Intel 9th Gen release on October 19th

[LRW 42]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13401/intel-9th-gen-cpus-9900k-9700k-9600k

$488 for an i9-9900k (but newegg shows $579.99)

Asus has their product info posted for the z390 boards.

https://edgeup.asus.com/2018/z390-motherboard-guide-coffee-lake-8-core/

 

Edited October 8, 2018 by LRW
Price update

[Guest]

I pre-ordered my i9 9900K from Amazon for $530.  My order for the ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390 is on back order (1-2 days I think).  I went for G.Skill 4400 DDR CL18 (is going fast, but secured a pair).

Looks like October will be a busy hardware month.

Cheers, Rob.

[G-RFRY 1,705]

Apparently the new z390 boards are beefed up VRM coolers due to the soldered CPUs which will clock higher but get hot. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, rjfry said:

CPUs which will clock higher but get hot.

Yes, also the reason I went for the Formula variant from Asus as that model includes their "10K Black Metallic Capacitors" (common parts for the ROG variants) and their "Crosschill EK III" waterblock (I'm a fan of EK water blocks) for the VRMs (full coverage).

I'm aiming for 5.6 to 5.8Ghz on water and I might add an additional chiller if necessary.

Hopefully 2018 will be the year that can claim the most "increase" in my computing hardware performance ... would be nice to be able to use XP11 Maximum (HDR+SSAO) setting and Reflections above "Minimal" ... and P3D's SSAA with DL and DR enabled at the same time ... and rid myself of AF2's periodic pauses as it loads scenery.

Cheers, Rob.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

29 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Yes, also the reason I went for the Formula variant from Asus as that model includes their "10K Black Metallic Capacitors" (common parts for the ROG variants) and their "Crosschill EK III" waterblock (I'm a fan of EK water blocks) for the VRMs (full coverage).

I'm aiming for 5.6 to 5.8Ghz on water and I might add an additional chiller if necessary.

Hopefully 2018 will be the year that can claim the most "increase" in my computing hardware performance ... would be nice to be able to use XP11 Maximum (HDR+SSAO) setting and Reflections above "Minimal" ... and P3D's SSAA with DL and DR enabled at the same time ... and rid myself of AF2's periodic pauses as it loads scenery.

Cheers, Rob.

I used an Asus Maximus Formula board once - didn't net me a bit of OC headroom above the Asrock board it replaced, but hey - my VRMs were cool!  

I don't think I would go that route again on a mainstream desktop platform, they just don't tend to draw enough power to justify the additional cooling.  I did, however, order a monoblock for my X299 board recently and intend to install it here in the near future in order to stabilize the system at higher clock speeds.  

Also, 5.6-5.8GHz is extremely optimistic.  I think I'm even being optimistic with my hope of 5.5GHz.  At least, not without sub-ambient cooling like a chiller as you mentioned.  Dunno if its worth the hassle in the long run though, condensation is a scary thought with a $1200 GPU sitting right below the CPU block and tubing.  

[Guest]

Interesting on your Monoblock purchase, I've actually moved away from Monoblocks ... they work well, but didn't do much for my 5960X in terms of OC.  I'm consider a 3 loop setup.

I don't know what to expect from the i9 9900K but LN2 results for the CPU range from 6.9Ghz to 7.4Ghz ... that's considerably higher than prior gens, so I'm hoping that will translate to overall better OC for water/chiller setup in the 5.6 to 5.8Ghz range (stable).  The chiller would be setup externally and just enough to stay below ambient but not far enough below so as to avoid condensation on the internal tubing.

But that's part of the fun, seeing what I can get out of it ... relatively speaking the processor is pretty cheap at $530 (1/2 the cost of my 7900X and likely to perform better if it can OC well).

Cheers, Rob.

[zanehuston777 1]

Does the absence of hyperthreading on the 9700K mean a whole lot for running X Plane 11 or P3D?

[TechguyMaxC 516]

On 10/8/2018 at 5:29 PM, Rob Ainscough said:

Interesting on your Monoblock purchase, I've actually moved away from Monoblocks ... they work well, but didn't do much for my 5960X in terms of OC.  I'm consider a 3 loop setup.

I don't know what to expect from the i9 9900K but LN2 results for the CPU range from 6.9Ghz to 7.4Ghz ... that's considerably higher than prior gens, so I'm hoping that will translate to overall better OC for water/chiller setup in the 5.6 to 5.8Ghz range (stable).  The chiller would be setup externally and just enough to stay below ambient but not far enough below so as to avoid condensation on the internal tubing.

But that's part of the fun, seeing what I can get out of it ... relatively speaking the processor is pretty cheap at $530 (1/2 the cost of my 7900X and likely to perform better if it can OC well).

Cheers, Rob.

The viability of a particular cooling solution depends on the use case.  In the case of X299, CPUs designed for this platform draw much more power than mainstream desktop CPUs (easily 2-3x as much without even getting into serious overclocking efforts).  This causes the VRMs to produce a lot more heat than their mainstream desktop counterparts.  In this case, upgrading the cooling capacity on X299 VRMs is justifiable.  

As for overclockability of 9900k, I think we're both in for a disappointment:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-core-i9-9900k-overclock-6.9ghz,37903.html

At this point in time the only person to publicly speak about overclocking 9900k from first hand experience has stated that watercooled 9900k only reaches 5.3GHz.  That might be just enough for me to justify the upgrade anyway, but I'll hold out for Silicon Lottery results before I buy one, on the off chance that there are some golden samples that can get closer to 5.5GHz.  

[westman 257]

The range for 8700k with LN2 is 6.9 to 7.4ghz very similar to the 9900k, if it do 100-200mhz higher with 8 cores its good but 2 more cores more heat a 5.3ghz average is ok.

