Intel Core i9 13900K and Core i5 13600K review: an effective redoubt against AMD’s Ryzen 7000 advances

With AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips firmly on retailer cabinets, it is now time for Intel to shoot their shot. Crew Blue’s Thirteenth-gen chips arrive at present, and on paper they symbolize an enormous improve over Twelfth-gen regardless of compatibility with present Z690 (and new Z790) boards. You get greater clock speeds (as much as 5.8GHz!), extra effectivity cores, extra L3 cache and better energy targets – all of which you’d charitably count on to contribute to a major uptick in gaming and content material creation efficiency.

To find if these processors dwell as much as the hype, we have been testing the $589 Core i9 13900K and $319 Core i5 13600K in gaming and content material creation benchmarks since final week. Our plan stepping into was easy: to seek out out precisely how significantly better these Thirteenth-gen fashions are than their Twelfth-gen predecessors, in addition to how they measure as much as AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 and in style Ryzen 5000 alternate options – together with the wonderful Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

As with our Ryzen 7000 testing, we have opted to verify two RAM configurations for every new processor: DDR5-5200, representing ‘funds’ DDR5, and DDR5-6000, the AMD-identified candy spot for worth versus efficiency. We have additionally achieved some extra in-depth RAM testing on web page 5, exhibiting the utmost beneficial properties you possibly can count on to see from choosing specialist high-speed RAM over extra pedestrian fashions.

The 13900K and 13600K symbolize the higher and decrease bounds of the preliminary Raptor Lake vary – in any other case, there is a $409 Core i7 13700K within the center and ‘F’ variants that price $25 much less however do not embody built-in graphics. As standard, we count on to see cheaper Core i5 and Core i3 fashions afterward, the place we might see even higher worth propositions if Twelfth-gen is any indication.

Wanting on the specs supplied by Intel for the brand new Thirteenth-gen lineup, two issues bounce out at me. First, although Intel warned we would see greater costs, we solely see two fashions which might be costlier than their counterparts – the Core i5 fashions are $30 costlier, whereas the Core i7 and Core i9 elements are the identical worth. (Actual world costs might fluctuate, after all.) Secondly, the bounce in turbo frequencies is unbelievable – 200MHz greater for the Core i5, 400MHz for the Core i7 and 600MHz for the Core i9. That is a large enchancment provided that these chips are made utilizing the identical ‘Intel 7’ course of node.

At this stage, earlier than we dive into the content material creation benchmark outcomes, it is in all probability price briefly outlining what {hardware} we’re utilizing in our check sytem. Whereas we initially deliberate to check on the identical Z690 board we used for our Twelfth-gen testing, we had boot and XMP points with the Asus Z690 Maximus Hero board, even with the newest BIOS put in, and swapped as an alternative to a Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Grasp. This motherboard affords the entire options we search for – an influence button and boot code indicator on the motherboard itself, a quick-release PCIe slot, strong energy supply, 5 (!) NVMe slots, and naturally help for PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 RAM. (We have additionally acquired an Asus Z790-I Gaming WiFi board that can little doubt characteristic in subsequent testing, and an MSI board can be reportedly on the best way.) We’ll go into extra element concerning the motherboards we have been capable of check on web page six.

This new Aorus motherboard is mixed with high-spec G.Ability’s Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM, Corsair’s Dominator Platinum DDR5-5200 CL40 for supplementary testing and naturally Asus’ RTX 3090 ROG Strix OC for the all-important GPU facet of issues. For storage, we’re utilizing three PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs to carry all of our video games – a 4TB Kingston KC3000, a 1TB PNY XLR8 CS3140 and a 1TB Essential P5 Plus. Our rig was accomplished with a 1000W Corsair RM1000x energy provide.

Elsewhere, we used an Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero for Ryzen 5000 testing, an Asus ROG Maximus Z590 Hero for Eleventh-gen Intel testing and an Asus ROG Z690 Maximus Hero for Twelfth-gen testing; all of those are high-end boards for his or her respective platforms. DDR4 motherboards used G.Ability 3600MT/s CL16 reminiscence, the sweetspot for DDR4.

Earlier than we get into the gaming benchmarks that make up pages two to 5, let’s whet our urge for food with some fast and soiled content material creation benchmarks: a Cinebench R20 3D render and a Handbrake video transcode.

The 13900K is massively spectacular right here, finishing our H.265 (HEVR) transcode in three minutes and eight seconds – a brand new report – that works out to a median of 41.2fps, making the 13900K the primary to succeed in the 40s whereas the next-fastest CPU we have examined hasn’t even cracked 30fps. It does, nonetheless, draw an additional 100W in comparison with our Z690 system with the 12900K.

Nonetheless, in my ebook, I might say the uptick in energy consumption is price it, provided that your CPU will use a lot much less energy in non-AVX workloads like H.264 encoding or gaming; after all in gaming we might count on thread utilisation to even be considerably decrease. Intel’s claims of a extra environment friendly processor, efficiency per watt, is unquestionably borne out. Bear in mind that almost all motherboards default to working flat-out although, so you will notice greater energy draw from the 13900K and 13600K in comparison with 12900K and 12600K – one thing price altering within the BIOS in the event you’d favor a cooler, quieter system.

The 13600K additionally acquits itself properly, exhibiting higher single-core speeds than the 12900K and higher multi-core outcomes than the 12700K. The truth is, it is pretty near the 5950X whereas consuming across the similar quantity of energy, which is absurd for a Core i5. All-told, it is a 40 % benefit for the 13600K over its last-gen counterpart when it comes to each Cinebench and Handbrake – good.

Now, let’s get into the enjoyable stuff – the video games. We have examined a spread of titles, so pick your favourites from the hyperlinks under or simply hit that subsequent web page button to proceed the journey. Bear in mind, you get a particular prize for studying each web page of the evaluation..!

Intel Core i9 13900K and Core i5 13600K evaluation

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