Performance Analysis

The evidence in HandBrake wasn't particularly convincing with just five seconds shaved off the encoding time, but that's still around five percent extra performance. In a 20-minute-long encoding task that's an extra minute you won't be hanging around. PCMark 10's image-editing test saw a more reasonable 400 points added, which equates to around 12 percent extra performance, while Cinebench was back to single figures with a rise of five percent.

With our GTX 1080 at the helm, the Core i5-9500 had already maxed out our system in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, with the only major separation here being between AMD and Intel in general. Far Cry 5 seems to love a mix of high frequencies and core counts and here there was a small difference between the two six-core Core i5 CPUs, with the Core i5-9500 edging out a 2fps lead on minimum frame rate and 5fps lead on the average. Again, though, not really worth writing home about and it was a similar story in 3DMark TimeSpy and VRMark tests too, while the faster CPU only drew a handful more watt from the wall under load.

Conclusion

In games, there's little evidence that spending the extra over the pesky Core i5-9400F is worth it so for a pure-gaming system, the Core i5-9500 doesn't really make sense compared to the cheaper F-series model, which is also a better choice than £150-200 AMD CPUs for that specific requirement. Outside of gaming things are less clear-cut, with the added clock speeds amounting to some noticeable gains. However, outside of lengthy video-editing exports, it's unlikely you'd notice the difference - certainly not to warrant spending this much more. 

There's another issue, though, which is whether you'll be using the onboard graphics and perhaps specific features of the UHD Graphics 630 IGP such as Quick Sync Video. If you won't be using a discrete graphics card then the Core i5-9500 is actually a better option than the Core i5-9400 given it costs just a fraction more. For AMD, of course, you'll need a discrete GPU to even power up your system, meaning that despite lower cost of something like a Ryzen 5 2600X, the total system cost will likely be higher. Sure, the AMD CPU is quicker still, but you'd be paying more for it overall. In summary, then, the Intel Core i5-9500 does have one or two areas of niche appeal, but the Core i5-9400F is still where your money should be going for a stock-speed gaming-focussed six-core CPU.