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: F1 2019
The F1 racing games from Codemasters have been popular benchmarks in the tech community, mostly for ease-of-use and that they seem to take advantage of any area of a machine that might be better than another. The 2019 edition of the game features all 21 circuits on the calendar for that year, and includes a range of retro models and DLC focusing on the careers of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. Built on the EGO Engine 3.0, the game has been criticized similarly to most annual sports games, by not offering enough season-to-season graphical fidelity updates to make investing in the latest title worth it, however the 2019 edition revamps up the Career mode, with features such as in-season driver swaps coming into the mix. The quality of the graphics this time around is also superb, even at 4K low or 1080p Ultra.
For our test, we put Alex Albon in the Red Bull in position #20, for a dry two-lap race around Austin. We test at the following settings:
- 768p Ultra Low, 1440p Ultra Low, 4K Ultra Low, 1080p Ultra
In terms of automation, F1 2019 has an in-game benchmark that can be called from the command line, and the output file has frame times. We repeat each resolution setting for a minimum of 10 minutes, taking the averages and percentiles.
| 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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Kevin G - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Inconsistency error on the second page: the 10850K and 10900K swap colors in the graphs.With regards to the intercore latency, what is the internal bus topology like in the 10 core Comet Lake? Last I heard, Intel was still using the ring topology for client processors but did they finally add a second ring similar to what they did for the medium and high core core count Xeons pre-Sky Lake? That'd explain why two of the cores seem off from the rest (and I would presume the GPU and PCIe controller would also sit on that same ring).
Spunjji - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I genuinely appreciate the detail put into this article, but it's amusing that it was prompted by what amounts to little more than a bait-and-switch on their top-end product. 😬 The way I'm looking at it, they either used the early reviews to lie about the price of their *theoretical* flagship CPU, or they used the early reviews to lie about the power characteristics of their *actually available* flagship CPU.Either way, the end result remains the same: never trust Intel PR, and avoid their products unless you like to use your PC as a small household water heater.
JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
All companies lie and do questionable stuff, all that matters is what you getting for the money.And in winter small house heater in much appreciated when running script overnight allows you to avoid using house air heater in the room ;D
I think 10850k could be a pretty good deal if $400 or cheaper and you can't wait for AMD availability.
But I think it's only viable option for those who still rocking DDR3 or those who have no PC at all for the rest of us waiting is better. CPU upgrade is just not worth it as long as you have anything Skylake based on zen2 based.
Qasar - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
" All companies lie and do questionable stuff " not compared to intel, they have been pretty much lieing for how many years now about how its 10nm tech is coming along.GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
Maybe Intel should go into the geyser business ;)zamroni - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Intel should remove the low spec on die integrated gpu and replace it with more powerful gpu chiplet.JessNarmo - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Intel should remove integrated GPU from all high end CPU's. It's completely pointless. No one is using $500 CPU and using integrated graphics. Silicone is better spent on better CPU.heftig - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I am, actually. For a soho+media server and distcc host which only needs a GPU for whatever can't be done over SSH.temps - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
good to see anandtech still has the biggest gap between quality of articles and quality of comment sectionrunning a 9900K with integrated here, the computer is for audio production and has no use for a graphics card. intel outperforms ryzen for this workload too.
powerarmour - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
Sorry to disappoint if you've been hiding under a rock for a couple of years, but this is no longer the case, check any recent Scan dawbench articles...