News Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K Review: Raptor Lake Beats Ryzen 7000

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We are in a power race, meaning watts. It will either end badly, or the big 2 will figure out how to be more efficient for the same performance.

Power users/gamers don't care, they are going to buy whatever is faster and has the least issues.
I mean, if they don't care how much power a 4090 might use they certainly won't care what the CPU platform needs.
 
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Thank you for the review! That's quite some numbers speaking for the Intel Core i9-13900K etc. (in the tests with DDR5).

What doesn't look good to me though is that the Raptor Lake CPUs seem to have only 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes, not leaving room for M.2 Gen5 support (some Z790 advertise a 5.0 M.2 slot, but that assumedly takes lanes away from the GPU, as with Alder Lake). And that is less than I would get with several of the AM5 motherboards and CPUs.

So, while I am like all ready, having a new case and PSU here, the connectivity issue doesn't look appealing to me when looking at Raptor Lake, and even less so in regard to Meteor Lake if a CPU upgrade will need a new MB due to socket change.
 
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It's a shame that so much focus in all the reviews online is going to the i9. Yes it's very power hungry, I think everywhere knew it would be, i9 have never been about power efficiency.

Meanwhile the far more interesting story is that mainstream i5 13600k, which is beating even the i9 12900k in games and beating everything AMD has, even at stock.

That i5 is a $319 chip beating last gen's $589 i9 in games, and doing it using around 30% less power.

That i5 gives gamers the same i9 performance of last gen at half the price, and using far less power to do it. That's insane.
 
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RodroX said:
This are some very impresive gen to gen improvements.

Seems that both Zen 4 and Raptor Lake still suffer in some games vs the old R7 5800X3D, but then again if you are a gamer with a midrange or high-midrange card, and play at 1440p or higher then the difference in those games will be really small, and any of this last gen chips will do great on the system.

To bad both Intel and AMD are pusing power limits and temps, but I guess thats the price to pay if you want fearless competition and to get big performance leaps from one gen to the next.
Click to expand...

It's the only way they can get performance anymore. Die shrinks are becoming so small in overall size terms it's not adding a lot in terms of just being able to pack more transistors into the same area like there were able to do for years. Without some kind of a breakthrough I don't see how we don't reach max silicon in the next decade or so.
 
Overall, if you intend to use the 13900K as an HEDT-type CPU (all-core all-blast) most of the time, you will need to invest heavily in cooling. Even in closed cases with 360 AIOs, it seems that it will throttle and reach 100°c all the time, very fast. This happens much faster than with the 12900K (in terms of reaching max temps), which are some important asterisks for people to plan ahead for. I would also say, that putting the 13900K in a SFF build will get super tricky unless you cap the power/temps of it. Against the 7950X, as I expectd, basically close match, but because of those asterisks, I'm willing to give the edge to the 7950X if you're building new. As an HEDT-type platform, AM5 just thas better all-around connectivity and future plans, so you will be able to get an even better CPU later on if you want, but if you're willing to throw away the whole thing for the "next best thing", then toss a coin, as you may have money to burn and go with what makes you happy. Gaming wise, Intel takes the edge, again, with some asterisks, but for games you shouldn't be looking at the 13900K or 7950X anyway; not exclusively at least.

The big winner here is the 13600K IMO, as it demonstrates it can be a great "value" CPU for people looking to build a new PC, even with the small price hike. It's an overall decent CPU, with manageable temps and you can still tweak it a bit to extact more performance out of it. Too bad it seems Intel won't be doing Raptor Lake in the lower SKUs from there, so the lower end will have to wait a bit more for something new (if at all). That being said, the differences are noticeable with a 4090 anyway, so I'm sure anyone building with something from either AMD or Intel will have a very decent gaming rig for years to come. You can't go wrong with either and should just build whatever comes cheaper/easier for your needs. That's like the most important thing here to take away as a conclusion, I'd say.

So, the next move needs to come from AMD.

What will it be, AMD? Price reductions? Bundles? VCache rather soon? All of the previous? XD

Regards.
 
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Why_Me said:
The locked cpu's use less power, create less heat while costing less yet go toe to toe with the unlocked cpu's.
Click to expand...
So you mean the higher end parts of Raptor Lake, yes? If so, they will be equivalent to power capping the K parts, no?

TerryLaze said:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/i...ications-pricing-benchmarks-all-we-know-specs
Except for the i5 13400, the 13600 and the i3s all others will have a locked (and a T) counterpart that will still be raptor.
and the 13400 is supposed to also have a raptor variant...
I guess we will have to see.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's why I was asking, since this gen will have plenty SKUs mixed. I'm expecting the non-K parts to just behave as K parts with lower (unchangable) clocks, which is a bummer.

Regards.
 
-Fran- said:
So you mean the higher end parts of Raptor Lake, yes? If so, they will be equivalent to power capping the K parts, no?


Yes, that's why I was asking, since this gen will have plenty SKUs mixed. I'm expecting the non-K parts to just behave as K parts with lower (unchangable) clocks, which is a bummer.

Regards.
Click to expand...
DeBauer locked the 13900K at 90W and it still mopped the floor with AMD's new lineup in regards to gaming. That right there tells me the locked cpu's are going to do the same yet for cheaper. It was the same with Intel 12 gen.

i7 12700 / 12700F gaming benchmarks.

i712700.jpg
 
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Are the Ryzen 7XXX numbers reflecting the SMT issue in Windows that is hampering performance?

Also, as I noted months ago and was poopoo'd, requiring DDR5 is going to make this generation completely uncompetitive against Intel. They could sell 7600 for $100 and while the system cost would be the same as 13600, but still won't have parity in performance. There is no equivalent system cost that would make AMD's lineup competitive. At every system price point Intel delivers more performance.
 
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Why_Me said:
DeBauer locked the 13900K at 90W and it still mopped the floor with AMD's new lineup in regards to gaming. That right there tells me the locked cpu's are going to do the same yet for cheaper. It was the same with Intel 12 gen.

i7 12700 / 12700F gaming benchmarks.

i712700.jpg
Click to expand...
Yes, my point is that now the power cap will matter less than their turbo clocks for making a significant difference in games, so Raptor Lake parts will indeed be better than Alder Lake, with an asterisk I saw: if you OC Alder Lake clocks to Raptor Lake levels, then you get the same performance and similar power usage, which is kind of interesting. This may matter in comparisons of the 12600K's price vs the 13600.

Regards.
 
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