Intel Core i9-13900K review: Biggest predator in the lake

Performance per watt

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Intel Core i9-13900K in detail

Intel Raptor Lake processors have a lot in common with older Alder Lake processors, but they differ in some details. In any case, this is an evolutionary generation of processors, the second from Intel, which is built on the concept of big.LITTLE, a symbiosis of large cores (Golden Cove) and small cores (Gracemont).

The manufacturing process is still 7 nm (Intel 7), as with Alder Lake processors, but it is an improved version of it. At one time Intel would have marked it with a “+” sign, but now they refer to this manufacturing process as Intel 7 Ultra. Meanwhile, Intel states that 200 MHz higher clock speeds are achieved at the same voltage, or the same clock speeds are achieved at 50 mV lower voltage.

Thanks to this, among other things, Raptor Lake has significantly higher clock speeds. The Core i9-13900K processor, which is the subject of the tests in this article, is 600 MHz faster than its predecessor (Ci9-12900K) on all cores (i.e. on both “P” and “E”) in both single-threaded (5.8 GHz) and multi-threaded (5.5 GHz) workloads.

The increase in clock speeds is not the only reason for significantly higher performance. From the point of view of applications that can use all threads, this is mainly due to the increase in the number of “effective” (E) cores. The Ci9-13900K has twice as many of these compared to the Ci9-12900K – 16. Together with the 8 “efficient” cores with Hyper Threading (two threads per core), this gives a total of 32 threads. And in addition to all this, possibly 350 W.

TDP/PL1 hasn’t changed, it remains at 125W, but the more benevolent power limit (PL2), which is bound to 5.5GHz, is slightly higher (253 W) than that of the Ci9-12900K, and on paper it goes back to the Core i9 Rocket (11900K – 251W) and Comer Lake (10900K – 250W). Also returning from the Rocket Lake generation is support for Adaptive and Thermal Velocity Boost, which manages clock speeds in multi-threaded (ABT) and single-threaded (TVB) workloads based on temperature.

The Core i9-13900K, like all other “125W” Intel Raptor Lake processors, has a larger L2 cache for the P cores. Instead of 1.25 MB (Alder Lake), it has 2 MB per core. For the small E cores, the increase is double, to 4 MB. However, in the case of the E cores, it is a shared cache that is used by four cores.

Also new is official support for faster DDR5 memory, from DDR5-4800 (Alder Lake) to DDR5-5600 (Raptor Lake). As always, selected modules will also run at higher speeds with higher bandwidth on select boards. The advantage over AMD Ryzen 7000 processors comes from retaining the dual memory controller, which also supports slower, but most importantly still significantly cheaper DDR4 memory.

One of the things that hasn’t changed is connectivity. Intel Raptor Lake processors also have a PCI Express 5.0×16-enabled controller in them, which is designed to connect graphics cards. These lanes can be split into ×8/×8 for two slots. Notably, Raptor Lake doesn’t have the PCIe 5.0 interface for SSDs (NVMe), and the same interface as Alder Lake processors – PCIe 4.0 ×4 – is brought out to connect them.

Windows 10 can be, but the latest

The traditional, much talked about topic – operating system support. The thread scheduler in Windows 11 is apparently better optimized for big.LITTLE and allocates specific thread types more appropriately for specific tasks. But that doesn’t mean that you necessarily suffer any performance hit under Windows 10 by the scheduler not properly recognizing threads and assigning more demanding tasks to slower, efficient ones. That happens sometimes, of course, but those cases are in the overwhelming minority.

In the hundreds of tests on which our methodology is based, these are situations when encoding video with the x264 encoder in HandBrake (this is also the case in the latest version 1.5.1 at the time of writing), computing Stockfish 13 chess combinations, and the entire workload is allocated to E cores also in yCruncher. We therefore omit these tests with big.LITTLE so as not to mislead in the graphs. You can work around this by forcing a higher affinity and the processor will go to full power, but this is a rather non-standard operation outside the user comfort and therefore we take it that under Windows 10 these apps are “unusable”.

