Intel Core i9-9900K and ASUS Z390 Strix-E Review

Very impressive performance. I mean, it's not surprising given the core count, clock speed, and price, but it's great to finally see that kind of performance on the 'mainstream' platform. Buying this over the 8700K or 9700K for gaming doesn't make very much sense (even over the 9600K), but still, it's a very powerful processor and handily beats AMD in all tasks. Zen 2 will need to bring the pain.

Thanks very much for the review. Excellent work.Quote

Honestly at this price I would expect everything. Not just a cardboard cop out reviewer's edition and then tray OEM for retail.

I know none of it matters, but it kinda does. If you are charging a premium people expect a premium product. It's kinda compounded by the fact that it does nothing the 2700x can't do. Sure it may do it a little faster but at that price?

CPUs are just not important. Not any more. You could still run games on an old quad core S775 and people know this because there are many Youtubers still building rigs like that.

I used to love Intel launches but over the past few years there have simply been far too many and all of the excitement has evaporated.

I also have a feeling AMD may respond with some sort of 2800x, but we'll see. Right now if I were them? I wouldn't bother.

Thanks for the review Tom.Quote

High FPS gaming (90+) still benefits noticeably with a modern Intel CPU. For me personally, my sweet spot is 90 FPS. That would be easier to hit with my graphics card if I had an 8700K instead of a 1600X. Much easier. The problem is, I don't want to support Intel. Also, I haven't played a game in almost a year.Quote

5GHz single core and 4.7GHz all core was always going to make it top dog in pretty much everything.


It's an extremely impressive processor, with the single threaded and multi-threaded grunt. There always was a compromise between the two, but this one really does away with that.


Problem with me though is I'm a bit of a cheap-ass, I figure if I'm not going to notice the performance difference then there's not much point in spending the extra cash.


My 6700k will probably have to last me for another year or longer with buying a house. However 60FPS in games is fine for me though, so I'd be fine on lots of CPUs now which is such a nice change from 3/4 years ago.Quote

How many monitors are 90hz though? Most would be 60 or 70.

Sure, if you bought one of those 144hz monitors it may benefit you, but most big games are designed to run much lower any way. Like, in my instance I can not actually run the games I play at 90hz because they break.

I don't understand this obsession with high FPS. I really thought my Xbox was going to absolutely and utterly suck at sub 30 but it is perfectly fine.

Big problem of course is could this CPU maintain a game at 90 FPS? I highly doubt that.Quote