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At our most "academic" resolution, 720p, which highlights CPU bottlenecks in a gaming PC, the mighty i9-9900K ends up just 2.6% faster than the i5-9600K. Across all our game resolutions, the i5-9600K stays ahead of all AMD processors in our bench, and more importantly, performs within 1–2% of the significantly pricier Core i7-9700K. When it comes to gaming, the i5-9600K is a "look no further" option for those who mainly game on their PC and don't use the same machine for making money (i.e., productivity that can leverage high multi-threaded processors).
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The new i5-9600K is consistently faster than the 2600X at gaming, in all resolutions, and stays ahead of it in all single-threaded and most multi-threaded CPU tests. Intel is right in its calculation that the Ryzen 5 2600X can be tackled by moderately increasing clock speeds over the i5-8600K without tinkering with the core configuration. It's a fantastic way to offset the cost of NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX graphics cards, which are relatively pricey, by choosing this processor over the pricier Core i7-9700K, or even the i9-9900K, but more on that later.
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The Core i5-9600K should bring a smile to the faces of PC gamers.
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