You may have noticed that the solution is to change the power plan in the control panel from “balanced” to “maximum power”, but based on our experience we have to note that this is not a solution and the whole thing behaves very strangely. For a while, after the test has started, it does get that power on the P cores, but only for a very short time. The performance trend is also well reflected by this power draw curve in x264 encoding (HandBrake), where there is a good ramp-up (P cores are fully engaged), but after a few seconds the power draw drops dramatically and ends up at the level of E cores.

We will investigate this further, but for now the interim view is that the maximum power plan is not very helpful. But again, CPUs run at full power most of the time under Windows 10 as well. Although it’s important to note some degradation compared to the Core i9-12900K. This happens typically with older OS builds and in games.

With the 21H2 build of W10, performance in some games was far behind expectations, and with the 22H2 build there is a significant performance improvement (especially in CS:GO and DOOM Eternal). Still, it looks like there is some limitation in games under Windows 10 after all. We’ll find that out as we move to W11 and map everything out in detail.

The reason we still test processors under Windows 10 is that we prefer a more stable platform that is not significantly affected by updates over time, as may be the case with Windows 11.This is, of course, a hypothesis, but a fairly logical one. From big.LITTE’s point of view, it is indeed a disadvantage that the work on W10 is “already finished”, but at least it does not change the testing environment that much and the consistency of the results is certainly much better than starting on W11, which still has a lot of major adjustments to make that change the overhead from the processors’ point of view.

But we will test Meteor Lake on Windows 11 with the fact that we will gradually measure Raptor Lake and see how the change of the operating system will affect the results of other processors, what will and what will not need to be discarded from the comparison charts and so on. So that’s it from our side on the issues around how we see the operating systems in the processor tests. One more overview of the complete Core i9-13900K parameters and you can move on to the measurements you’re after.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Gaming tests

We test performance in games in four resolutions with different graphics settings. To warm up, there is more or less a theoretical resolution of 1280 × 720 px. We had been tweaking graphics settings for this resolution for a long time. We finally decided to go for the lowest possible (Low, Lowest, Ultra Low, …) settings that a game allows.
One could argue that a processor does not calculate how many objects are drawn in such settings (so-called draw calls). However, with high detail at this very low resolution, there was not much difference in performance compared to FHD (which we also test). On the contrary, the GPU load was clearly higher, and this impractical setting should demonstrate the performance of a processor with the lowest possible participation of a graphics card.
At higher resolutions, high settings (for FHD and QHD) and highest (for UHD) are used. In Full HD it’s usually with Anti-Aliasing turned off, but overall, these are relatively practical settings that are commonly used.

The selection of games was made considering the diversity of genres, player popularity and processor performance requirements. For a complete list, see Chapters 7–16. A built-in benchmark is used when a game has one, otherwise we have created our own scenes, which we always repeat with each processor in the same way. We use OCAT to record fps, or the times of individual frames, from which fps are then calculated, and FLAT to analyze CSV. Both were developed by the author of articles (and videos) from GPUreport.cz. For the highest possible accuracy, all runs are repeated three times and the average values of average and minimum fps are drawn in the graphs. These multiple repetitions also apply to non-gaming tests.

Computing tests

Let’s start lightly with PCMark 10, which tests more than sixty sub-tasks in various applications as part of a complete set of “benchmarks for a modern office”. It then sorts them into fewer thematic categories and for the best possible overview we include the gained points from them in the graphs. Lighter test tasks are also represented by tests in a web browser – Speedometer and Octane. Other tests usually represent higher load or are aimed at advanced users.
We test the 3D rendering performance in Cinebench. In R20, where the results are more widespread, but mainly in R23. Rendering in this version takes longer with each processor, cycles of at least ten minutes. We also test 3D rendering in Blender, with the Cycles render in the BMW and Classroom projects. You can also compare the latter with the test results of graphics cards (contains the same number of tiles).
We test how processors perform in video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve Studio 17. We use a PugetBench plugin, which deals with all the tasks you may encounter when editing videos. We also use PugetBench services in Adobe After Effects, where the performance of creating graphic effects is tested. Some subtasks use GPU acceleration, but we never turn it off, as no one will do it in practice. Some things don’t even work without GPU acceleration, but on the contrary, it’s interesting to see that the performance in the tasks accelerated by the graphics card also varies as some operations are still serviced by the CPU.

