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: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA to help optimize the title. At this point GTA V is super old, but still super useful as a benchmark – it is a complicated test with many features that modern titles today still struggle with. With rumors of a GTA 6 on the horizon, I hope Rockstar make that benchmark as easy to use as this one is.
GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
We are using the following settings:
- 720p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data. The benchmark can also be called from the command line, making it very easy to use.
There is one funny caveat with GTA. If the CPU is too slow, or has too few cores, the benchmark loads, but it doesn’t have enough time to put items in the correct position. As a result, for example when running our single core Sandy Bridge system, the jet ends up stuck at the middle of an intersection causing a traffic jam. Unfortunately this means the benchmark never ends, but still amusing.
| 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.