9900K/9700K Overclock performance review

[Bob Scott 7,720]

9 hours ago, joemiller said:

Gentlemen: 

Who has the Intel 8086K ? Have you managed to OC all cores to 5.0Ghz? How good is it for P3D? 

                     - How about the 8700k, is it better for P3D than the 8086K ?   I'm just looking into other  options besides my current 7700k, should the 9900k or  9700k happens to be a  "hype' rather than a significant upgrade. I am looking into OC all cores to 5.0Ghz ++

The 8086K is a pre-binned 8700K.  No difference in the circuitry...these chips are cherry-picked off the production line, and overclock to the chip's expected limits (5.0-5.3 GHz) very reliably, and at lower-than-average voltages.  There's an outfit out there (Silicon Lottery) that tests and sells binned chips, and they reported that 100% of the 8086K chips they've processed overclocked to at least 5.0 GHz on all cores.  Many of the 8700K chips will, too, although I have also read a few articles that suggest since the 8086K hit the scene the percentage of 8700K chips that will overclock that high has dropped, which makes sense given that they're grabbing the better silicon and rebranding it.

Originally, the 8086K was $100 more than the 8700K, but the one I bought yesterday was on sale and $20 more than the 8700K, and I'll pay that for the warm fuzzy that this chip will at least hit 5.0, and possibly as high as 5.3 on all cores, especially if delidded.

I found that 5.0 GHz is a sweet spot for P3D v4...just enough processor headroom on the primary thread to power through most spikes with a heavy add-on panel, weather and scenery load.  In fact most of the stutters I see now are related to either the terrain/texture threads hitting the 100% wall, or what I suspect is a delay in loading autogen due to data starvation associated with memory bandwidth not keeping up with the CPU (stutters when neither CPU nor GPU loads are near 100%).

There is enough uncertainty as to whether the average i9-9900K will reliably reach that 5.0 mark when running all cores without overheating, so I punted on waiting months to find out when I found an 8086K on sale and on the shelf at an area retailer.  A bird in the hand...

If the six-core chip doesn't work out, I can always swap in the 9900K later on this Z390 board when the initial release feeding frenzy subsides and we know enough to develop informed expectations on the chip.  For me, 5.0 GHz or above is a must-have for P3D, which is what has also kept me away from the Extreme-edition X299 systems so far.

Regards

 

[martin-w 3,235]

54 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

How about the 9700K Turbo Boosted to 4.9?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-core-i7-9700k-s-1151-coffee-lake-refresh-8-core-8-thread-36ghz-49ghz-turbo-12mb-1200mhz-gpu-95

 

I'm reluctant to tell people what they should do, I can only say what I'd do.

9700K Scan = £499.99

8700K Scan = £448

8700K Amazon = £365 

8700K OCUK = £428.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-BX80684I78700K-Core-i7-8700K-Processor/dp/B07598VZR8/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1540142380&sr=1-1&keywords=9700k

9700K isn't listed on Amazon yet.  But if I could get the 8700K for £365, saving £134.99 I might go that way and spend that 134.99 on the graphic card. (Or as Bob said the 8086K for a few quid more) There's only 4% difference in single thread performance between the 9700K and 8700K. 

http://hwbench.com/cpus/intel-core-i7-9700k-vs-intel-core-i7-8700k

As for 9700K Turbo, it will only Turbo 2 cores (IIRC) to 4.9 GHz if only two cores are active. You would have to switch MCE on to achieve 4.9 on all cores, so essentially an overclock. How it behaves re temp with all cores active at 4.9 GHz I don't know, haven't looked at the 9700K reviews much. 

Edited October 21, 2018 by martin-w

[martin-w 3,235]

7 minutes ago, w6kd said:

 

Originally, the 8086K was $100 more than the 8700K, but the one I bought yesterday was on sale and $20 more than the 8700K, and I'll pay that for the warm fuzzy that this chip will at least hit 5.0, and possibly as high as 5.3 on all cores, especially if delidded.

 

 

 

 

$20! No brainer then.

