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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brucethemoose - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
x264 is (more or less) the same thing as the handbrake test... and it kinda is legacy software at this point.Personally, I'd like to see a more modern encoding test, like av1an with x265+chunked encoding, or maybe Staxrip with some filters enabled. Reply
GeoffreyA - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
Yes, some libaom would be fantastic. Replyjakky567 - Monday, October 24, 2022 - link
I wouldn't say handbrake/x264 are obsolete yet. We should be looking towards the future, but h264 is here to stay as at least a fallback codec. ReplyGeoffreyA - Tuesday, October 25, 2022 - link
It is very much the MP3 of video and here to stay. Plus, its successors have not been indisputably better or have come with tradeoffs. ReplyAshantus - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
Comparing the performance of 7600X vs 13600k i see some overall advantage for the 13600K.But, i will defionitly go for the 7600X due one argue.
Load Consumption of 134 Watt vs 238 Watt at almost same performance is something.
Regarding the poweer costs in europe of 60 cent per Watt that is quiet some pricing argue at a 5 years lifetime.
At anandtech:
this argue should be mentioned in your closing thoughts. 100 Watt more powerconsumption at todays powerprices is a serious issue. Reply
Yojimbo - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
I don't remember seeing power versus performance numbers. Did I miss them? ReplyCiccioB - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
<blockquote>Load Consumption of 134 Watt vs 238 Watt at almost same performance is something.</blockquote>This thought is completely wrong. It is called "induction", as you were looking at something and then reported that on something else.
You see a graph of power consumption for a "unlimited test" (where performance is not measured) and then you think that that measure is valid also for other tests.
So you just think that for each bench those CPUs consume always those Watts (how can it be?) and that the performance are the same (where did you got that? In almost all benches the 13600K leaves the 7600X in the dust, but not knowing their power consumption for those test you cannot say which is the most efficient). Reply
Ashantus - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
Just found another test, whereas a powerconsumption at action is recorded.At gaming (average out of 12 games tested) is:
13600k = 88 W. 7600X = 60 W
13990K = 144 W 7900X = 107W Reply
Yojimbo - Thursday, October 20, 2022 - link
that looks more plausible. but it is also mostly useless except in the context of the specific workload. modern cpu performance testing is very complicated and performance versus power should be taken in the specific workload one is interested in, or at the very least an average of workloads of a similar type. ReplyGastec - Sunday, October 23, 2022 - link
Specific workload such as : 13990K produces 100 fps @ 144 W, while 7600X produces 100 fps @ 60 W? Reply