Intel Core i9-10850K Review: The Real Intel Flagship
by Dr. Ian Cutress on January 4, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core
- Z490
- 10th Gen Core
- Comet Lake
- LGA1200
- i9-10850K
Gaming Tests: Gears Tactics
Remembering the original Gears of War brings back a number of memories – some good, and some involving online gameplay. The latest iteration of the franchise was launched as I was putting this benchmark suite together, and Gears Tactics is a high-fidelity turn-based strategy game with an extensive single player mode. As with a lot of turn-based games, there is ample opportunity to crank up the visual effects, and here the developers have put a lot of effort into creating effects, a number of which seem to be CPU limited.
Gears Tactics has an in-game benchmark, roughly 2.5 minutes of AI gameplay starting from the same position but using a random seed for actions. Much like the racing games, this usually leads to some variation in the run-to-run data, so for this benchmark we are taking the geometric mean of the results. One of the biggest things that Gears Tactics can do is on the resolution scaling, supporting 8K, and so we are testing the following settings:
- 720p Low, 4K Low, 8K Low, 1080p Ultra
For results, the game showcases a mountain of data when the benchmark is finished, such as how much the benchmark was CPU limited and where, however none of that is ever exported into a file we can use. It’s just a screenshot which we have to read manually.
If anyone from the Gears Tactics team wants to chat about building a benchmark platform that would not only help me but also every other member of the tech press build our benchmark testing platform to help our readers decide what is the best hardware to use on your games, please reach out to ian@anandtech.com. Some of the suggestions I want to give you will take less than half a day and it’s easily free advertising to use the benchmark over the next couple of years (or more).
As with the other benchmarks, we do as many runs until 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination has passed. For this benchmark, we manually read each of the screenshots for each quality/setting/run combination. The benchmark does also give 95th percentiles and frame averages, so we can use both of these data points.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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zodiacfml - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
While it is true that AMD's current available Ryzen mobile at 7nm is superior to the M1 at 5nm, you have to consider that M1 is Apple's entry level. Things will get more interesting once AMD gets into 5nm and Apple releases bigger M1Alistair - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
That is not true at all. Everything works on the M1, I have an M1 Mac Mini and a PC and have no problems. The issue is Apple's lack of expansion and lack of GPU performance. Games for example that are not on the Mac, not because of M1's performance (which is excellent) but because of M1's lack of GPU performance vs a basic video card, and the lack of the basic GPU expansion options. Also Mac OS sucks compared to Windows imo, but the Mac Mini hardware and M1 CPU performance are A+. Hopefully Apple doubles the GPU options and performance quickly.Meteor2 - Thursday, January 7, 2021 - link
Yes, I thought that a very strange statement too. Rosetta2 exists and it works.JayNor - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
compared to the competition that can't respond to the WFH and educational demand?Qasar - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
still better then a company that fell asleep, and stagnated the cpu industry. intels lack of innovation, and reliance on its process tech, is what has caused intel to be in the position it is now in.powerarmour - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
Can you actually buy an Intel motherboard at the moment?, shortages are very apparent there too.regsEx - Thursday, January 7, 2021 - link
Apple doesn't have any high performance CPU.JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
420mm AIO with bare die liquid metal here we come!But jokes aside good 360 AIO with liquid metal should keep it quite easily under 80C at all times.
Anytime you see significant temperatures liquid metal helps disproportionately more, because it's thermal conductivity grows with temperature unlike thermal pastes. It drops 20C from 80C on paste and 30C from 100C on paste.
Still I'd rather wait for 5900x
Deicidium369 - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Did you see the cooler?http://thermalright.com/product/true-copper/
passive design
lopri - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I have been looking for that cooler. Does anyone know where to find one?