We test video encoding under SVT-AV1, in HandBrake and benchmarks (x264 HD and HWBot x265). x264 HD benchmark works in 32-bit mode (we did not manage to run 64-bit consistently on W10 and in general on newer OS’s it may be unstable and show errors in video). In HandBrake we use the x264 processor encoder for AVC and x265 for HEVC. Detailed settings of individual profiles can be found in the corresponding chapter 25. In addition to video, we also encode audio, where all the details are also stated in the chapter of these tests. Gamers who record their gameplay on video can also have to do with the performance of processor encoders. Therefore, we also test the performance of “processor broadcasting” in two popular applications OBS Studio and Xsplit.
We also have two chapters dedicated to photo editing performance. Adobe has a separate one, where we test Photoshop via PugetBench. However, we do not use PugetBench in Lightroom, because it requires various OS modifications for stable operation, and overall we rather avoided it (due to the higher risk of complications) and create our own test scenes. Both are CPU intensive, whether it’s exporting RAW files to 16-bit TIFF with ProPhotoRGB color space or generating 1:1 thumbnails of 42 lossless CR2 photos.
However, we also have several alternative photo editing applications in which we test CPU performance. These include Affinity Photo, in which we use a built-in benchmark, or XnViewMP for batch photo editing or ZPS X. Of the truly modern ones, there are three Topaz Labz applications that use AI algorithms. DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI. Topaz Labs often and happily compares its results with Adobe applications (Photoshop and Lightroom) and boasts of better results. So we’ll see, maybe we’ll get into it from the image point of view sometime. In processor tests, however, we are primarily focused on performance.

We test compression and decompression performance in WinRAR, 7-Zip and Aida64 (Zlib) benchmarks, decryption in TrueCrypt and Aida64, where in addition to AES there are also SHA3 tests. In Aida64, we also test FPU in the chapter of mathematical calculations. From this category you may also be interested in the results of Stockfish 13 and the number of chess combinations achieved per unit time. We perform many tests that can be included in the category of mathematics in SPECworkstation 3.1. It is a set of professional applications extending to various simulations, such as LAMMPS or NAMD, which are molecular simulators. A detailed description of the tests from SPECworkstation 3.1 can be found at spec.org. We do not test 7-zip, Blender and HandBrake from the list for redundancy, because we test performance in them separately in applications. A detailed listing of SPECWS results usually represents times or fps, but we graph “SPEC ratio”, which represents gained points—higher means better.

Processor settings…

We test processors in the default settings, without active PBO2 (AMD) or ABT (Intel) technologies, but naturally with active XMP 2.0.

… and app updates

The tests should also take into account that, over time, individual updates may affect performance comparisons. Some applications are used in portable versions, which are not updated or can be kept on a stable version, but this is not the case for some others. Typically, games update over time. On the other hand, even intentional obsolescence (and testing something out of date that already behaves differently) would not be entirely the way to go.
In short, just take into account that the accuracy of the results you are comparing decreases a bit over time. To make this analysis easier for you, we indicate when each processor was tested. You can find this in the dialog box, where there is information about the test date of each processor. This dialog box appears in interactive graphs, just hover the mouse cursor over any bar.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Methodology: how we measure power draw

Measuring CPU power consumption is relatively simple, much easier than with graphics cards. All power goes through one or two EPS cables. We also use two to increase the cross-section, which is suitable for high performance AMD processors up to sTR(X)4 or for Intel HEDT, and in fact almost for mainstream processors as well. We have Prova 15 current probes to measure current directly on the wires. This is a much more accurate and reliable way of measuring than relying on internal sensors.
The only limitation of our current probes may be when testing the most powerful processors. These already exceed the maximum range of 30 A, at which high accuracy is guaranteed. For most processors, the range is optimal (even for measuring a lower load, when the probes can be switched to a lower and more accurate range of 4 A), but we will test models with power consumption over 360 W on our own device, a prototype of which we have already built. Its measuring range will no longer be limiting, but for the time being we will be using the Prova probes in the near future.

The probes are properly set to zero and connected to a UNI-T UT71E multimeter before each measurement. It records samples of current values during the tests via the IR-USB interface and writes them in a table at one-second intervals. We can then create bar graphs with power consumption patterns. But we always write average values in bar graphs. Measurements take place in various load modes. The lowest represents an idle Windows 10 desktop. This measurement takes place on a system that had been idle for quite some time.

Audio encoding (FLAC) represents a higher load, but processors use only one core or one thread for this. Higher loads, where more cores are involved, are games. We test power consumption in F1 2020, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Total War Saga: Troy in 1920 × 1080 px. In this resolution, the power consumption is usually the highest or at least similar to that in lower or higher resolutions, where in most cases the CPU power draw rather decreases due to its lower utilization.
Like most motherboard manufacturers, we too ignore the time limit for “Tau”, after which the power consumption is to be reduced from the PL2 boost limit (when it exceeds the TDP) to the TDP/PL1 value, recommended by Intel, in our tests. This means that neither the power draw nor the clock speed after 56 seconds of higher load does not decrease and the performance is kept stable with just small fluctuations. We had been considering whether or not to respect the Tau. In the end, we decided not to because the vast majority of users won’t either, and therefore the results and comparisons would be relatively uninteresting. The solution would be to test with and without a power limit, but this is no longer possible due to time requirements. We will pay more attention to the behavior of PL2 in motherboard tests, where it makes more sense.
We always use motherboards with extremely robust, efficient VRM, so that the losses on MOSFETs distort the measured results as little as possible and the test setups are powered by a high-end 1200 W BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro 12 power supply. It is strong enough to supply every processor, even with a fully loaded GeForce RTX 3080, and at the same time achieves above-standard efficiency even at lower load. For a complete overview of test setup components, see Chapter 5 of this article.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests

When choosing a cooler, we eventually opted for Noctua NH-U14S. It has a high performance and at the same time there is also the TR4-SP3 variant designed for Threadripper processors. It differs only by the base, the radiator is otherwise the same, so it will be possible to test and compare all processors under the same conditions. The fan on the NH-U14S cooler is set to a maximum speed of 1,535 rpm during all tests.
Measurements always take place on a bench-wall in a wind tunnel which simulates a computer case, with the difference that we have more control over it.
System cooling consists of four Noctua NF-S12A PWM fans, which are in an equilibrium ratio of two at the inlet and two at the outlet. Their speed is set at a fixed 535 rpm, which is a relatively practical speed that is not needed to be exceeded. In short, this should be the optimal configuration based on our tests of various system cooling settings.

It is also important to maintain the same air temperature around the processors. Of course, this also changes with regard to how much heat a particular processor produces, but at the inlet of the tunnel it must always be the same for accurate comparisons. In our air-conditioned test lab, it is currently in the range of 21–21.3 °C.
Maintaining a constant inlet temperature is necessary not only for a proper comparison of processor temperatures, but especially for unbiased performance comparisons. Trend of clock speed and especially single-core boost depends on the temperature. In the summer at higher temperatures, processors may be slower in living spaces than in the winter.

For Intel processors, we register the maximum core temperature for each test, usually of all cores. These maximum values are then averaged and the result is represented by the final value in the graph. From the outputs of single-threaded load, we only pick the registered values from active cores (these are usually two and alternate during the test). It’s a little different with AMD processors. They don’t have temperature sensors for every core. In order for the procedure to be as methodically as possible similar to that applied on Intel processors, the average temperature of all cores is defined by the highest value reported by the CPU Tdie sensor (average). For single-threaded load, however, we already use a CPU sensor (Tctl/Tdie), which usually reports a slightly higher value, which better corresponds to the hotspots of one or two cores. But these values as well as the values from all internal sensors must be taken with a grain of salt, the accuracy of the sensors varies across processors.
Clock speed evaluation is more accurate, each core has its own sensor even on AMD processors. Unlike temperatures, we plot average clock speed values during tests in graphs. We monitor the temperature and clock speed of the processor cores in the same tests, in which we also measure the power consumption. And thus, gradually from the lowest load level on the desktop of idle Windows 10, through audio encoding (single-threaded load), gaming load in three games (F1 2020, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Total War Saga: Troy), to a 10-minute load in Cinebench R23 and the most demanding video encoding with the x264 encoder in HandBrake.
To record the temperatures and clock speed of the processor cores, we use HWiNFO, in which sampling is set to two seconds. With the exception of audio encoding, the graphs always show the averages of all processor cores in terms of temperatures and clock speed. During audio encoding, the values from the loaded core are given.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Test setup

* 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.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

3DMark

We use 3DMark Professional for the tests and the following tests: Night Raid (DirectX 12), Fire Strike (DirectX 11) and Time Spy (DirectX 12). In the graphs you will find partial CPU scores, combined scores, but also graphics scores. You can find out to what extent the given processor limits the graphics card.

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: low; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Borderlands 3

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Very Low; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: None; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Counter-Strike: GO

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; lowest graphics settings and w/o Anti-Aliasing, API DirectX 9; test platform script with Dust 2 map tour.

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; high graphics settings and w/o Anti-Aliasingu, API DirectX 9; test platform script with Dust 2 map tour.

   

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; high graphics settings; 4× MSAA, API DirectX 9; test platform script with Dust 2 map tour.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; very high graphics settings; 4× MSAA, API DirectX 9; test platform script with Dust 2 map tour.

   

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Cyberpunk 2077

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: custom (Little China).

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: custom (Little China).

   

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: custom (Little China).

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: custom (Little China).

   

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

DOOM Eternal

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Low; API Vulkan; extra settings Present From Compute: off, Motion Blur: Low, Depth of Field Anti-Aliasing: off; test scene: custom.

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API Vulkan; extra settings Present From Compute: on, Motion Blur: High, Depth of Field Anti-Aliasing: off; test scene: custom.

   

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API Vulkan; extra settings Present From Compute: on, Motion Blur: High, Depth of Field Anti-Aliasing: on; test scene: custom.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra Nightmare; API Vulkan; extra settings Present From Compute: on, Motion Blur: High, Depth of Field Anti-Aliasing: on; test scene: custom.

   

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

F1 2020

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Ultra Low; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: off, Anisotropic Filtering: off; test scene: built-in benchmark (Australia, Clear/Dry, Cycle).

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: off, Skidmarks Blending: off; test scene: built-in benchmark (Australia, Clear/Dry, Cycle).

   

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: TAA, Skidmarks Blending: off; test scene: built-in benchmark (Australia, Clear/Dry, Cycle).

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra High; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: TAA, Skidmarks Blending: off; test scene: built-in benchmark (Australia, Clear/Dry, Cycle).

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Metro Exodus

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 12; no extra settings test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Extreme; API DirectX 12; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Disclaimer: The performance of this game changes and improves frequently due to continuous updates. We verify the consistency of the results by re-testing the Ryzen 9 5900X processor before each measurement. In case of significant deviations, we discard the older results and start building the database from scratch. Due to the incompleteness of the MFS results, we do not use MFS to calculate the average gaming performance of the processors.

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 11; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: off; test scene: custom (Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Air Traffic: AI, February 14, 9:00) autopilot: from 1000 m until hitting the terrain.

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 11; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: off; test scene: custom (Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Air Traffic: AI, February 14, 9:00) autopilot: from 1000 m until hitting the terrain.

   

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 11; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: TAA; test scene: custom (Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Air Traffic: AI, February 14, 9:00) autopilot: from 1000 m until hitting the terrain.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra; API DirectX 11; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: TAA; test scene: custom (Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Air Traffic: AI, February 14, 9:00) autopilot: from 1000 m until hitting the terrain.

   

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Lowest; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: off; test scene: built-in benchmark.

   

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: off; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: TAA; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Highest; API DirectX 12; extra settings Anti-Aliasing: TAA; test scene: built-in benchmark.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Total War Saga: Troy

test environment: resolution 1280 × 720 px; graphics settings preset Low; API DirectX 11; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 1920 × 1080 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 11; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 2560 × 1440 px; graphics settings preset High; API DirectX 11; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

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test environment: resolution 3840 × 2160 px; graphics settings preset Ultra; API DirectX 11; no extra settings; test scene: built-in benchmark.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Overall gaming performance

To calculate average gaming performance, we normalized the Intel Core i7-11900K processor. The percentage differences of all other processors are based on this, with each of the games contributing an equal weight to the final result. To see exactly what the formula we use to arrive at each value looks like, see „New average CPU score measuring method“.

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Gaming performance per euro

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

PCMark

Geekbench

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Speedometer (2.0) and Octane (2.0)

test environment: We’re using a portable version of Google Chrome (91.0.472.101) 64-bit so that real-time results are not affected by browser updates. GPU hardware acceleration is enabled as each user has in the default settings.

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Note: The values in the graphs represent the average of the points obtained in the subtasks, which are grouped according to their nature into seven categories (Core language features, Memory and GC, Strings and arrays, Virtual machine and GC, Loading and Parsing, Bit and Math operations and Compiler and GC latency).

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Cinebench R20

Cinebench R23

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Blender@Cycles

test environment: We use well-known projects BMW (510 tiles) and Classroom (2040 tiles) and renderer Cycles. Render settings are set to None, with which all the work falls on the CPU.

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LuxRender (SPECworkstation 3.1)

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Adobe Premiere Pro (PugetBench)

test environment: set of PugetBench tests. App version of Adobe Premiere Pro is 15.2.

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

DaVinci Resolve Studio (PugetBench)

test environment: set of PugetBench tests, test type: standard. App version of DaVinci Resolve Studio is 17.2.1 (build 12).

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects

test environment: set of PugetBench tests. App version of Adobe After Effects is 18.2.1.

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

HandBrake

test environment: For video conversion we’re using a 4K video LG Demo Snowboard with a 43,9 Mb/s bitrate. AVC (x264) and HEVC (x265) profiles are set for high quality and encoder profiles are “slow”. HandBrake version is 1.3.3 (2020061300).

x264 and x265 benchmarks

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SVT-AV1

Test environment: We are encoding a short, publicly available sample park_joy_2160p50.y4m: uncompressed video 4096 × 2160 px, 8bit, 50 fps. Length is 585 frames with encoding quality set to 6 which makes the encoding still relatively slow. This test can make use of the AVX2 i AVX-512 instructions.

Version: SVT-AV1 Encoder Lib v0.8.7-61-g685afb2d via FFMpeg N-104429-g069f7831a2-20211026 (64bit)
Build from: https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
Command line: ffmpeg.exe -i “park_joy_2160p50.y4m” -c:v libsvtav1 -rc 0 -qp 55 -preset 6 -f null output.webm

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Audio encoding

test environment: Audio encoding is done using command line encoders, we measure the time it takes for the conversion to finish. The same 42-minute long 16-bit WAV file (stereo) with 44.1 kHz is always used (Love Over Gold by Dire Straits album rip in a single audio file).

Encoder settings are selected to achieve maximum or near maximum compression. The bitrate is relatively high, with the exception of lossless FLAC of about 200 kb/s.

Note: These tests measure single-thread performance.

FLAC: reference encoder 1.3.2, 64-bit build. Launch options: flac.exe -s -8 -m -e -p -f

MP3: encoder lame3.100.1, 64-bit build (Intel 19 Compiler) from RareWares. Launch options: lame.exe -S -V 0 -q 0

AAC: uses Apple QuickTime libraries, invoked through the application from the command line, QAAC 2.72, 64-bit build, Intel 19 Compiler (does not require installation of the whole Apple package). Launch options: qaac64.exe -V 100 -s -q 2

Opus: reference encoder 1.3.1, Launch options: opusenc.exe –comp 10 –quiet –vbr –bitrate 192

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Broadcasting

test environment: Applications OBS Studio and Xsplit. We’re using the built-in benchmark (scene Australia, Clear/Dry, Cycle) in F1 2020, in a resolution of 2560 × 1440 px and the same graphics settings, as with standard game performance tests. Thanks to this, we can measure the performance decrease if you record your gameplay with the x264 software encoder while playing. The output is 2560 × 1440 px at 60 fps.

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Adobe Photoshop (PugetBench)

test environment: set of PugetBench tests. App version of Adobe Photoshop is 22.4.2.

