Review: Intel Core i9-10900K and Core i5-10600K

Test Methodology

Notes

It's worth mentioning there were multiple motherboard BIOSes released in the run-up to launch. The primary issue was one of ensuring the chips turbo boosted correctly when BIOSes were set to Auto. As shown on the first page, Intel says the Core i9-10900K can run at up to 5.3GHz on a couple of cores and, temperature permitting, 4.9GHz across all cores.

Achieving such speeds requires tweaking the power levels of the processor. Intel chips are equipped with at least a couple of exposed power levels known as PL1 and PL2. The latter is the short-term limit that is higher than the TDP, which in this case is 125W. PL1 is the long-term power, which ought to be that 125W, and the time the processor stays in the short-term PL2 is known as Tau.

Now, the processor maintains its 4.8GHz/4.9GHz (TVB) all-core speed when it's in the PL2 state, but according to Intel's guidelines, drops down to something lower when PL1 is active. Benchmarks that are over quickly, within the PL2 envelope, do well, but those that are longer ought to spill over to lower-frequency PL1.

Intel, however, offers system integrators and motherboard partners a choice on how they implement these power targets and Tau time. "We have expanded our definition of PL2 to allow customers to take further advantage of a 10th Gen Intel Core desktop processor’s performance options and capabilities. Our customers now have more ability to configure their boards and implement power and performance settings according to their own design targets. Some customers may want to follow Intel’s configuration recommendation, while others will design boards that draw more power and may require more capable cooling solutions".

All of this is important because the motherboard guys want to hit peak performance for as long as possible. The flurry of recent BIOSes aim to achieve that peak 5.3GHz TVB frequency and 4.9GHz all-core load for lengthy benchmarks. Even up until last Friday BIOSes were being released by all the major makers, including MSI, as tested here, to fully exploit the potential speed of the processor.

The upshot of all this is that, set to Auto in BIOS, the Core i9-10900K easily surpasses its 125W TDP for long-term load, and operates at somewhere in the region of 200W, unlike AMD processors that steadfastedly keep within their allocated TDP. You'll see exactly what we mean on the power-consumption page.