Review Intel Core i3-9350KF Review: Coffee Lake's Stagnant Waters

[Admin]

Intel's Core i3-9350K looks to shore up the company's defenses against the surging Ryzen processors, but doesn't quite pass the test.

Intel Core i3-9350KF Review: Coffee Lake's Stagnant Waters : Read more

 

[g-unit1111]

Is there any point in buying a 4/4 CPU on a platform that is becoming increasingly outdated anymore? Even for an office machine, a Ryzen 3400G is a more attractive CPU at that price.

 

[Co BIY]

I would like to see some comment from the reviewers on the "snappiness" of the machines when powered by the various processors when doing various routine tasks. Do any of the benchmarks capture the "drive responsiveness" of the machine.

I imagine that most those buying the lower end processors will be doing routine computer work like web browsing, word processing ect... I see that as the perfect use case for a very fast low core count processor. Feels fast in normal home/office use at a low cost.

 

[logainofhades]

Seeing recent reviews from GN, tech deals, and Hardware Unboxed, I am convinced 4 core/4 thread gaming, is essentially dead, at this point, unless you only play old titles that don't need more than 2-4 cores. The six core Ryzen 5's still keep going, where the i3 and i5 intels run out of steam, due to insufficient resources, being limited to 4 and 6 core without hyperthreading.

 

[g-unit1111]

Seeing recent reviews from GN, tech deals, and Hardware Unboxed, I am convinced 4 core/4 thread gaming, is essentially dead, at this point, unless you only play old titles that don't need more than 2-4 cores. The six core Ryzen 5's still keep going, where the i3 and i5 intels run out of steam, due to insufficient resources, being limited to 4 and 6 core without hyperthreading.

Yeah especially when you can get a 2nd gen Ryzen CPU for ridiculously cheap right now. Even the 3rd gen CPUs are still a relative bargain compared to their Intel counterparts.

 

[Giroro]

Seeing recent reviews from GN, tech deals, and Hardware Unboxed, I am convinced 4 core/4 thread gaming, is essentially dead, at this point, unless you only play old titles that don't need more than 2-4 cores. The six core Ryzen 5's still keep going, where the i3 and i5 intels run out of steam, due to insufficient resources, being limited to 4 and 6 core without hyperthreading.

I've been under the assumption that games are being optimized for 8 threads, because of the consoles.
I'll need to look into if 4c/8t outperforms 6/6 at gaming to see if that's true, even though 4 hyperthreaded cores are usually going to be worse than 6 physical cores at overall number crunching.
I wonder how console-comparable pre-ryzen 8-weak-core AMD processors hold up with modern games compared to 4 fast cores.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

I've been under the assumption that games are being optimized for 8 threads, because of the consoles.
I'll need to look into if 4c/8t outperforms 6/6 at gaming to see if that's true, even though 4 hyperthreaded cores are usually going to be worse than 6 physical cores at overall number crunching.
I wonder how console-comparable pre-ryzen 8-weak-core AMD processors hold up with modern games compared to 4 fast cores.

Anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of "FX-8350 or better" in the 'recommended' listing of $50-60 games on Steam, so I'm guessing those older 8 cores are working better now that things are optimized for 8 cores.

 

[logainofhades]

I've been under the assumption that games are being optimized for 8 threads, because of the consoles.
I'll need to look into if 4c/8t outperforms 6/6 at gaming to see if that's true, even though 4 hyperthreaded cores are usually going to be worse than 6 physical cores at overall number crunching.
I wonder how console-comparable pre-ryzen 8-weak-core AMD processors hold up with modern games compared to 4 fast cores.

Games are starting to use more threads, because of Ryzen, really. Hence Intel finally pushing core counts higher, across all product lines. I would expect a 6c/6t to do better, than a 4c/8, but still suffer from frametime issues, a 6c/12t CPU like an intel 8700k, or a Ryzen 5 3600, would not.

 

[mdd1963]

Just how many times can the 7600K be recycled, bumped up 100 MHz, given a new name, and called 'new'....

This processor should be $59 , and a questionable purchase even then, but, it is NEVER worth $180+....(Intel, trim it's price by 60-70% , pronto..!)

 

[mdd1963]

The review actually discusses the advantages of PCI-e 4.0? Honestly, with no GPUs yet available using it, and, I rather doubt anyone pondering this rig or an R5-1600 or less is pondering the latest NVME 4.0 drive on an X570 onslaught at 50-70% increased NVME storage cost but often an actual .1% longer 50 GB file transfer vs. the 970 EVO in real world testing.

 

[logainofhades]

The review actually discusses the advantages of PCI-e 4.0? Honestly, with no GPUs yet available using it, and, I rather doubt anyone pondering this rig or an R5-1600 or less is pondering the latest NVME 4.0 drive on an X570 onslaught at 50-70% increased NVME storage cost but often an actual .1% longer 50 GB file transfer vs. the 970 EVO in real world testing.

While the are not taking advantage of the bandwidth, AMD's NAVI cards are PCI-E 4.0. X570 is not compatible with 1st gen Ryzen. Only a 3rd gen CPU, with an x570, gets you PCI-E 4.0. I do agree that PCI-E 4.0, is not really necessary, for the average user, at this time.

