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 |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
Otritus - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Furthermore, Intel already uses a 1+4 design in their Lakefield processors. So, 1+n designs are possible on x86.It's 2021, when will Anandtech get an edit button.
phoenix_rizzen - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
What all these graphs show me is that AMD's Zen 3 CPU architecture is a heck of a lot better than Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake CPU architecture.The 8-core 5800X is within spitting distance of the 10-core 10850K is many benchmarks, and way ahead of it in many others. You pay less upfront, you pay less in power/cooling, and you get better/same performance! Even in multi-threaded benchmarks where the AMD CPU has two fewer cores, but better overall performance.
Hopefully Intel get's their Tiger Lake desktop CPUs (or whatever Lake naming variation the 11th Gen stuff will be) sorted out soon. The only thing holding AMD back right now is supply issues (and a lack of support from the big OEMs like HP, Dell, Compaq, etc).
2021 will be an interesting time for those upgrading desktops... :)
Deicidium369 - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
"Hopefully Intel get's their Tiger Lake desktop CPUs (or whatever Lake naming variation the 11th Gen stuff will be) sorted out soon" Rocket Lake 11900K is the top SKU and wrecks the 5800X"The only thing holding AMD back right now is supply issues (and a lack of support from the big OEMs like HP, Dell, Compaq, etc)" Compaq? really? You know that Compaq was bought by HP... Maybe Lenovo would have been a better choice there...
Intel provides designs for OEMs - have been doing this since the ultralight era - Intel makes it easy for OEMs to introduce a design using Intel SOCs. AMD does not do this - which is AMD's failing - the OEMs have to spend their own money designing a platform for AMD - and at some point hopefully recoup their investment - the sales volume for AMD is low enough that it often doesn't.
Chicken and Egg - OEMs won't introduce high end AMD designs due to cost, consumers won't be able to purchase a high end AMD - and will instead purchase an Intel.
IF AMD started providing designs and packages of components (like the 1W display for Ice Lake and Tiger Lake 13") to the OEMs - then AMD can start to expect higher end designs, rather than some 15" chassis from 3 years ago - by relieving the OEMs from spending $$ to engineer AMD designs, AMD would remove that burden, and also somewhat dictate what tier these designs go into ... provide the same design to all OEMs (just like Intel does)
This is not bashing AMD - they are missing several tricks to get their product in the high end laptop sector... it's not bribing or anything else - it is SMART BUSINESS.
IF AMD wants it's SOCs in high end designs like the Dell XPS - then it's not difficult to see the path forward.
JayNor - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
TGL added integrated pcie4, Thunderbolt 4, Wifi6 and lpddr5, and already has avx512, dlboost... all in a laptop chip. When will the competition have those features?RSAUser - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
Interesting that I've seen quite a few high end AMD OEM systems, they can just reuse the design of the Intel counterpart, change is just the mobo and CPU, which doesn't influence Form factor much since can get mobo with same Form factor.powerarmour - Tuesday, January 5, 2021 - link
Just wait until you see the power consumption numbers for Rocket Lake then, you'll then see who wrecks what.Makaveli - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Where did you see a 11900k which is unreleased at the moment wrecking a 5800x? Those leaked geekbench scores lol? Citation needed.AndrewJacksonZA - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
So let me get this straight: A CPU with 65% more cores, 100% more power consumed, and with a 50% greater price than their competitor's smallest and cheapest CPU, is being outperformed or equalled by that little CPU.OK, right on.
JayNor - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
"Intel likes to point out it has another 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes through the chipset, however this is limited by the DMI/PCIe 3.0 x4 uplink to the processor."Ok, through a switch, but perhaps the OEMs would have to add a switch on the motherboard if Intel only provided four lanes. Seems like a reasonable feature.
Hulk - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
I loved the article. Well-written, very informative, and entertaining. Also little is ever written when it comes to binning. It's great to hear Ian's thoughts on this and the lengths Intel has been going to in order to stay competitive.Ian presented the facts of the case. We are the jury and make our own decisions.