Intel Core i9-11900K and Core i5-11600K

Photo: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

Just when you think Intel couldn't do anything else with its desktop processors on that old, 14nm node, it manages to do something else. I thought the company hit a limit with its previous generation, although the gains it does make gen-over-gen aren't the most impressive. Between Intel's long, fraught saga getting its architecture down to 7nm and the ongoing global chip shortage, it feels like the company would have been better off skipping this generation altogether. And probably the last one, too.

However, the Core i9-11900K is Intel's answer to AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X. The company needed to do something to keep pace with AMD, and sort of managed to pull it off, albeit with little fanfare. Intel based its 11th generation of desktop CPUs on its Cypress Cove architecture, or rather its Ice Lake 10nm node and then ported back to 14nm.

But even with the 14nm node past its expiration date, Intel's new mid-range Core i5-11600K yet again outshines the enthusiast-level Core i9—if you're building a PC strictly for gaming, that is. If you need something with more multi-core processing power, then you're going to want something other than the Core i5-11600K's six cores and 12 threads.

Intel Core i9-11900K and Core i5-11600K Intel Core i9-11900K and Core i5-11600K What is it?

Two of Intel's 11th-generation of desktop processors, one enthusiast CPU and one mid-range CPU.

Price

$539 MSRP for the Core i9, and $262 MSRP for the Core i5.

The Core i5-11600K has excellent performance for the price.

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This is what Intel's 10th generation of desktop processors actually should have been.

All benchmarks were performed with the following PC configuration: Asus ROG Maximus XIII Hero Z590 motherboard, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, G.Skill Trident Z Royal 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3600, Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD 500GB, Seasonic Focus GX-1000, and a Corsair H150i Pro RGB 360mm for cooling. An Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero X570 was used for the Ryzen 9 5950X.

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Because companies often update their BIOS and drivers, I re-tested the Ryzen and older Intel chips, although there's not much difference between these latest results and the previous ones. What's interesting is the gen-to-gen comparisons, and the comparisons to the Ryzen chip. (Unfortunately, I did not have a Ryzen 9 5900X to add to the comparisons below.)

When it comes to non-gaming applications, it's the same old story: Intel leads in single-core performance because it has higher clock speeds than AMD, but AMD leads in multi-core because it has more cores than Intel. The Core i9-11900K is an 8-core, 16-thread processor than can get up to 5.3GHz, and the Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core, 32-thread processor that tops out at 4.9GHz, like the Core i5-11600K.

But for 3D rendering or video transcoding, more cores are the way to go. Even the Intel Core i9-11900K can't fend off AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X in all of the below multi-core benchmarks. It takes the Core i9-11900K nearly a minute longer to render the same image in Blender and transcode a video from 4K to 1080p at 30 fps in Handbrake.

Higher is better.Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

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3D rendering speed. BMW test from Blender's demos. Lower is better.Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

Transcoding a 4K video to 1080p 30 fps. Lower is better.Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

Gaming performance is where things get complicated for the Core i9-11900K and Core i5-11600K. To summarize as concisely as possible, all frames per second gains are at 1080p on ultra (or highest graphical setting) across every processor. But sometimes there isn't even a difference at that resolution. If you look at Metro Exodus with ray tracing on at 1080p, all CPUs average 104-105 fps with the RTX 3080, which isn't surprising considering that GPU can bottleneck some games at lower resolutions.

Generally, that applies to games which rely on the CPU more than the GPU. Also, performance across CPUs tends to plateau at higher resolutions with the same GPU. So that's why you'll see the Core i5-11600K with the same level of performance as the Core i9-11900K in, say, Shadow of The Tomb Raider at 4K. Basically, if you have a powerful GPU and you want to game at 1440p or above, it doesn't matter if you go with the 11th-gen Core i9 or Core i5.

Another curve ball: The 11th-gen Core i5 is a near-equivalent to the 10th-gen Core i9. It also gained, on average, 10-20 fps at either 1080p or 1440p over the 10th-gen Core i5, where the gen-to-gen gain for the Core i9 was only about 5-10 fps. That alone makes the Core i5-11600K a more attractive option for gaming due to its gen-over-gen performance increase for the price, $262 compared to the new Core i9's $539 price tag. But when you compare the Core i9-11900K to the Ryzen 9 5950X, $539 is a steal compared to that $800 Ryzen chip.

Frames per secondGraphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo