Intel Core i5-13400F: Best price/perf ratio, questionable for games

Test setup

Thanks to the addition of E cores even in the lowest Core i5 Raptor Lake models (13400F and 13400), the raw performance between generations has advanced the most in years. However, the improvement may not always happen, the relatively small number of performance ones (P) combined with the lower Turbo Boost 2.0 clock speeds some games don’t like, and when they reach for E cores, the concept of big.LITTLE is at once detrimental.

Test setup

Noctua NH-U14S cooler
Kingston Fury Beast memory (2× 16 GB, 5200 MHz/CL40)
MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio graphics card
2× SSD Patriot Viper VPN100 (512 GB + 2 TB)
BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro 12 1200 W PSU

* We use the following BIOSes on motherboards. For Asus ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi v0502, MSI MEG X670E Ace v1.10NPRP, for MEG X570 Ace v1E, for MEG Z690 Unify v10, for MAG Z690 Tomahawk WiFi DDR4 v11, for MEG Z590 Ace v1.14 and for MEG Z490 Ace v17.

Note: The graphics drivers we use are Nvidia GeForce 466.77 and the Windows 10 OS build is 19045 at the time of testing.

Processors of other platforms are tested on MSI MEG Z690 Unify, MAG Z490 Tomahawk WiFi DDR4, Z590 Ace and Z490 Ace motherboards, MEG Z690 Unify (all Intel) and MEG X570 Ace, MEG X670E Ace (AMD).

      

      

On platforms supporting DDR5 memory, we use two different sets of modules. For more powerful processors with an “X” (AMD) or “K” (Intel) in the name, we use the faster G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo memory (2×16 GB, 6000 MHz/CL30). In the case of cheaper processors (without X or K at the end of the name), the slower Kingston Fury Beast modules (2×16 GB, 5200 MHz/CL40). But this is more or less just symbolic, the bandwidth is very high for both kits, it is not a bottleneck, and the difference in processor performance is very small, practically negligible, across the differently fast memory kits.


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Comments (3) Add comment

  1. I wonder how the gaming results, especially power consumption, would look with E-cores turned off. Also, whether the Raptor Lake stepping has any performance advantage over Alder Lake one.

    1. After all, it seems that it might not be so easy to get Ci5-13400F in stepping B0. Big domestic shops (on the Czech-Slovak market) have only stepping C0 available, but we believe that sooner or later at least one piece will appear for testing. The availability of the variant based on Raptor Cove will probably be very low.

      When we were looking for Ci5-12400 stepping H0 last year, they were also in the minority, but there were still some, about in 40/60 ratio (H0/C0). It’s worse over here, and Intel is obviously trying to use as many B0 “silicon” as possible for more powerful processors.

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