Intel Core i9-13900K and i5-13600K Review: Raptor Lake Brings More Bite
by Gavin Bonshor on October 20, 2022 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance: 720p And Lower
The reason we test games in CPU reviews at lower resolutions such as 720p and below is simple; titles are more likely to be CPU bound than they are GPU bound at lower resolutions. This means there are more frames for the processor to process as opposed to the graphics card doing the majority of the heavy lifting.
There are some variances where some games will still use graphical power, but not as much CPU grunt at these smaller resolutions, and this is where we can show where CPU limitations lie in terms of gaming.
We are using DDR5 memory on the Core i9-13900K, the Core i5-13600K, the Ryzen 9 7950X, and Ryzen 5 7600X, as well as Intel's 12th Gen (Alder Lake) processors at the following settings:
- DDR5-5600B CL46 - Intel 13th Gen
- DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000
- DDR5-4800 (B) CL40 - Intel 12th Gen
All other CPUs such as Ryzen 5000 and 3000 were tested at the relevant JEDEC settings as per the processor's individual memory support with DDR4.
Civilization VI
World of Tanks
Borderlands 3
Grand Theft Auto V
Red Dead Redemption 2
F1 2022
Hitman 3
Total War: Warhammer 3
Cyberpunk 2077
Digesting our results at 720p (and lower) resolutions, we can see that things are quite competitive at the top end, especially with the Core i9-13900K and the Core i9-12900KS across most of the games. Some of the games from our testing look to benefit from a different variable, whether that is core count, quality of cores versus core count and frequency; L3 cache size, or a mixture of all three.
In World of Tanks, the majority of the field of processors on test look to be within a certain margin depending on frequency, IPC, and core count. The Ryzen 9 7950X does well here, although the latest Raptor Lake chips seem to be hovering around the levels of performance as the previous 12th Gen Core chips. In Civ VI, the latest AMD Ryzen 7000 and their Zen 4 cores dominate the field, while the 5800X3D and R9 5950X are also competitive. Behind these come the Intel chips with the Core i9-13900K performing the best of those.
Overall, it's a bit of a mixed bag at 720/480p in terms of performance. There are cases where Raptor Lake performs well, but equally, the same can be said for the Ryzen 7000 chips. But ultimately, none of the top chips here have a 95th percentile frame rate lower than 170fps in any action game, while the more unique Civlization 6 never drops 114fps. Which is to say that these high-end CPUs aren't likely to be a gaming performance bottleneck any time soon – getting a GPU that can keep up at higher resolutions is going to be the harder task.
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flyingpants265 - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
That doesn't matter. All that proves is TDP is a phony measurement. If the CPU draws up to 300 watts, then it's a 300 watt CPU. Replyyh125d - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Exactly ReplyIketh - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
proving TDP is a phony measurement is the entire point of that post ReplyYojimbo - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Firstly this discussion is not confined to Intel. All the modern CPUs use turbo clocks. They all have various performance characteristics dependent on the thermal design of the product they are in.Please cite where Intel writes that. Intel only uses TDP in its technical literature these days for the very reason that consumers are confused about it. Intel uses PL1 and PL2. TDP is the MINIMUM power that one should be designing for, not the maximum. The amount of turbo clock exposed by the cooling solution is optional, but the thermal solution associated with the processor must be capable of handling the TDP. The processor will not be damaged with a cooling solution that only handles the TDP. The processor will not use its turbo clocks much and will stay at or below the TDP power except for short periods of time. On the other hand if a cooling solution cannot handle the TDP there could he bad consequences.
Again. This isn't an Intel-specific thing. TDP and turbo clocks are ubiquitous in the industry. What is also very widespread is massive misunderstanding and misinformation about the term. Perhaps Anandtech should stop using the term with respect to CPUs because it seems to me that it's a minority of readers who understand it. Reply
Meteor2 - Saturday, October 22, 2022 - link
Reviews should stop quoting TDP. Intel no longer uses it; their latest product spec pages e.g. for the i9-13900K quote Maximum Turbo Power: "The maximum sustained (>1s) power dissipation of the processor as limited by current and/or temperature controls. Instantaneous power may exceed Maximum Turbo Power for short durations (<=10ms). Note: Maximum Turbo Power is configurable by system vendor and can be system specific."Which for the i9-13100K is 253W. Reply
Meteor2 - Saturday, October 22, 2022 - link
AMD still quotes TDP (e.g. 170W for the 7950X) with no definition of TDP provided, which I would suggest IS misleading. Replyat_clucks - Monday, October 24, 2022 - link
Ah, not confined to Intel, solid argument that it's not a problem to do it but that "people are uneducated". Scale matters. When your real power consumption is 120% over the advertised one (see link below) this isn't an "everybody's doing it" but it is indeed a matter of "people are uneducated". At this time Jimbo, anyone trying to find excuses for Intel, and downplaying the shenanigans is _really_ uneducated, was born yesterday, or benefits from the lie.This doesn't mean you should stop using Intel if it does the job for you,. But only a fool or the fraudster would defend or downplay what they're doing.
https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph17585/130... Reply
catavalon21 - Sunday, November 20, 2022 - link
"Please cite where Intel writes that."Step right up, folks...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/ar... Reply
Truebilly - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
🫳🎤 ReplyHarryVoyager - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Doesn't especially matter whether they are conforming to the technical definition or not as it is tells me nothing useful about the CPU in the context in which it is presented. Reply