Essentially, Intel published this summary graphic in their Bean Canyon launch presentation:
Needless to say, Techspot, https://www.techspot.com/article/1722-misleading-core-i9-9900k-benchmarks/ called them out on it. Overloading the AMD test system with additional RAM modules, using slower RAM speeds and looser timings, using an inferior cooler, as well as other things. In Techspot's words:
The results and testing methods are heavily biased, but they haven’t attempted to hide their dodgy methods. You can dig into the specs and find all the details, it’s still dodgy but it’s a paid report, so it’s somewhat expected.
They also called out PCGamesN for taking the story at face value and running full speed with it, with them having this statement in their article:
"But the real point of all this is for Intel to be able to hold out the 9900K as hands down the best gaming processor compared with the AMD competition, and in that it seems to have excelled. On some games, such as Civ 6 and PUBG, the performance delta isn’t necessarily that great, but for the most part you’re looking at between 30 and 50% higher frame rates from the 9900K versus the 2700X."
What makes this really dangerous is the fact that no doubt someone from AMD will have reported this jumped conclusion to the marketing team, the people who let the reputable third parties have early access to their products so they can publish unbiased reviews, so by making such a claim using very flawed testing methods, they could endanger their relationship with AMD.
It also serves as another reminder to -never- trust any first party benchmark, and to -never- obtain product information and reviews from a single source.
