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: Borderlands 3
As a big Borderlands fan, having to sit and wait six months for the EPIC Store exclusive to expire before we saw it on Steam felt like a long time to wait. The fourth title of the franchise, if you exclude the TellTale style-games, BL3 expands the universe beyond Pandora and its orbit, with the set of heroes (plus those from previous games) now cruising the galaxy looking for vaults and the treasures within. Popular Characters like Tiny Tina, Claptrap, Lilith, Dr. Zed, Zer0, Tannis, and others all make appearances as the game continues its cel-shaded design but with the graphical fidelity turned up. Borderlands 1 gave me my first ever taste of proper in-game second order PhysX, and it’s a high standard that continues to this day.
BL3 works best with online access, so it is filed under our online games section. BL3 is also one of our biggest downloads, requiring 100+ GB. As BL3 supports resolution scaling, we are using the following settings:
- 360p Very Low, 1440p Very Low, 4K Very Low, 1080p Badass
BL3 has its own in-game benchmark, which recreates a set of on-rails scenes with a variety of activity going on in each, such as shootouts, explosions, and wildlife. The benchmark outputs its own results files, including frame times, which can be parsed for our averages/percentile data.
| 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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1_rick - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Because you've got the people who will spend any amount of money to get 5fps more in their games so they can smugly tell everyone who they've got the best.lopri - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I see Ryzens beating this thing by sizeable margins in games.zodiacfml - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Ryzen 5000 series is significantly faster than Intel's i9-10900k in all games though I haven't seen compared with overclocks. The Intel gets good at rendering/encode but I'd rather buy old Xeons with Chinese motherboards for those loadsV3ctorPT - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
In gaming the real star is the 5600X... awesome performance for its price, for a 65W(!) CPU...lmcd - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
It's basically an 80W CPU though lolCrazyeyeskillah - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
my 5600x is 10-20c hotter than my 3600 clock for clock on the same exact rig and watercooler.JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I was considering 10850k as an upgrade option when I it for $400. It's undeniably significantly better deal than 10900k at $530.But ultimately decided that it's just not good enough for an upgrade because it still doesn't support PCIE 4 so if I upgrade I would have to upgrade again very shortly.
Would have to wait for 5900x availability or maybe intel will come up with something better.
edzieba - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
The same argument can be made for the 5900x and PCIe 5 (or DDR 5). There will always be a new protocol, or new interface, or etc on the horizon.JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Disagree. Right now I have the same Skylake cores running 5Ghz and the same PCIE 3, the same everything and it's still fine except I have less cores.With 5900x I'll get better single thread and multi thread performance as well as PCIE4 which is really important for future GPU's and upcoming upgrades unlike PCIE5 which isn't important at all at this point in time.
MDD1963 - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
PCI-e 4.0 was going to be 'critical' for GPUs to get best performance from a 3080/3090...; instead, it was/is still a non-player. Maybe that will change for next gen. Maybe not.