Coffee Lake Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/30...ryzen-cpus

In 2017, Intel’s 8700K won accolades for a great balance between core counts and clock speed. Last year, the 9900K established itself as the premium chip to beat, even if the 2700X had significant competitive strengths of its own. This year, the tables have turned. While the Core i9-9900KS does indeed manage to beat the Ryzen 7 3700X core-for-core in a number of tests where the Core i9-9900K came up just short, the Ryzen 9 3900X is there to challenge it, every step of the way.

That leaves the Core i9-9900KS in a precarious position. It offers excellent per-core performance, but it’s fighting to beat a chip that sells for $184 less. If what you care about is gaming and only gaming, the Core i7-9700K offers equally good performance for much less money. If you need high core counts, the Ryzen 9 3900X packs superior performance for the same price. The Core i9-9900KS is actually a pretty good step up from the Core i9-9900K, offering 5-8 percent more performance for ~5 percent more money, but it’s beset on every side by competitors.

The truth is, Intel is in a tough competitive spot right now. There are no desktop 10nm chips coming in the near future and while we’ve heard rumors of 10-core Comet Lake CPUs arriving in 2020, for now, the company has to hold the eight-core desktop line. Outside of 1080p gaming, it’s hard to point to very many price/performance wins for Intel at this point. If the 9900KS could hold an all-core 5GHz boost it would undoubtedly help, but it still wouldn’t be enough in and of itself to completely close the gaps. Thus far, Intel has chosen to maintain its higher prices rather than slash desktop pricing. Lower prices are coming to the HEDT family, however, with the launch of Cascade Lake X.

The 9900KS does give Intel a slightly better competitive position versus AMD right now, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issues that are making Ryzen CPUs strong competitive options in the first place. That kind of realignment will have to come with Comet Lake, if it can be achieved at all.