modular) with braided cables.

NEW (build shot here and here - WARNING: RGB)
Intel i9-9900KS CPU @ 4GHz (Stock), Cooler Master MasterGel Maker (2019) thermal grease, Corsair H115i 280mm Liquid CPU cooler, G.SKILL Ripjaws V series 64GB 3200MHz DDR4, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE (+80 Core Voltage, 123% Power Limit, 88C Temp Limit, +160 Core Clock, +500 Memory Clock), Samsung 970 Pro NVMe SSD (512GB), Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSD (2TB), on an GIGABYTE AORUS Z390 Master motherboard inside of a Cooler Master H500M mid-tower – powered by a Corsair AX1000 power supply (1000W; fully modular).

Unfortunately, I only have two like for like (except the 5960X results are from about one year ago) benches, but here they are:

Time Spy Extreme (link)

6,322 5960X
7,004 9900KS

Time Spy (link)

13,569 5960X
14,605 9900KS
 
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I'd have taken the 5960X to 4.4GHz or so. Both of mine did that and one went to 4.5GHz. I never heard of one that couldn't do 4.3GHz. Seems like a nice upgrade either way. I did the same thing actually. I had a 5960X for years and then "upgraded" to a Threadripper 2920X which turned out to be a step back in gaming performance. I then ended up on a 9900K.
 
I chuckled at the RGB trigger warning ;)

lol...yeah I am "new" to this RGB scene. Frankly, all the parts I wanted just happened to have RGB. The price on the Corsair H115i with all the crazy crap (Platinum, I believe?) happened to be lower than the "normal" one right before BF. The funny part is I have THREE friggin' RGB controllers and none of them can talk to eachother now (Aorus, Corsair, and Cooler Master)....so I have to use the garish, default rainbow because none of the rest of the options can appear like they're sync'd.

I'd have taken the 5960X to 4.4GHz or so. Both of mine did that and one went to 4.5GHz. I never heard of one that couldn't do 4.3GHz. Seems like a nice upgrade either way. I did the same thing actually. I had a 5960X for years and then "upgraded" to a Threadripper 2920X which turned out to be a step back in gaming performance. I then ended up on a 9900K.

As I am finding with the 9900KS - it's hard to get to what I call "stable" versus what others do. I could only get my 5960X to 4GHz for long-term stability. Anything more was a stretch and there would be occasional glitches or hiccups. I play MMORPG games like ARK: Survival Evolved where if I'm on a flying mount and my box crashes - done-zo.

I am happy with the 9900KS and it is a nice upgrade, but probably not a necessary one at all. I just had not built in several years and was really getting the itch. I almost went with a pre-built because I have been pretty busy but I talked myself off that ledge and enjoyed this build. Went real slow and did it over two days because, you know, now I have kid responsibilities and such so it is harder to get that 4 hour block of time haha.

I feel the price/perf is still great - I am not an AMD guy but I give them props. Maybe next time around I will go AMD. I got burned before with them (Athlon days) so I am once bitten twice shy as Great White says.
 
My last AMD system with the Threadripper 2920X was fantastic outside of gaming. It's been the reverse with the 9900K. Gaming is fantastic, but the performance in some other applications is lacking. I will probably do something else before too long.
 
9900ks runs all core 5ghz out of the box. You lowered it to 4ghz? Am I understanding correctly? Why not run real world comparison where your 4ghz oc system goes against the 5ghz new system and then see where the difference lies? I mean you aren’t gonna run the new chip at 4ghz are you?

I have an interest in this because im currently running 5930k at 4.4ghz and have been back and forth over building a 9900ks box. I really wanna wait for the 10 core equavilent in quarter one along with new gen card from NVIDIA to really get the most for the money but that 9900ks is tempting. Thing is I’m not going from two 1080ti’s to one 2080ti. Especially not this late in the product cycle and not for the retarded price NVIDIA charges so ya there’s that.
 
9900ks runs all core 5ghz out of the box. You lowered it to 4ghz? Am I understanding correctly? Why not run real world comparison where your 4ghz oc system goes against the 5ghz new system and then see where the difference lies? I mean you aren’t gonna run the new chip at 4ghz are you?

I have an interest in this because im currently running 5930k at 4.4ghz and have been back and forth over building a 9900ks box. I really wanna wait for the 10 core equavilent in quarter one along with new gen card from NVIDIA to really get the most for the money but that 9900ks is tempting. Thing is I’m not going from two 1080ti’s to one 2080ti. Especially not this late in the product cycle and not for the retarded price NVIDIA charges so ya there’s that.

No, I run the 5960X at 4GHz and I run the 9900KS at stock (5GHz boost), currently. My OC attempts with the 9900KS get me to 5.2GHz but I have a pretty stringent stability requirement that others may not have.

I did not hear about that 10 core CPU. I just had the upgrade itch and the 9900KS looked pretty good (versus the 9900K) and didn't cost much more. I like that the 9900KS seems to have the Kyle Bennett touch. :)
 
No, I run the 5960X at 4GHz and I run the 9900KS at stock (5GHz boost), currently. My OC attempts with the 9900KS get me to 5.2GHz but I have a pretty stringent stability requirement that others may not have.