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Adobe Lightroom Classic

test environment: With the settings above, we export 42 uncompressed .CR2 (RAW Canon) photos with a size of 20 Mpx. Then we create 1:1 previews from them, which also represent one of the most processor intensive tasks in Lightroom. The version of Adobe Lightroom Classic is 10.3.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Affinity Photo (benchmark)

Test environment: built-in benchmark.

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Topaz Labs AI apps

Topaz DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI. These single-purpose applications are used for restoration of low-quality photos. Whether it is high noise (caused by higher ISO), raster level (typically after cropping) or when something needs extra focus. The AI performance is always used.

test environment: As part of batch editing, 42 photos with a lower resolution of 1920 × 1280 px are processed, with the settings from the images above. DeNoise AI is in version 3.1.2, Gigapixel in 5.5.2 and Sharpen AI in 3.1.2.

XnViewMP

Test environment: XnViewMP is finally a photo-editor for which you don’t have to pay. At the same time, it uses hardware very efficiently. In order to achieve more reasonable comparison times, we had to create an archive of up to 1024 photos, where we reduce the original resolution of 5472 × 3648 px to 1980 × 1280 px and filters with automatic contrast enhancement and noise reduction are also being applied during this process. We use 64-bit portable version 0.98.4.

Zoner Photo Studio X

Test environment: In Zoner Photo Studio X we convert 42 .CR2 (RAW Canon) photos to JPEG while keeping the original resolution (5472 × 3648 px) at the lowest possible compression, with the ZPS X profile ”high quality for archival”.

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

WinRAR 6.01

7-Zip 19.00

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

TrueCrypt 7.1a

Aida64 (AES, SHA3)

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Y-cruncher

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Stockfish 13

Test environment: Host for the Stockfish 13 engine is a chess app Arena 2.0.1, build 2399.

Aida64, FPU tests

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FSI (SPECworkstation 3.1)

Kirchhoff migration (SPECworkstation 3.1)

Python36 (SPECworkstation 3.1)

SRMP (SPECworkstation 3.1)

Octave (SPECworkstation 3.1)

FFTW (SPECworkstation 3.1)

Convolution (SPECworkstation 3.1)

CalculiX (SPECworkstation 3.1)

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

RodiniaLifeSci (SPECworkstation 3.1)

WPCcfd (SPECworkstation 3.1)

Poisson (SPECworkstation 3.1)

LAMMPS (SPECworkstation 3.1)

NAMD (SPECworkstation 3.1)

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Memory tests…

… and cache (L1, L2, L3)

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A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Processor power draw curve

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Average processor power draw

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Performance per watt

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Achieved CPU clock speed

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

CPU temperature

A fully active Intel Raptor Lake CPU chip, that’s tremendous performance for all situations, but also a lot of worries. These revolve around how to use this great potential and not hold anything back. There are more obstacles than usual. When it’s not on a software basis, it’s a struggle with cooling for a change. And you already know that the 13th-generation Intel Core CPU is sometimes more efficient than the Ryzen 7000.

Conclusion

The same way the Ryzen 7000 CPUs did well, (we already tested models R9 7900X and R5 7600X) Intel also scores with Raptor Lake. From a multi-threaded performance perspective the jump in efficiency across generations is really significant. At similar power draw, the Ci9-13900K has about three times the performance compared to the Ci9-11900K, and 2.5 times the performance of the Ci9-10900K.

Compared to the Ci9-12900K, it’s “only” some 50 %, but in the charts where we’re looking at the performance per unit of power draw ratio, it looks better than ever from Intel’s point of view. Naturally, this is also because while Intel is increasing efficiency, AMD is decreasing it by increasing power limits. However, the Ryzen 9 7900X is still more efficient compared to the Ci9-13900K and the lead of the Ryzen 9 7950X won’t be any smaller. We don’t have the R9 7950X tests published yet, but they are on the way. We’re definitely not shying away from confronting this processor with the Ci9-13900K, but the gap between the release of the Ryzen 7000 and the Raptor Lake processors was too narrow for us to be able to test and rank all the models as well as we would have liked.

