With AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips firmly on the shelves, it’s time for Intel to shoot. Team Blue’s 13th-gen chips arrive today, and while compatible with existing Z690 (and new Z790) boards, they represent, on paper, a huge upgrade over the 12th-gen. You’ll get higher clock speeds (up to 5.8GHz!), more efficient cores, more L3 cache, and higher power targets – all of which will help significantly improve gaming and content creation performance.
To see if these processors live up to the hype, we tested the $589 Core i9 13900K and $319 Core i5 13600K in gaming and content creation benchmarks from last week. Our plan is simple: find out just how much better these 13th Gen models are than their 12th Gen predecessors, and how they measure up against AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 and popular Ryzen 5000 alternatives – including the excellent Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
As with our Ryzen 7000 tests, we chose to examine two RAM configurations for each new processor: DDR5-5200 (which stands for “budget” DDR5) and DDR5-6000 (AMD’s determined price-performance sweet spot). We also did some more in-depth RAM testing on page 5, showing the biggest gains from opting for pro high-speed RAM over more pedestrian models.
The 13900K and 13600K represent the upper and lower end of the initial Raptor Lake lineup—otherwise, there’s the $409 Core i7 13700K and “F” variants in the middle for $25 less, excluding integrated graphics. As usual, we expect to see cheaper Core i5 and Core i3 models later, and if the 12th gen is any indication, we could see a better value proposition.
Looking at the specs Intel has provided for the new 13th Gen lineup, two things caught my eye. First, despite Intel’s warnings that we might see higher prices, we’ve only seen two models that are more expensive than their counterparts — the Core i5 model is $30 more expensive, while the Core i7 and Core i9 parts cost the same. (Of course, real-world prices may vary.) Second, the leap in turbo frequency is incredible—200MHz higher for the Core i5, 400MHz higher for the Core i7, and 600MHz higher for the Core i9. Given that these chips are made using the same “Intel 7” process node, that’s a huge improvement.
| processor | Color(P/E) | thread | P max turbo | E max turbo | Smart Cache | cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i9-13900K | 24 (8P/16E) | 32 | 5.8GHz | 4.3GHz | 36MB | $589 |
| i9-13900KF | 24 (8P/16E) | 32 | 5.8GHz | 4.3GHz | 36MB | $564 |
| i7-13700K | 16 (8P/8E) | twenty four | 5.4GHz | 4.2GHz | 30MB | $409 |
| i7-13700KF | 16 (8P/8E) | twenty four | 5.4GHz | 4.2GHz | 30MB | $384 |
| i5-13600K | 14 (6P/8E) | 20 | 5.1GHz | 3.9GHz | 24MB | $319 |
| i5-13600KF | 14 (6P/8E) | 20 | 5.1GHz | 3.9GHz | 24MB | $294 |
| i9-12900K | 16 (8P/8E) | twenty four | 5.2GHz | 3.9GHz | 30MB | $589 |
| i9-12900KF | 16 (8P/8E) | twenty four | 5.2GHz | 3.9GHz | 30MB | $564 |
| i7-12700K | 12 (8P/4E) | 20 | 5.0GHz | 3.8GHz | 25MB | $409 |
| i7-12700KF | 12 (8P/4E) | 20 | 5.0GHz | 3.8GHz | 25MB | $384 |
| i5-12600K | 10 (6P/4E) | 16 | 4.9GHz | 3.6GHz | 20MB | $289 |
| i5-12600KF | 10 (6P/4E) | 16 | 4.9GHz | 3.6GHz | 20MB | $264 |
At this stage, before we dive into the content creation benchmark results, it may be worthwhile to give a brief overview of the hardware we used in our test system. While we originally planned to test on the same Z690 motherboard we used for our 12th Gen testing, we experienced boot and XMP issues on an Asus Z690 Maximus Hero motherboard, even with the latest BIOS installed and a Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master. This motherboard offers all the features we were looking for – power button and boot code indicator on the motherboard itself, quick-release PCIe slots, robust power delivery, five(!) NVMe slots, and of course PCIe support 5.0 and DDR5 memory. (We also received an Asus Z790-I Gaming WiFi board, which will no doubt be used in follow-up testing, and a MSI board is also reportedly in development.) We’ll detail the boards we were able to test on page six.
