Intel Core i9-9900T scores up to 11% more than the Ryzen 7 2700X in Geekbench with 3x lower TDP; comparable single-core performance to the Core i7-8700

Intel launched the Core i9-9900T last quarter, but the processor remains hard to come purchase. While Intel UK directs people to Insight Direct, a UK retailer, which sells the processor for £397.99 (~US$487.30) ex VAT and £477.59 (~US$584.76) including VAT, the Core i9-9900T appears to be unavailable to order in the US. Incidentally, Intel lists its Recommend Customer Price (RCP) at US$439, although do not confuse this with RRP as Intel specifies RCP as applying to "direct Intel customers" that bulk buy CPUs.

So, while the Core i9-9900T product page lists all its vital specifications like thermal design power (TDP), clock speeds and confirms that it supports Hyper-Threading among other Intel technologies, no website appears to have gotten their hands on a unit, including us. However, someone has been benchmarking the CPU on Geekbench, with five listings recently appearing on the website.

Geekbench confirms that the 35 W chip has 16 threads, a 2.1 GHz base clock and can reach 4.4 GHz. All benchmarks were conducted using an ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard and 65 GB of DDR4 RAM. for reference. The only variable among these benchmarks appears to be the RAM speed, with it being clocked at 1,334 MHz, 1,600 MHz and 1,734 MHz. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Core i9-9900T achieved higher Geekbench scores at higher RAM speeds.

Multicore scores fluctuate between 27,147 and 28,893 points, with it averaging 28,077. This puts the Core i9-9900T well ahead of the Core i7-8700K and the Ryzen 7 2700X according to our database, which average 25,045 and 25,919 points respectively. Both processors have around 3x the TDP of the Core i9-9900T, putting the result into perspective somewhat. It is worth keeping in mind that the Ryzen 7 2700X is an 8 core and 16 thread CPU whereas the Core i7-8700K has 2 fewer cores and so can execute a maximum of 4 fewer threads. By contrast, the Core i9-9900T trails the Core i9-9900K by around 14% in multicore workloads.

The Core i9-9900T narrows the gap to its more powerful sibling in the single-core portion of Geekbench, although it still falls around 12% on 5,407 points. The same is the case with the Core i7-8700K, which edges the Core i9-9900T by 6% in the same benchmark. The Core i7-8700, meanwhile, sits at 5,565 points in our database, just 2% ahead of the Core i9-9900T. Conversely, the Ryzen 7 2700X drops 8% behind the Core i9-9900T.

Overall, the Core i9-9900T seems like a big upgrade over the Core i5-8500T, the last 35 W T series processor we reviewed. The latter scored 4,626 in Geekbench's single-core benchmark, a deficit of around 15% to the Core i9-9900T. It also scores about 35% less than the Core i9-9900T in the multicore equivalent too. The latter is unsurprising though, considering that the Core i5-8500T has two fewer cores than the Core i9-9900T and does not support Hyper-Threading.