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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WannaBeOCer - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
Did you even read the article? Intel advertises the 13900k as a 253w chip. It drew 32% more than it advertised while AMD advertises its 7950x as a 170w and it drew 30% more than they advertised.“Processor Base Power
125 W
Maximum Turbo Power
253 W” Reply
Wrs - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
You're comparing the PL2 of one chip with the TDP of the other. Also, the article mentioned the motherboard may have something to do with ignoring the PL2 on the 13900k.If the chip can't dissipate PL2, it'll incrementally step down to TDP gracefully. It's like you're complaining your 130mph sedan went 165mph on the race track... Reply
Gastec - Sunday, October 23, 2022 - link
Oh, so the motherboards are the culprits for overclocking the CPU's to new height of financial success, not Intel? ReplyWhatYaWant - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
7600x seems a bit overpriced, doesn’t it? Replyingwe - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
Yeah it does. $250 seems like a better price--maybe even a bit lower. It will probably come down. I just picked up a 5600 for $125 though so I am set. I suspect that the price will only come down on the 7600x once the stock of 5 series is cleared out. Replymeacupla - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
I am happy that Raptor Lake offers stiff competition to Zen 4. Hopefully AMD brings down the price of 7600X, and hurry up and launch their B650 boards Replycaqde - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
?? B650 is released? At least on Newegg and amazon you can purchase a selection of B650 motherboards today. Out of the 23 boards listed, 1 is out of stock and 5 are preoders for the 21st or 27th. So that leaves 17 boards that you can purchase today that are in stock, the in stock boards go from 170-350 (Asrock 650M PG Riptide and Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master respectively). But yeah AMD should and from what I have heard can lower Zen 4 prices to compete with Intel's prices. Replyhaukionkannel - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
When AMD release 3d cache versions, it will reduce the prices of normal versions.How much, is interesting question. I expect that AMD also will release 7600 to compete with intel in price, so 7600x may not come down a lot. Reply
meacupla - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
Oh, B650 is out already? I saw no news coverage of them, so I thought they were still waiting to be released. Replytechguymaxc - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
You list Handbrake under legacy tests however, either the graphs or mislabeled or the tests are not included. Did you test these CPUs with Handbrake? If so, please post the results. If not, please consider testing and updating the article. This is the only workload that matters to me, and the number one reason I come to Anandtech for CPU reviews/benchmarks. Reply