I did not hear about that 10 core CPU. I just had the upgrade itch and the 9900KS looked pretty good (versus the 9900K) and didn't cost much more. I like that the 9900KS seems to have the Kyle Bennett touch. :)


No doubt that Chip is sweet. Tbh of new NVIDIA gpu’s were out in the wild I would have pulled the trigger already. For me thought without the gpu upgrade along with new cpu mb ram etc I don’t feel I’m getting as much shelf life out of my platform. Since that chipset is gonna be eol soon.

I probably wouldn’t even bother over clocking that KS personally. 5ghz all core stable out of the box is yummy af lol.

Ya supposedly a10 core 20 thread version of the.9900k is supposed to drop quarter one. It’s still a 14nm+++ wtfever though. So if I can get 10 core running at least all core stable 4.8-5.0 I’m good on a new chipset which gives me at least one more or two upgrades down the road I’m good.
 
Yeah I just searched my email for when I bought my 2080 Ti FE - back in August of 2018. Insane. Is there even rumor of when the new stuff comes out from NVIDIA? February next year? It seems like they have skipped a year.

EDIT: and if you want nice longevity, get HEDT - which at this point would be AMD. Which is why I went Z390, personally. :) I'm an HEDT guy traditionally...but I've realized my primary use case is gaming.
 
Yeah I just searched my email for when I bought my 2080 Ti FE - back in August of 2018. Insane. Is there even rumor of when the new stuff comes out from NVIDIA? February next year? It seems like they have skipped a year.

EDIT: and if you want nice longevity, get HEDT - which at this point would be AMD. Which is why I went Z390, personally. :) I'm an HEDT guy traditionally...but I've realized my primary use case is gaming.


I think x99 is probably my last hedt to be honest. I just don’t see a need anymore. I’m not going to run sli anymore and I don’t run anything that exotic that requires a ton of pcie lanes/bandwidth so ya. I mainly only game on my main systems so it’s geared to that end.

Latest rumors suggest spring for 3080 but then there is talk that their might be a delay and as such they might bring out a super variant of the 2080ti late winter.
 
I think x99 is probably my last hedt to be honest. I just don’t see a need anymore. I’m not going to run sli anymore and I don’t run anything that exotic that requires a ton of pcie lanes/bandwidth so ya. I mainly only game on my main systems so it’s geared to that end.

Latest rumors suggest spring for 3080 but then there is talk that their might be a delay and as such they might bring out a super variant of the 2080ti late winter.

It's funny, I was on X99 for almost 5 years and I went to AMD's X399 and 2920X. I then concluded something similar, and went back to the mainstream segment with the 9900K. I'm actually going to get back on HEDT by the end of the year. The gaming performance has been stellar, but the multitasking and productivity stuff has been disappointing. I actually do need the extra PCIe lanes though. Perhaps not memory bandwidth, but definitely the PCIe lanes.
 
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I'm currently on my 4960x for a year or so now after 4 or so years of 3930k. I'll probably build a 3700x next spring. I'm in the same boat. My Vega 64 started me down a path of single GPU after years of SLi or Crossfire which just doesn't pay off anymore. I only need 1 gpu, 1 nvme and maybe a sound card cause I'm a dinosaur.
 
My last AMD system with the Threadripper 2920X was fantastic outside of gaming. It's been the reverse with the 9900K. Gaming is fantastic, but the performance in some other applications is lacking. I will probably do something else before too long.
Sounds like a 3950X is calling your name. :-P
 
Sounds like a 3950X is calling your name. :-P

No such luck. There aren't enough PCIe lanes for me on X570. Really, I would need to go with either an Intel Core i9 10980XE or a Threadripper 3960X. The latter being the better choice, but I have to decide whether or not the cost is worth it.
 
I'm currently on my 4960x for a year or so now after 4 or so years of 3930k. I'll probably build a 3700x next spring. I'm in the same boat. My Vega 64 started me down a path of single GPU after years of SLi or Crossfire which just doesn't pay off anymore. I only need 1 gpu, 1 nvme and maybe a sound card cause I'm a dinosaur.

Yep - HEDT is dead for most hardcore gamers/OC'ers now. I used to be quad-SLI (680 days), then tri-SLI (TITAN days), then SLI (TITAN X days). NVIDIA just made the bad support worse and worse over time for SLI and now it is just not worth it.

My Z390 build is awesome - just a CPU and a GPU plugged in, everything else is built into the motherboard (RAM, two NVMe drives). I love the longevity that I have seen with my X99 boxes - and they're still in use - but that doesn't change versus the longevity that I saw with my 2500K build in the past now that SLI is out of the picture.
 
Just curious, where are the rumours about 10C/20T consumer 14nm Intel chip coming from? Have a hard time believing that but you never know.
 
Just curious, where are the rumours about 10C/20T consumer 14nm Intel chip coming from? Have a hard time believing that but you never know.

No idea. I haven't heard anything official about that. Given what Intel was able to do with Cascade Lake-X, I don't doubt it would be possible. But, without doing more than simply applying another optimization to Skylake, I can't see much point. Unless it clocked significantly higher, and there is no reason to think that it would, I don't think it will matter. It will still lose to a Ryzen 3950X in everything but gaming. Without hitting 5.2GHz or beyond, even that wouldn't be enough of a win to sway people.
 
Thanks for this post!

Did you do any benches of both setups at 4k gaming?

On a similar x99 setup but with a 5930k and interested as to what your performance increase was, I can't believe I have had this for so long. Pretty stellar but sad that in 5 years NOTHING has been 'game changing' I used to LOVE the massive upgrades after 2/3 years.

Even on the gpu end its not huge. Is it snarky to admit I'm disappointed that things feel stagnant and it seems only AMD has stepped up their game.
Maybe, the bitcoin craze for GPUS made companies too cocky and they didn't foresee the need for faster setups as we moved to cloud performance for AI.

Sadly, this does not translate or help us pc users that want MORE RAW performance on one machine.

A lot of my friends in tech all tell me that this is where the money had gone. Which one could surmise is the reason why there have not been significant upgrades / significant advances made. If one could take the current add more (I.e cpu/gpu stacked together) and kill it, then all you need to do is make that lore efficient at a corporate level and delay your R&D in the rest.
 
Still on X99 here too on an overclocked 5930K! I have seen a lot of these "similar" threads lately. It's like all of us who built X99 systems 5 years ago are looking for a REASON to upgrade... when there has been no real reason till now. lol. Like many of you, SLI was once a priority for me, but once I moved to a single 2080Ti, I haven't really looked back. Although, TBH, if support was there, I'd probably still do it... :p
 
Still on X99 here too on an overclocked 5930K! I have seen a lot of these "similar" threads lately. It's like all of us who built X99 systems 5 years ago are looking for a REASON to upgrade... when there has been no real reason till now. lol. Like many of you, SLI was once a priority for me, but once I moved to a single 2080Ti, I haven't really looked back. Although, TBH, if support was there, I'd probably still do it... :p
yeah it's definitely not there, spent money on an SLI bridge that just sits and collects dust in a box I never opened.
 
Hard drives have started requiring 4 PCI-E lanes if you want NVME SSDs.

So I'm not sure dead or unnecessary is true.

I mean if you have only 20 lanes with a mainstream AMD platform you can only have one graphics card and one NVME and that's it!?!?

I just recently discovered the wonderful world of enterprise cache SSDs used off ebay. 3.2TB of NVME speed storage, used for $200. (4 PCI-E lanes) or 6.4TB of $400 (8 PCI-E lanes). They support RAID arrays in whatever multiples your motherboard can handle. If you wanted multiples for a RAID 0 or RAID 5, you'd likely need HEDT. Sure you could use spinning rust, or old school SATA SSDs, but why, they cost more than these Enterprise SSDs $/TB, and are are multiples of slower, and literally about 1/100 of the endurance rating (new vs. new). (My OS drive is a Samsung 860 EVO = 200TB endurance rating, vs. my Fusion I/O Scale's 20PB endurance rating).
https://hardforum.com/threads/3-2tb-ssd-for-240.1991865/
I recently moved my gaming hard-drive from a 10TB RAID 0 array, to that Fusion I/O Scale 3.2TB drive and that surprised me with how much difference it made. I had a 2TB Firecuda SSHD before that, and the RAID array and the firecuda felt pretty similar as a games drive.
Hunt Showdown textures would take about 10 seconds, at least, to load in once a level launched on the RAID array with max settings at 3440x1440. It was during the time the game is paused for all players, allowing everyone to load in - so I figured that was mostly normal. Both my Seagate SSHD and my RAID 0 array did that. On the Fusion I/O scale everything is loaded up from the very first moment the screen lights up in game. Pretty cool.

I'm still on x99, and 6850K at 4.0Ghz. If it was an 8 core I'd stay here for another few cycles. The system is rock solid stable. I haven't had a crash in so long I can't remember. Maybe never. When I tried to run my system at 4.1 to 4.3Ghz on all cores I'd get the occasional crash. At 4.0Ghz on all cores, I don't think it's ever crashed, and with gaming at 3440x1440 - I'm not sure I'm missing much of anything --- yet. Maybe after next gen consoles come out with their 8 core/16 thread base for both Sony and Microsoft, we'll start seeing game engines update to push for more cores/threads. The other little trend I've noticed for myself at least is I've played increasingly more indie type game titles, which don't always require the most powerful hardware. I haven't found a single game that can't run maxed out on my 6850K with a 2080 at 3440x1440 at ~70FPS average plus at max settings (Except Kingdom Come Deliverance which says it's ultra settings are for next gen hardware that isn't even out yet, and even with that I can still get 40FPS mins with everything maxed out). Gsysnc further eliminates concerns about seeing lower FPS. Everything feels pretty dang smooth to me down to just under 40FPS with Gsysnc on my Alienware aw3418dw.

I'm curious to know if you can tell any difference in your gaming after you spend some time with the 9900KS. As several in this thread already posted. I'm not buying something immediately, but I am starting to plot my course. Probably either Ryzen gen 4, or maybe Intel's next go round. I don't think current Ryzen or Intel is enough to make me jump quite yet.
 
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