Looks like OC 8700K and 9700K/9900K still rule the roost for 1080p high refresh rate gaming, but outside of that niche are increasingly harder to justify.
I am not so sure about the 8700K. One thing is clear: had TSMC 7nm worked out well enough to allow boosting to 4.5 GHz (or higher) on a regular basis or if future UEFI updates allow this for Matisse, Matisse will start winning more gaming benchmarks.
Boosting to 4.3 GHz is not really going to be enough.
And I will freely admit, I bought into some of the non-Adored hype about 8c Matisse hitting all core clocks of 4.6-4.7 GHz and 6c/12c chips hitting maybe 4.8-5.0 GHz with good cooling. I want to see more OC results from non-review samples, but der8auer put to rest any hope of those clocks being attainable. 4.4 GHz looks like the ceiling, up a mere 100 MHz from GF 12nm.
Which doesn't really change the status quo at all.
I disagree. The lowly 3700x is way too close to a stock 9900k for Intel's comfort. You can go out and basically match the 9900k for $329. I would not be surprised if someone shows up doing this on one of the better B450 boards once they sort out the UEFI issue. There is almost 0 reason to buy a 9900k now, unless you are absolutely confident you are going to hit 5 GHz all-core and keep it there. Despite the 3700x needing more cooling than its 65W TDP would indicate, it still requires less than the 5 GHz 9900k.
If you look at most reviews, they pair the Intels with 2666 and don't have MCE/ACE enabled.
PBO isn't working yet, that's why. I'm not sure Matisse gains that much from running faster RAM either. But they're sticking with DDR4-2666 on Intel systems because that is what is "officially" supported for stock operation. Agree or disagree, that's what a user will get if they never go into the UEFI to tweak anything, enable XMP, etc.
Like a 3600x+470+RTX2060 would be cheaper and better than a 9700k+z390+1660.
3600x + x470 wouldn't be that much faster than 3600 + B450 either. Not if you're running stock. You could save more money and get into a card nicer than a 2060.