Edited October 10, 2018 by westman

[Guest]

I've read the "testing" accusations going back and forth between Intel / AMD / Reviewers … no idea how the WC setup was done to only get 5.3GHz, but the first thing I will do is turn off HT as that seems hinder most sims/games … the only time I've seen any benefit from HT is when using "defined" segmented tasks like you see in Adobe PP or Cinebench or 3DSMax.  Otherwise HT is just a heat generator usually triggering instability.

It'll be fun discovering what can be done … still waiting for a commercial LN2 loop with zero maintenance 🙂

Cheers, Rob.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Just now, Rob Ainscough said:

I've read the "testing" accusations going back and forth between Intel / AMD / Reviewers … no idea how the WC setup was done to only get 5.3GHz, but the first thing I will do is turn off HT as that seems hinder most sims/games … the only time I've seen any benefit from HT is when using "defined" segmented tasks like you see in Adobe PP or Cinebench or 3DSMask.  Otherwise HT is just a heat generator usually triggering instability.

It'll be fun discovering what can be done … still waiting for a commercial LN2 loop with zero maintenance 🙂

Cheers, Rob.

HT off is usually good for another 100-200MHz in my experience so that'll help.

[kand 205]

On 10/9/2018 at 4:56 AM, zanehuston777 said:

Does the absence of hyperthreading on the 9700K mean a whole lot for running X Plane 11 or P3D?

I think the consensus from SteveW was that sims dont see much benefit of spreading out on anything more than 6 threads. 

I have been pondering the same question for days whether to upgrade my i7 6700k to an i7 9700k, and I have come to a conclusion , bear in mind I have always turned HT off to get the highest clock speed which IMHO is needed most on my P3d rig, generally running p3d on all 4 cores. 

8 physical cores must be better than 8 logical cores (4 physical*2 threads), CPU hyperthreading is irrelevant because P3d will move threads to either the next physical core or the next logical depending on your AM if used. HT is a CPU thing, the software is written for multicore.

So my basic conclusion is that an i7 9700K at the same clock speed must theoretically perform better than an i7 6700k because it has more dedicated resource, each thread can run on its own physical core as opposed to sharing whats left between 2 logical cores, whether it gives faster FPS will depend on the clock speed but my skylane does 4.7ghz on a closed loop, I have decided that even a step to 5ghz wouldn't bring that much benefit to the main thread speed so I am now skipping this release unless the reviews tell me otherwise. Sim rendering and all that would probably be better so smoothness may improve? 

Pretty sure someone will have the opposite to say, but this is my take on life and my wallet! 

[TechguyMaxC 516]

25 minutes ago, kand said:

I think the consensus from SteveW was that sims dont see much benefit of spreading out on anything more than 6 threads. 

I have been pondering the same question for days whether to upgrade my i7 6700k to an i7 9700k, and I have come to a conclusion , bear in mind I have always turned HT off to get the highest clock speed which IMHO is needed most on my P3d rig, generally running p3d on all 4 cores. 

8 physical cores must be better than 8 logical cores (4 physical*2 threads), CPU hyperthreading is irrelevant because P3d will move threads to either the next physical core or the next logical depending on your AM if used. HT is a CPU thing, the software is written for multicore.

So my basic conclusion is that an i7 9700K at the same clock speed must theoretically perform better than an i7 6700k because it has more dedicated resource, each thread can run on its own physical core as opposed to sharing whats left between 2 logical cores, whether it gives faster FPS will depend on the clock speed but my skylane does 4.7ghz on a closed loop, I have decided that even a step to 5ghz wouldn't bring that much benefit to the main thread speed so I am now skipping this release unless the reviews tell me otherwise. Sim rendering and all that would probably be better so smoothness may improve? 

Pretty sure someone will have the opposite to say, but this is my take on life and my wallet! 

Physical cores are always better than logical cores, so if the question is "should I use an 8-core/non-HT CPU or a 4-core/HT CPU at the same clock speed?" the answer is clear.  If we change the question however to "is it better to have more cores/threads or less" then the answer changes, albeit with diminishing returns the more cores/threads you add.  

[macwino 14]

On 10/8/2018 at 2:00 PM, Rob Ainscough said:

I went for G.Skill 4400 DDR CL18 (is going fast, but secured a pair).

Rob, just wondering what you see as the advantage for P3D and XP11, if any, of getting this 4400 DDR Ram. I ask because I was planning to use my existing 32GB of G.Skill 3200 DDR Ram for the i7 9900k upgrade, as it is compatible with the Z390 chipset. FWIW, I am presently using this Ram:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232206&nm_mc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel&cm_mmc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel-_-Content-_-text-_-

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

Robert

 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, macwino said:

just wondering what you see as the advantage for P3D and XP11, if any, of getting this 4400 DDR Ram

In theory, the less a CPU has to wait for RAM to refresh the faster overall system performance, this usually equates to slightly higher FPS and textures/files tend to load a little faster … the differences aren't that dramatic.  It's often more a case of getting CPU stability at higher OC levels.  Just want to make sure the RAM is too slow … CAS Latency increases as frequency support increase … what I look for is higher frequency with lowest possible increase in CAS Latency … for example G.Skill sell 4400 DDR4 CL19 and 4400 DDR4 CL18, the CL18 providing slightly better performance but also requires more voltage v1.4 v1.35 … and G.Skill also have 4600 DDR CL18 at v1.5v (and other timing changes).  I settled on the 4400 CL18 because it was "available" and I'm betting I could probably get it to 4600 … memory can be a bit of a pricing game and it's hard to find out the exact memory chips being used (they obfuscate them well).

You might find you can adjust your existing RAM to higher speeds with more voltage and timing adjustments … it's just time consuming tweaking them beyond whatever XMP profile gets loaded.

Cheers, Rob.