393.59 on Amazon here in the UK. 8700K is £365. Seems the 8086K prices have dropped considerably since I last looked.

A pittance, I spend the difference at Nando's for some butterfly chicken with lemon and herb sauce. 🙂 

Edited October 21, 2018 by martin-w

[Bob Scott 7,720]

2 minutes ago, martin-w said:

$20! No brainer then.

393.59 on Amazon here in the UK. 8700K is £365. Seems the 8086K prices have dropped considerably since I last looked. 

Indeed.  The 8086K was $380...$200 less than the i9-9900K I had pre-ordered (Newegg-speak for back-ordered).

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

57 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

I'm reluctant to tell people what they should do, I can only say what I'd do.

9700K isn't listed on Amazon yet.  But if I could get the 8700K for £365, saving £134.99 I might go that way and spend that 134.99 on the graphic card. (Or as Bob said the 8086K for a few quid more) There's only 4% difference in single thread performance between the 9700K and 8700K. 

http://hwbench.com/cpus/intel-core-i7-9700k-vs-intel-core-i7-8700k

As for 9700K Turbo, it will only Turbo 2 cores (IIRC) to 4.9 GHz if only two cores are active. You would have to switch MCE on to achieve 4.9 on all cores, so essentially an overclock. How it behaves re temp with all cores active at 4.9 GHz I don't know, haven't looked at the 9700K reviews much. 

Thanks Martin. The reason for the higher Scan prices is because they will build a PC for me as oposed to just supplying them for me to do it myself.

Still unclear whether the 9700K or 8086K will be best. As P3D is essentially relying on 1 core then CPUs that perform best on the first or second are favourites. I'll leave it to either Chillblast or Scan how they best overclock where necessary.

[shivers9 1,174]

51 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Indeed.  The 8086K was $380...$200 less than the i9-9900K I had pre-ordered (Newegg-speak for back-ordered).

 

Bob I am ordering the 8086 today. Just makes good sense for P3D. What Mother board and Memory did you decide on?

[martin-w 3,235]

59 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Indeed.  The 8086K was $380...$200 less than the i9-9900K I had pre-ordered (Newegg-speak for back-ordered).

 

 

Delidding?

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

 

There's only 4% difference in single thread performance between the 9700K and 8700K. 

http://hwbench.com/cpus/intel-core-i7-9700k-vs-intel-core-i7-8700k

 

Oh, I think that 4% is being ever so generous. After seeing several different Cinebench scores I still haven't seen a 9900K match my single core 225 score at 5.0Ghz and 230 at 5.2Ghz.....in fact I still haven't see a single core cinebench of at least 230 at any clock.  Oh, and not to beat a dead horse ...and were only days past the 9900k launch :-), I can do 5.2 all day long at about 100 watts or mid 70's c with a H110 v2 being cooled by the ever so quiet Noctcha chassis fans. lol

The only question that needs to be answered around here is whether or not those two extra cores on the 8 core coffee makes a meaningful difference while running P3D 4.3 -and I'm not talking about the 2 seconds that the 2 extra cores.will shave off load times .....oh wait, Westman has already answered that for us.

Folks there is nothing to see here ....Although, after seeing all the abuse that Intel is putting Coffee Refresh through it has inspired me to run P3D 4.3 at 5,2 instead of the 5.0 I've been running. ---and I'm still 15 to 20 C cooler than the I9900k  running 4.9 on two cores.

Edited October 21, 2018 by FunknNasty

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, FunknNasty said:

is whether or not those two extra cores on the 8 core coffee makes a meaningful difference while running P3D 4.3

That depends on the add-ons used ... for example the GTN750 will run on a separate core, or if you run HiFi AS4 weather, the MJC Q400, lots of add-ons that will use other cores and not the main sync core.  I still feel 8 real cores is the sweet spot for P3D V4.x with add-ons.  However, with that said, I do most of my testing of P3D V4.x on an 8700K (no OC) and a 1080Ti at 1440p and get excellent performance with VERY high graphics settings with those add-ons that work installed and active. 