This new Aorus motherboard combines high-spec G.Skill’s Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM, Corsair’s Dominator Platinum DDR5-5200 CL40 for supplemental testing, and of course Asus’ RTX 3090 ROG Strix OC for the most important GPU side of things. For storage, we use three PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs to hold all our games – a 4TB Kingston KC3000, a 1TB PNY XLR8 CS3140, and a 1TB Crucial P5 Plus. Our rig was equipped with a 1000W Corsair RM1000x power supply.
Elsewhere, we used the Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero for the Ryzen 5000 test, the Asus ROG Maximus Z590 Hero for the 11th Gen Intel test, and the Asus ROG Z690 Maximus Hero for the 12th Gen test; all are high-end boards for their respective platforms . DDR4 motherboard uses G.Skill 3600MT/s CL16 memory, which is the best choice for DDR4.
Before we get into the gaming benchmarks that make up pages two through five, let’s whet our appetites with some quick-and-dirty benchmarks: Cinebench R20 3D rendering and Handbrake video transcoding.
The 13900K was impressive here, completing our H.265 (HEVR) transcode in 3 minutes and 8 seconds – a new record – at an average of 41.2fps, bringing the 13900K to 40 seconds for the first and the next – our The fastest CPU tested didn’t even hit 30fps. However, it does consume 100W more than the Z690 system with the 12900K.
In my book, though, I think the increase in power consumption is worth it because your CPU uses much less power in non-AVX workloads like H.264 encoding or gaming; of course, in gaming, we Thread utilization is also expected to decrease significantly. Intel’s claims of a more efficient processor, performance per watt, are certainly confirmed. Note though that most motherboards default to full speed, so you’ll see the 13900K and 13600K draw more power compared to the 12900K and 12600K – worth it in the BIOS if you want a cooler, quieter system make changes.
| CB R20 1T | CB R20 metric tons | HB h.264 | HB HEVC | HEVC power usage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i9 13900K | 873 | 15570 | 104.67fps | 41.20fps | 473W |
| Core i5 13600K | 767 | 9267 | 62.37fps | 26.44fps | 254W |
| Core i9 12900K | 760 | 10416 | 70.82fps | 29.26fps | 373W |
| Core i7 12700K | 729 | 8683 | 57.64fps | 25.67 frames per second | 318W |
| Core i5 12600K | 716 | 6598 | 44.27fps | 19.99 frames per second | 223W |
| Core i5 12400F | 652 | 4736 | 31.77fps | 14.70fps | 190W |
| Core i9 11900K | 588 | 5902 | 41.01fps | 18.46fps | 321W |
| Core i5 11600K | 541 | 4086 | 29.00 frames/sec | 13.12fps | 250W |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | 791 | 11324 | 79.38fps | 33.77fps | 288W |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | 750 | 6063 | 44.35fps | 20.28fps | 236W |
| Ryzen 9 5950X | 637 | 10165 | 70.28fps | 30.14fps | 237W |
| Ryzen 7 5800X3D | 546 | 5746 | 42.71fps | 19.10fps | 221W |
| Ryzen 7 5800X | 596 | 6118 | 44.18fps | 19.50fps | 229W |
| Ryzen 5 5600X | 601 | 4502 | 31.75fps | 14.43fps | 160W |
The 13600K also performed well, with single-core speeds better than the 12900K and multi-core results better than the 12700K. In fact, it’s pretty close to the 5950X while consuming about the same amount of power, which is ridiculous for a Core i5. All in all, in terms of Cinebench and Handbrake, the 13600K has a 40% advantage over its previous-gen counterparts—good.
Now, let’s get into the fun stuff – games. We’ve tested a range of titles, so pick your favorite from the links below, or just hit the next page button to continue your journey. Remember, you get a special prize for reading every page of the review..!
