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]
Within minutes of this unrealistic, pre-release, result appearing on userbenchmark, AMD’s marketing machinery declared a 20% victory over the 12900K whilst simultaneously slandering userbenchmark via hundreds of “news” outlets and thousands of supposedly disinterested twitter, reddit, forum and youtube accounts. Buying new AMD products is like buying used cars: it takes time, experience and a taste for sales hype. It’s difficult for consumers to make rational choices because AMD completely dominates “news” and social media channels. Ten years ago, when AMD was the underdog, this type of marketing was understandable. Today, with a capitalization of $150 Billion USD, it’s disrespectful to AMD's own users. Even with Intel's marketing department permanently asleep at the wheel, If these practices continue, Ryzen may eventually end up in the same state as Radeon. Following a series of overhyped releases, consumers have little interest in the Radeon brand. The combined market share for all AMD’s (discrete) Radeon RX 5000 and 6000 GPUs (Jun ’22 Steam stats) is just 2%. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s RTX 2060 alone accounts for 5%. If Zen 4 actually delivers anywhere near a 57% real-world single core uplift, we will bow down, call AMD king, and commit seppuku! AMD’s new architecture is, once again, optimized to shine in specific benchmarks. Realistically, even if Zen 4 only catches Intel's 12th gen. (Alder Lake) in a handful of real-world scenarios, it will be a big step forward for AMD. A few weeks after Zen 4 (est. Sep 27), Intel’s 13th gen. (Raptor Lake) is scheduled to launch. Smart shoppers will do well to wait until then, before considering a purchase. Despite AMD’s Neanderthal marketing techniques, it’s hard not to admire the speed of their technical progress. AMD-Raptor-4 and Intel-Zen-13 would be better fitting product names. [Jul '22CPUPro]
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.