Intel Core i9-13900K and i5-13600K Review: Raptor Lake Brings More Bite
by Gavin Bonshor on October 20, 2022 9:00 AM ESTZ790 Chipset: More I/O Than Z690, But Same Performance
One of the main talking points surrounding all processor launches at present is platform affordability. When Intel launched its 12th Gen Alder Lake core series processors towards the tail end of 2021, it enabled users to utilize the higher bandwidth DDR5 memory in a desktop platform. As DDR5 memory supply was low and consumer demand was high during Alder Lake’s initial launch, this sky rocketed prices and it made it near impossible for users to buy a DDR5 kit to use with 12th Gen. Intel did offer support for both DDR5-4800 and DDR4-3200, but motherboards (600-series) could only support one or the other.
Although this hasn’t changed with Intel’s latest Z790 chipset, Intel does offer support for both DDR5 and DDR4 with its 13th Gen Raptor Lake Core processors; something AMD doesn’t do with Ryzen 7000 series, much to consumer’s angst. Even though Intel has opted for a higher DDR5 memory speed (5600 MT/s versus 4800 MT/s) compared to Alder Lake, DDR4 memory support remains at DDR4-3200.
| Intel Z690, Z590, and Z490 Chipset Comparison | ||||
| Feature | Z790 | Z690 | Z590 | Z490 |
| Socket | LGA1700 | LGA1700 | LGA1200 | LGA1200 |
| PCIe Lanes (CPU) | 16 x 5.0 4 x 4.0 |
16 x 5.0 4 x 4.0 |
20 x 4.0 | 16 x 3.0 |
| PCIe Lanes (Chipset) | 20 x 4.0 8 x 3.0 |
12 x 4.0 16 x 3.0 |
24 x 3.0 | 24 x 3.0 |
| PCIe Specification (CPU) | 5.0/4.0 | 5.0/4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 |
| Memory Support | DDR5-5600B DDR4-3200 |
DDR5-4800B DDR4-3200 |
DDR4-3200 | DDR4-2933 |
| PCIe Config | x16 x8/x8 x8/x8/x4 |
x16 x8/x8 x8/x8/x4 |
x16 x8/x8 x8/x8/x4 |
x16 x8/x8 x8/x8+x4 |
| DMI Lanes | x8 4.0 | x8 4.0 | x8 3.0 | x4 3.0 |
| Max USB 3.2 (Gen2/Gen1) | 10/10 | 10/10 | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) | Y (5) | Y (4) | Y (4) | ASMedia |
| Total USB | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 |
| Max SATA Ports | 8 | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| Memory Channels (Dual) | 2/2 | 2/2 | 2/2 | 2/2 |
| Intel Optane Memory Support | N | Y | Y | Y |
| Intel Rapid Storage Tech (RST) | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Integrated Wi-Fi MAC | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 6 | Wi-Fi 6 |
| Intel Smart Sound | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Overclocking Support | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Intel vPro | N | N | N | N |
| ME Firmware | 16 | 16 | 15 | 14 |
| TDP (W) | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Looking at the Intel chipset comparison table above, one could really question what’s actually different about Z790 when compared directly to Z690, especially given that Z690 does allow full support for 13th Gen processors; yes, there is no hidden secret sauce or performance unlocking features, Z690 and Z790 will perform the same in compute and gaming.
The key differences are that Z790 offers an additional 8 x PCIe 4.0 lanes from the chipset, but at the cost of 8 x PCIe 3.0 lanes. This means Z790 still offers a total of 28 x PCI lanes when compared to Z690, but it gives vendors further flexibility to utilize the extra PCIe 4.0 lanes for high bandwidth M.2 slots and additional Thunderbolt 4 controllers, while still offering a few PCIe 3.0 lanes for devices such as additional NICs, streaming cards, and other non-bandwidth critical devices.