I don't think one can go wrong with 8000 or 9000 series CPU ... but single core performance is important (this is why I avoid AMD CPUs), because there will also be a main Sync thread even when other cores are used, there has to be one core working the hardest in order for a real "time based" simulator to make any visual sense.  If you ever see a flight simulator with all the other cores pegged at 100%, then this is BAD thing, not a good thing ... likely means you've run into thread contention ... in normal situations the other cores should be around 40-80% utilization with the main core being just a little below 100% (90-98%) that's when you know you're getting the most of you hardware and simulator.

Cheers, Rob.

[martin-w 3,235]

Quote

cooled by the ever so quiet Noctcha chassis fans.

 

Do you know, before making fun of NOCTCHA I checked just in case there was actually a company called NOCTCHA.  😀

[shivers9 1,174]

33 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

That depends on the add-ons used ... for example the GTN750 will run on a separate core, or if you run HiFi AS4 weather, the MJC Q400, lots of add-ons that will use other cores and not the main sync core.  I still feel 8 real cores is the sweet spot for P3D V4.x with add-ons.  However, with that said, I do most of my testing of P3D V4.x on an 8700K (no OC) and a 1080Ti at 1440p and get excellent performance with VERY high graphics settings with those add-ons that work installed and active. 

I don't think one can go wrong with 8000 or 9000 series CPU ... but single core performance is important (this is why I avoid AMD CPUs), because there will also be a main Sync thread even when other cores are used, there has to be one core working the hardest in order for a real "time based" simulator to make any visual sense.  If you ever see a flight simulator with all the other cores pegged at 100%, then this is BAD thing, not a good thing ... likely means you've run into thread contention ... in normal situations the other cores should be around 40-80% utilization with the main core being just a little below 100% (90-98%) that's when you know you're getting the most of you hardware and simulator.

Cheers, Rob.

Thanks Rob. That all makes good sense as usual. It does however seem to me that you would have to be running some pretty insane settings on many ad ons like AS4 before P3D performance would suffer noticeably between 6 and 8 cores. That is actually a question.

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

59 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

That depends on the add-ons used ... for example the GTN750 will run on a separate core, or if you run HiFi AS4 weather, the MJC Q400, lots of add-ons that will use other cores and not the main sync core.  I still feel 8 real cores is the sweet spot for P3D V4.x with add-ons.  However, with that said, I do most of my testing of P3D V4.x on an 8700K (no OC) and a 1080Ti at 1440p and get excellent performance with VERY high graphics settings with those add-ons that work installed and active. 

I don't think one can go wrong with 8000 or 9000 series CPU ... but single core performance is important (this is why I avoid AMD CPUs), because there will also be a main Sync thread even when other cores are used, there has to be one core working the hardest in order for a real "time based" simulator to make any visual sense.  If you ever see a flight simulator with all the other cores pegged at 100%, then this is BAD thing, not a good thing ... likely means you've run into thread contention ... in normal situations the other cores should be around 40-80% utilization with the main core being just a little below 100% (90-98%) that's when you know you're getting the most of you hardware and simulator.

Cheers, Rob.

Yeah, I get it Rob ...I'm just picking on the low hanging fruit.

 

59 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

Do you know, before making fun of NOCTCHA I checked just in case there was actually a company called NOCTCHA.  😀

LOL

 ...but they'd sell more, here in the States,  if they spelled it my way.  

....Just thinking the brand name of those fans gives me a headache. 🙂

[joemiller 269]

I'll go with the 8086K for now. I just need to get a good motherboard; however, I don't need extra unnecessary stuff. I'll get a 1080ti card- no SLI.  Can someone recommend a good motherboard to OC this processor?

 

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

Yeah, more reference material 🙂 ....5,2 with tightened memory timings and a bump up on the northbridge speed 5200/4600  Hwinfo started at top of decent into SFO from Reno at sunset today.

 

link below is fun stuff with my new flip-off Intel settings - edit: all bench screen shots in image below with same settings as the P3D 4.3 sceenee above <vbg>

https://i.imgur.com/kHiLQb3.png

Edited October 22, 2018 by FunknNasty

[zwenna 1]

very very nice Performance.