Intel teases i9-11900K's +11% lead over AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in PCMark 10 storage performance benchmark and a new CPU-Z run confirms the Rocket Lake chip's position as a single-core sovereign ^↺

The Intel Core i9-11900K has been showing its teeth in official and unofficial benchmark runs. Intel’s chief performance strategist, Ryan Shrout, shared a slide of the Rocket Lake-S part's performance against the fearsome AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. Also, another CPU-Z run for the i9-11900K has appeared that seemingly confirms the 11th Gen processor as the single-core monster to beat. While it is to be expected that AMD still generally holds a steel multi-core performance grip over Intel, as is highlighted below in the CPU-Z comparison, there are still many desktop PC builders who will focus on the single-core performance of a processor while also factoring in its purchase cost, power consumption, heat emissions, and actual availability.

The official i9-11900K teaser features a slide of results taken from PCMark 10 Quick System Drive Benchmark with the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X featuring as the antagonist here. Using the Ryzen 5000 part as a 1.00 baseline, the Intel Core i9-11900K managed 1.11, which is a +11% lead. Intel lists the particular systems used, with the Rocket Lake chip paired with an Asus Z590 ROG Maximus XIII Hero and the Ryzen 9 5950X using an Asus X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero board. The teaser, and the carefully constructed accompanying chart, is a very typical Intel maneuver: Vague cherry-picked benchmark comparison with an 8-core 125 W chip facing off against a 16-core 105 W processor. Unsurprisingly, commenters to Shrout’s post in regard to this particular synthetic benchmark result have been overwhelmingly skeptical. But a sort of a win is still a sort of a win.

As for the unofficial benchmark, an Intel Core i9-11900K sample was spotted on CPU-Z Validator after churning out a very high single-core score of 716 points. Apparently this was accomplished with stock settings, which certainly demonstrates how incredibly strong the top-end Rocket Lake CPU is in regard to single-core processing. Compared to Ryzen 5000 results compiled by VideoCardz, the i9-11900K’s score was +5.76% ahead of both the Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X, and it was +7.99% beyond the score of the Ryzen 7 5800X. But while the Intel processor could also keep up reasonably well with the latter AMD chip in terms of multi-core performance (+3.47% for the Ryzen 7 5800X), the two Ryzen 9 parts make use of their additional cores and blow the 8-core i9-11900K away: +49.38% Ryzen 9 5900X (12 cores); +88.55% Ryzen 9 5950X (16 cores).

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