The hex-core i5-9600K is third in Intel’s line-up of 9th generation Coffee Lake CPUs. It has a TDP of 95W and requires an aftermarket cooler (such as the $20 GAMMAXX 400). The 9600K was designed to be overclocked. Once this is enabled in the BIOS (requires a Z-series motherboard), the 9600K runs 10% faster. In terms of performance, the i5-9600K is almost unbeatable for desktop users and it has sufficient multi-core performance to handle all but the most demanding workstation tasks. For CPU encoding (Cinebench, Blender, Handbrake etc.) the Ryzen 3000 series offers great 64-core performance. For example the overclocked Ryzen 3600 is approximately 13% worse for gaming, desktop and normal consumer workloads but it is 27% faster for 64-core processing. CPU encoding is akin to using hair clippers on a lawn, encoding tasks are far better performed by dedicated hardware such an NVENC or QuickSync. At stock clocks the i5-9600K is around 8% slower than Intel’s flagship i9-9900K but when both are overclocked, the 9600K closes the gaming gap to within two or three percent. Considering that the 9900K is the fastest gaming processor available, and almost twice the price of the 9600K, this is no small feat. The i5-9600K is aimed squarely at gamers who are not willing to compromise on performance but don't want to pay more than they need to. [Oct '18CPUPro]
The 8 core, 16 thread 1900X is the third and entry-level processor from AMD’s Threadripper series of high-end desktop (HEDT) processors. The 1900X is based on AMD’s 14nm Zen architecture and features 20MB of cache (16MB of which is L3) and quad channel DDR4, which is twice as many channels as in the Ryzen 7 series. It has a base clock of 3.8GHz increasing to a boost of 4.0 GHz and has an additional short-term boost of 0.2 GHz when thermals allow. Most impressively, the 1900X features 64 PCIe lanes which is the same of number of lanes in the nearly twice as expensive Ryzen Threadripper flagship, the 1950X. This facilitates the simultaneous high speed PCIe connection of up to seven different graphics or storage peripherals. By comparison, Intel’s similarly priced 8 core, 16 thread i7-7820X which, even though it has an 11% effective speed advantage over the 1900X, only has 28 PCIe lanes (down from 44 lanes as recently seen in the recent i9-7900X). Both upgrade options may require new, and not inexpensive motherboards, the 7820X requires an X299 (Basin Falls) chipset and the 1900X utilizes the premium X399 motherboard. Despite the considerable price tags attached to the CPUs and motherboards, never before has HEDT processing been so affordable. [Oct '17CPUPro]
We calculate effective speed which measures real world performance for typical users. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield a value for money rating. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top CPUs. [CPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.