i9-9900K Saga continues

Well looks like start of i9-9900K couldn’t be worse but truth is that it is.

I recently found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGHiRrQ2AAo and this video discussed why some reviewers measured much higher power consumption that others.

In short if you have motherboard with 4 VRM phases then CPU will stay in 95W TDP and limiting it boost clock speed to 4.2 GHz (instead of 4.7 GHz). While if you have decent motherboard, it will go to 150W TDP and thus requiring high end cooling solution and obviously expensive motherboard. So, while technically 4 VRM phases still supports 9900K performance will be reduced to around 7-13% (7% for cold and 13% for continuous run when board is hot). And good example of 4 VRM phases is ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) Z390 Gaming Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th 9th Gen) ATX DDR4 DP HDMI M.2 USB 3.1 Gen2 802.11ac Wi-Fi that cost $289.99. Some reviewers found that in this configuration even 8700K faster than 9900K

You may ask where did it leave us? Well firstly in my talk about new Intel CPU you have to increase total price of Intel system (I would say $50-$100) or decrease its performance for about 7-13% (as I mentioned above for long runs it will be more towards 13%). And with that data Intel looks even worse than before, because many consumers will see test results on high end motherboards and they will assume that this performance will be possible on any motherboard, right? After all, performance should be the same if you don’t do overclocking and everything in stock settings. But Intel thinks different and I think it confuses consumers a lot. Moreover, if you check 9900K specs you will see 95W so technically Intel is correct, and you suppose to get lower performance, but all reviews will show different. And I pretty sure that review from Principled Technologies uses high end motherboard that works in 150W mode and shown great performance.

I found this quite misleading and it doesn’t look like Intel treating their consumers fairly. Moreover, it looks like Intel is desperate to show that their CPU is capable and can compete to AMD and they are ready to use every dirty trick they can. And truth is that don’t really need to do it. CPU is still faster than AMD one. Yes, it is very expensive, but Intel has a lot of fans and they will buy it anyway. A lot of businesses will buy Intel because they don’t know about AMD. Perhaps situation in Intel is even worse than I thought.