Intel says Goodbye to Optane Memory (Cache), No Support on Z790
One thing to note with Z790 is that along with Intel’s decision to kill its Optane business; this chipset will NOT support Intel's Optane Memory, Intel's Optane-based drive caching solution. Using Z690 combined with 12th Gen should still yield the same level of support as before, but using Z790 will not allow Optane Memory to be used, which is understandable as Intel winds down its Optane and 3DXpoint storage division.
The main benefit for opting for Z790 over Z690 is essentially down to PCIe 4.0 I/O capabilities, with support for one more additional USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C port compared to Z690. Having spoken to Intel directly about processor performance with either chipset, they made it clear that they do not expect compute or gaming performance to be any different regardless of whether you’re using the new Z790 or the existing Z690 chipset.
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mode_13h - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
"The new instruction cache on Gracemont is actually very unique. x86 instruction encoding is all over the place and in the worst (and very rare) case can be as long as 15 bytes long. Pre-decoding an instruction is a costly linear operation and you can’t seek the next instruction before determining the length of the prior one. Gracemont, like Tremont, does not have a micro-op cache like the big cores do, so instructions do have to be decoded each time they are fetched. To assist that process, Gracemont introduced a new on-demand instruction length decoder or OD-ILD for short. The OD-ILD generates pre-decode information which is stored alongside the instruction cache. This allows instructions fetched from the L1$ for the second time to bypass the usual pre-decode stage and save on cycles and power."Source: https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/6102/intels-gracemo... Reply
Sailor23M - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Interesting to see Ryzen 5 7600X perform so well in excel/ppt benchmarks. Why is that so? ReplyMakste - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Thank you for the review. So Intel too, is finally throwing more cores and increasing frequencies to the problem these days, which increases heat and power usage in turn. AMD too, is a culprit of this practice but has not gone to these lengths as Intel. 16 cores versus supposedly efficiency cores. What is not happening? Replyricebunny - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
It would be a good idea to highlight that the MT Spec benchmarks are just N instantiations of the single thread test. They are not indicative of parallel computing application performance. There are a few dedicated SPEC benchmarks for parallel performance but for some reason they are never included in Anandtechs benchmarks. ReplyRyan Smith - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
"There are a few dedicated SPEC benchmarks for parallel performance but for some reason they are never included in Anandtechs benchmarks."They're not part of the actual SPEC CPU suite. I'm assuming you're talking about the SPEC Workstation benchmarks, which are system-level benchmarks and a whole other kettle of fish.
With SPEC, we're primarily after a holistic look at the CPU architecture, and in the rate-N workloads, whether there's enough memory bandwidth and other resources to keep the CPU cores fed. Reply
wolfesteinabhi - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
its strange to me that when we are talking about value ...especially for budget constraint buyers ... who are also willing to let go of bleeding edge/performance ... we dont even mention AM4 platform.AM4 is still good ..if not great (not to say mature/stable) platform for many ..and you can still buy a lot of reasonably price good procs including 5800X3D ...and users have still chance to upgrade it upto 5950X if they need more cpu at a later date. Reply
cowymtber - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Burning hot POS. ReplyBernieW - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Disappointed that you didn't spend more time investigating the serious regression for the 13900K vs the 12900K in the 502.gc_r test. The single threaded test does not have the same regression so it's a curious result that could indicate something wrong with the test setup. Alternately, perhaps the 13900K was throttling during that part of the test or maybe E cores are really not good at compiling code. ReplyAvalon - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
I had that same thought. Why publish something so obviously anomalous and not even say anything about it? Did you try re-testing it? Did you accidentally flip the scores between the 12th and 13th gen? There's no obvious reason this should be happening given the few changes between 12th and 13th gen cores. ReplyRyan Smith - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
"Disappointed that you didn't spend more time investigating the serious regression for the 13900K vs the 12900K in the 502.gc_r test."We still are. That was flagged earlier this week, and re-runs have produced the same results.
So at this point we're digging into matters a bit more trying to figure out what is going on, as the cause is non-obvious. I'm thinking it may be a thread director hiccup or an issue with the ratio of P and E cores, but there's a lot of different (and weird) ways this could go. Reply