D&H BX80673I99900X

The 9900X posts a 21,554 multi-thread PassMark score, well above average for desktop CPUs. But the 165W TDP and 54.3 efficiency score mean you're paying for that performance in heat and power. At USD 168 it's a steal, at USD 500 it's a hard pass.

The 21,554 multi-thread PassMark score is the headline here. That's well above average for desktop CPUs in our database, and it translates to smooth 4K video editing, 3D rendering, and heavy multitasking. The 10 cores and 20 threads with Hyper-Threading give you real parallel muscle. AVX-512 support is a nice bonus for scientific workloads and some encoding tasks, though it'll push thermals hard.

Single-thread is where this chip shows its age. The 2,527 single-core score is solid but unremarkable, landing around the 70th percentile. The 4.4GHz boost clock helps, but Skylake-X's IPC is a generation behind newer architectures. For gaming at 4K where the GPU does most of the work, you won't notice much difference. For high-refresh 1080p gaming, a modern 6-core chip will often feel snappier. The quad-channel DDR4-2666 memory controller is a genuine strength for bandwidth-hungry workloads, though you'll need four sticks to take advantage of it.

Against the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the 9900X wins on raw core count but loses badly on gaming performance and efficiency. The 9800X3D's 3D V-Cache makes it a monster in games, while the 9900X's 2,527 single-thread score can't keep up. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is a more direct productivity comparison, with newer architecture and better efficiency, though it costs significantly more. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 is a budget alternative with far fewer cores but a much lower price. If you need PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 for fast storage, the 9900X's PCIe 3.0 support is a real limitation. For pure multi-threaded work on a budget, the 9900X still holds its own, but you're buying into a dead-end platform.

Value is where this chip gets complicated. The affordability score of 60.9 out of 100 puts it in the 27th percentile, which is rough. US pricing swings wildly from USD 168 to USD 500 across three listings, and that spread tells you the used market is all over the place. If you can snag one near the USD 168 end, it's a legitimate bargain for a 10-core chip with quad-channel memory. At USD 500, you're paying too much for 2018 silicon. European buyers face an even wider gap, with EUR prices ranging from EUR 727 to EUR 942 across four listings. The cheapest EUR option is still a tough sell when modern mid-range chips beat this in single-thread and efficiency.

The Core i9-9900X is a 10-core, 20-thread Skylake-X chip that still knows how to flex in multi-threaded workloads. Its PassMark multi-core score of 21,554 lands it in the 76th percentile of our database, which is well above average even by today's standards. Single-thread performance is more modest at 2,527, sitting at the 70th percentile. The 19.25MB of L3 cache and quad-channel DDR4-2666 support give it real bandwidth chops for content creation and heavy multitasking.

But this is a 14nm part with a 165W TDP, and the efficiency score of 54.3 out of 100 tells the story. You're getting strong productivity performance at the cost of heat and power draw. The platform score of 81 is solid, mostly because X299 boards are cheap on the used market now. Affordability is the real problem, landing in the 27th percentile. You'll pay a premium for this aging HEDT platform.

Skip this if you care about efficiency or single-thread performance. The 54.3 efficiency score is one of the weakest in our database, and the 2,527 single-thread PassMark score is just average. If you're building a new system, the LGA 2066 platform is a dead end with no upgrade path and PCIe 3.0 only. Gamers chasing high frame rates at 1080p should look elsewhere. And if you're paying anywhere near the USD 500 or EUR 942 end of the price range, you're overpaying for 2018 silicon.

The Core i9-9900X is a niche buy in 2025. If you find one cheap on the used market and already have an X299 board, it's a solid upgrade for multi-threaded productivity. The 21,554 PassMark score and quad-channel memory are genuinely useful for rendering and video work. But the 165W TDP, mediocre single-thread performance, and dead-end LGA 2066 platform make it hard to recommend as a new build. Most people are better off with a modern mid-range chip that costs less and runs cooler.