Either way, a Core i9-13900K for similar money (and in the context of an entire platform with DDR4 memory, possibly less) than you’d pay for a Ryzen 9 7900X is 30–40 % faster in 3D rendering., at (de)compression then around 20 %. In a similar ratio, but already in favor of the Ryzen 9 7900X, the AMD processor may again be faster at (de)encryption. When video encoding with x264/x265, the Core i9’s edge is some 12–20 %, which also benefits this processor in video editing applications, in Adobe Premiere Pro or in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Also noteworthy are the advantages in computing various physics simulations, for which the Core i9-13900K has a more attractive price/performance ratio at the expense of weaker efficiency.

In any case, raw multithreaded performance is not one of the Core i9-13900K’s strongest points. This is undoubtedly performance in single-threaded applications, where Raptor Lake is without a doubt more attractive than the equivalent Ryzen 9 79×0 processors. Compared to the R9 7900X, the Ci9-13900K has higher performance at lower power draw. In practice, single-threaded performance often manifests itself in faster responses in web environments or when working with some graphic editor filters (including Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo), that do not support GPU acceleration or multiple CPU cores. High performance in single-threaded applications given the very high frequencies was expected, but that Intel can do it at lower power draw is already a surprise. However, despite high efficiency and relatively low power draw in single-threaded loads, a more powerful cooler is needed for the core temperature under load not to exceed 70 °C. Only under such conditions does the processor hold its maximum 5.8 GHz. But even after exceeding this limit TVB does not make big cuts and the clock speed reduction is only symbolic, by 100 MHz.

The bigger clock speed drop is in multi-threaded loads, where after a few seconds speeds drop by 400–500 MHz from a maximum of 5.5 GHz (This is matched by a drop in power draw, which then stabilises at around 290 W). The more powerful the cooler you use, the longer it will maintain the initial power draw of approximately 350 W. Not even the most powerful AIO liquid coolers can handle such power draw for the long term according to the needs of Raptor Lake. It’s always only a matter of time before individual cores start hitting 100°C, at which point the clock speeds start to drop. And paradoxically, at least on the Asus ROG Strix Z790-E motherboard, even disabling ABT (Advanced Boost Technology) won’t change anything. How the processor will react to such high temperatures in other motherboards, you will find out in a relatively short time. The benchmarks will also show later how the efficiency of the Ci9-13900K changes due to the power limitation by TDP (125 W) at lower power draw.

The Core i9-13900K is, among other things, the fastest “gaming” processor. In terms of the average of all games, the edge over the Ci9-12900K can be up to 14 %, over the R7 5800X3D up to 11 %. In some games, the Ci9-13900K may run into the limits of the OS scheduler, which may misallocate E cores to more demanding tasks or work incorrectly with HT. This can happen, for example, in CS:GO, in DOOM Eternal and the most in Total War Saga: Troy, where the Ci9-13900K seemingly illogically ends below the Ci9-12900K. In TWST, the naturally lower power draw is adequate to the lower gaming performance.

For most games, however, the Ci9-13900K is the number one performer, even at the relatively higher resolution (compared to 720p) of 1080p. This is how the Core i9 Raptor Lake processor fares in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, in Borderlands 3, in F1 2020, in Microsoft Flight Simulator or in Metro Exodus. For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, however, the Ryzen 9 7900X is already looking better. In games, however, what is true of single-threaded performance is no longer true of efficiency. Of the Ci9-13900K and R9 7900X pair, Intel’s processor is always the less efficient. AMD pulls the longer end of the rope in this micro-battle with the R9 7900X, even if only by a little bit.

When it’s all summed up and underlined, if we’re targeting a similar price range of builds, the Core i9-13900K played out a pretty nice tie with the Ryzen 9 7900X. And hopefully, this is also the start of a bigger effort by both manufacturers to again make one of them properly stand apart from the other when it comes to the quality characteristics of mainstream processors for desktops.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

Games for testing are from Jama levova

Special thanks to Blackmagic Design (for a DaVinci Resolve Studio license), Topaz Labs (for licenses for DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Zoner (for Photo Studio X license)

• Contents
• Intel Core i9-13900K in detail
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Borderlands 3
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Overall gaming performance
• Gaming performance per euro
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Photos 1/2: Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
• Photos 2/2: Affinity Photo, Topaz Labs AI Apps, ZPS X, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)cryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• Processor power draw curve
• Average processor power draw
• Performance per watt
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• Conclusion