Intel Core i9-9880H vs Intel Core i9-8950HK – battle of the Core i9s

Naturally, we are going to test the new Core i9-9880H to its predecessor – the Core i9-8950HK. With the introduction of Core i9 to the laptop markets last year, Intel brought an enormous headache to the notebook manufacturers, mostly due to the difficulty of cooling the processor. This year’s iteration has taken a slightly different approach, bringing laptop computing on another level. However, do the two added cores make up for the lack of overclockability?

Visit our Top Laptop CPU Ranking to check these two and many more CPUs.

Specs overview

Both of today’s competitors are using 45W of power and are built around a 14nm manufacturing process. As we mentioned, the Core i9-9880H features eight cores and sixteen threads, while the Core i9-8950HK has “only” six cores and twelve threads. However, the latter has a higher base frequency than the former – 2.80 GHz vs 2.30 GHz, while both of them have a maximum Turbo clock speed of 4.80 GHz. Additionally, the Core i9-9880H has 16MB of Cache, whereas the Core i9-8950HK has 12MB.

When it comes to memory, the newer architecture of the Core i9-9880H supports up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM at 2666 MHz, with the amount being twice less for the Core i9-8950HK – 64GB of the same type and speed. Lastly, they have the same Intel UHD Graphics 630 on board.

You can check out the full specs of the Intel Core i9-9880H and the Intel Core i9-8950HK.

Benchmarks

According to the synthetic benchmarks, the Intel Core i9-9880H has a clear advantage of around 10% over the Core i9-8950HK.

Results are from the Cinebench 20 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)


Conclusion

Interestingly, the Core i9-9880H is only 10% faster than its competitor, even though it features 33% more cores. This means that the higher Base frequency of the Core i9-8950HK is making the difference indeed. However, we expect the difference to be greater if you put them side by side in a laptop that has the necessary cooling capacity. At the same time, the Core i9-8950HK is still an overclockable processor. By the way, we have the Core i9-9880H compared to the Core i9-9900K, so make sure you don’t miss it!

All laptops equipped with the Intel Core i9-9880H

All laptops equipped with the Intel Core i9-8950HK

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