Intel’s Comet Lake flagship, the i9-10900K, is the fastest gaming and desktop CPU currently available. This ten-core hyperthreaded processor can easily be overclocked so that all twenty threads run at an eye-watering 5.2 GHz. Whilst its stellar performance is second to none, it comes with a premium price tag of $488 USD. The 10900K also requires a new (Z490) LGA1200 motherboard, which Intel has indicated will remain compatible with Rocket Lake CPUs which are due later this year. Whilst AMD’s competing $420 USD Ryzen 3900X and $675 USD Ryzen 3950X do have a greater number of cores, their lower clock speeds and higher memory latency handicap them in non-rendering use cases. Overall, the 10900K has a 16% effective speed advantage over both the 3900X and 3950X. Users that do a lot of rendering should investigate dedicated hardware encoders such as NVENC and Quick Sync as these are far more efficient than CPU based rendering. Comparing the 10900K and 10700K shows that, when paired with a 2060S, the 10700K offers comparable gaming performance for 20% less money.[Jun '20CPUPro]
I loved this thing, so much nostalgia, any sort of cpu intensive game ran like crap and any modern game will. But god, after an overclock, it really tells you how far ryzen has come on their single core, aka no where. This thing is a cheap beast, going for like $45. Don’t ever really buy it though, just get like a FX-6300, 6 cores, 6 threads versus 1 core, 2 threads at $90 (+$45 more). If you’re truly set on a $50 CPU, buy a A8 6600K. Saw those floating for the same price as this but with quad core. Overall making this product obsolete, but still no where near the worst of old tech. Especially a 6 year old product that still arguably has a fight and a half left in it. I mean it is extremely unlikely you’ll find a use for it, but under the right circumstances, I.E a strictly single core game, after a pushy overclock and in theory you would get the same FPS as a modern ryzen, as in 2020 product.
P.S.
Over clock the absolute hell out of this thing for the real performance. [Jan '21ThatGuyRandomly]
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.