 

[hotaru251]

$150-200 for a 4/4 chip that needs a expensive board to OC and is on a deadend platform?
/laugh

intel just needs accept they are screwed and stop wasting silicon on crap.


you could build an entire budget AMD ryzen pc for cost of this chip, a gpu, and mb to oc the thing...

 

[AlistairAB]

$150-200 for a 4/4 chip that needs a expensive board to OC and is on a deadend platform?
/laugh

intel just needs accept they are screwed and stop wasting silicon on crap.


you could build an entire budget AMD ryzen pc for cost of this chip, a gpu, and mb to oc the thing...

I don't think they are screwed. But they do need to make all their CPUs unlocked (an unlocked i3-9100kf for $100 would be nice) and with hyperthreading included no extra charge.

If it was unlocked 4/8 and 6/12 and 8/16 and 10/20 for the same prices as the locked items they would be in a very good place. They would lose profit though. One of the reasons I buy Ryzen is I hate Intel's mass differentiation. They have 4 cpus, not 50, they just pretend they have 50 different models.

 

[hotaru251]

I don't think they are screwed. But they do need to make all their CPUs unlocked (an unlocked i3-9100kf for $100 would be nice) and with hyperthreading included no extra charge

except even their newest chips have microcode vulnerabilities that need patching (and lose performance) and they basically lose access to software OC due to plundervolt fix <_<

I still mainly use my i3-4130 and i have been wanting to build a newer main system for a year, but waiting for intel to release a chip worth soemthign and they just basically do refresh after refresh...

their lack of progress is likely gonna make me go amd for 1st time in my life. (as at least they are making progress w/o as punishing/severe issues)



and i meant screwed in the sense of they cant sell their stuff for as much as they are use to because they arent that much better anymore.

 

[closs.sebastien]

I bought a i7 8700k, changing from a i7 3700. tired of waiting for the 10nm that I wanted initially.

 

[logainofhades]

For the price of that 8700k, you could have gotten a better 3700x, and had money left over, for other things. Intel's pricing needs to change. Even a Ryzen 5 3600x can hold its own fairly well, vs an 8700k, and is quite a bit less. Right now you can get a 3600x, B450 Tomahawk max, and 16gb of 3200 flare-x, for about $15 more than an 8700k, and enjoy a very similar experience. Intel's noncompetitive pricing is why I am on my first full time AMD rig, in over a decade.

 

[hannibal]

Is there any point in buying a 4/4 CPU on a platform that is becoming increasingly outdated anymore? Even for an office machine, a Ryzen 3400G is a more attractive CPU at that price.

for net surfing and email reading 2 cores is enough!
For Gaming... 8 cores is the way to go!

 

[g-unit1111]

for net surfing and email reading 2 cores is enough!
For Gaming... 8 cores is the way to go!

Yeah for net surfing / browsing, etc, I would just get a Ryzen 3400G. Even a Pentium G4650 would be sufficient enough for those tasks. But spending $200 on an i3-9350KF seems kind of irrelevant these days when a Ryzen 2600 is better, newer, and cheaper.

 

[Giroro]

Games are starting to use more threads, because of Ryzen, really. Hence Intel finally pushing core counts higher, across all product lines. I would expect a 6c/6t to do better, than a 4c/8, but still suffer from frametime issues, a 6c/12t CPU like an intel 8700k, or a Ryzen 5 3600, would not.

I've heard of the frametime issues for 6c/6t i5s. Part of my speculation is that issue may be partially caused by waiting for the windows scheduler to split threads 7 and 8 between the 6 cores. Whereas hyperthreading/SMT is a lot better at that task - which is possibly where the gain could really be coming from when you move up to 6c/12t.

I'm totally unwilling to put in the work to test this hypothesis or to hunt down existing data (we definately already know the old 8-core AMD FX chips sucked at games optimized for quad-core, which was typical at the time). But, I would be pretty interested in reading some kind of "What's better for gaming in 2020, 6 cores or 8 threads" analysis that tests those old chips in new games as a point of comparison.
I think the real value would be in determining if an old i7 (4c/8t) is better than a new i5 (6c/6) - but the rest would just be fun to know.
...or maybe it's all moot since -i5 9400 beats Ryzen 3400G at the given test suite, although those games and this testing methodology is chosen specifically to push CPUs - most aren't the games that come to mind as the AAA console ports that I have been curious about.

 

[Cantime77]

And with all of this negative, yet they can't make them fast enough and in enough quantities! Even with the higher cost they still sell out.

 

[Foeke]

I would like to see some comment from the reviewers on the "snappiness" of the machines when powered by the various processors when doing various routine tasks. Do any of the benchmarks capture the "drive responsiveness" of the machine.

I imagine that most those buying the lower end processors will be doing routine computer work like web browsing, word processing ect... I see that as the perfect use case for a very fast low core count processor. Feels fast in normal home/office use at a low cost.

I think I can answer that. We are system builders. sometimes high-end, sometimes pro-bono best effort on a tight budget.
Doing general office and internet tasks there is no noticeable difference between an Sandy bridge i3 and an Threadripper.
As long as both systems have a good SSD (no difference between an 850 EVO or an PM983) and 8Gb memory.
For an end user, the size of the case has a more profound effect on the end users experience. Indexing a big Mailbox in outlook or updating Windows is a different story. But the 100% CPU load on average day to day workloads are so short on any reasonable CPU anyway, that you just don't notice.