Gaming Benchmarks
These benchmarks do not represent real-world gameplay by any stretch of the imagination. These tests are conducted using built-in benchmarking tools utilizing the game engine. These tests are designed to stress the CPU’s power system as well as ensure proper functionality. These are all run at CPU limited resolutions to try our best to remove the video card as a bottleneck.
One additional note about gaming performance is that these are average values. They do not tell the whole story. Specifically, Destiny 2’s low’s and high’s help tell a very different story than what the average reports are. Fortunately, while the lows are considerably lower than that of Intel CPU’s, the amount of frames that drop into the lowest range are extremely few.
As stated in previous articles, we are transitioning to providing more comprehensive data for gaming benchmarks. Leveraging some of the built-in tools, we are showing minimums, averages, and maximum frame rates. Frametimes are something we will work on including in the future as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that much lead time from Intel on this review.
3DMark 10
In this test, the extra power offered by the 10980XE’s additional cores and thread count are of limited value at best. At stock speeds, the Prime X299 Edition 30 and 10980XE combination achieve the two lowest results.
Heaven
Given the similarity of clocks, IPC and graphics cards, are numbers are reasonably close across the spectrum. The Prime X299 Edition 30 achieves a result of 370.7FPS overclocked but shows its lack of gaming pedigree at stock speeds with a result of 351.6FPS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an interesting test. CPU’s with higher core counts can often achieve much higher results than you would expect. Typically, a CPU like the 9900K is the best choice here and clearly, based on the graph that’s mostly true. However, overclocked, the 10980XE catches and surpasses the stock 9900K which is an impressive feat.
Hitman 2 (2019)
Hitman 2 is similar to Shadow of the Tomb Raider in that additional cores beyond the usual 8c/16t can be of some performance benefit. When clock speeds are increased as well, you can see large gains in performance. At stock speeds, the Prime X299 Edition 30 based system is slightly slower than the 9900K based system. Overclocked, it’s actually quite a bit faster with almost a 20FPS lead.
Destiny 2
Destiny 2’s performance is also interesting as HEDT systems can sometimes achieve better frame rates than their mainstream counterparts. What the graph doesn’t show is how the performance is more erratic when it comes to minimum and maximum frame rates. However, as you can see here, the average is much higher on the overclocked Prime X299 Edition 30 with the 10980XE. Almost 40FPS is gained through overclocking. Weirdly, I had always assumed memory bandwidth was the larger reason for this, but that doens’t seem to be the case as stock 10980XE and 9900K performance is pretty similar.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Ghost Recon Breakpoint is a controversial title for sure. However, it can be a gorgeous game with a large landscape and a ton of things going on. In this test, we can see the average performance favors the Core i9 9900K. The Prime X299 Edition 30 test system when overclocked can match the stock 3900X but falters slightly at stock speeds.