Review: Intel’s Latest CPUs Are Powerful and Power Hungry

With only one month in between their respective showcases, each Dr. Lisa Su of AMD and Intel’s Pat Gelsinger declared their forthcoming line of CPUs to be the very best and quickest gaming CPUs in the marketplace. These are daring claims from each producers, nonetheless, AMD’s Zen 4-powered juggernaut left an impression that calls for a robust reply. Now it’s time to see Intel’s response—and what a response they gave!

Codenamed Raptor Lake, Intel’s thirteenth Generation Core processor household follows intently within the footsteps of the Alder Lake launch – and I imply intently. It was solely 11 months in the past that Intel’s twelfth Generation Core processors have been launched.

Fast ahead to the current and we’ve the following iteration of Intel’s hybrid core structure in hand. With six CPUs throughout the Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 households revealed and a restricted version 6.0 GHz CPU teased at September’s Intel Innovations summit, it will be an understatement to say that we’ve been anticipating this second because the announcement.

For this text, we acquired two thirteenth Generation Core CPUs from Intel – the Core i5-13600K and Core i9-13900K. We’re going to interrupt down what has modified from twelfth Gen to thirteenth Gen, take a look at a bunch of knowledge, speak in regards to the trendy CPU panorama, and, in fact, speak a bit about who these merchandise are greatest fitted to.

Exploring Raptor Lake

Before we start, I’ve to warn you: should you have been right here for Alder Lake in any capability, you will really feel a little bit of déjà vu. Raptor Lake builds on the muse laid by its predecessor, so it is going to be value revisiting acquainted floor.

Intel’s thirteenth Generation Core processors are constructed on a hybrid core structure, comprised of two completely different microarchitectures. Efficient cores (or E-cores) are lower-powered cores designed to handle background duties and to unfold out the load of scaling, multithreaded workloads. Performance cores (or P-cores) are processing cores designed for demanding workloads, gaming, and single- or frivolously threaded duties. While P-cores are hyperthreaded, every E-core represents a single processing thread.

This is a vital element to pause on. When we begin speaking about thread counts on these processors, it’s possible you’ll discover whereas taking a look at charts that the maths is fascinating. While AMD leans right into a multi-chiplet design, retaining the thread depend and core depend at 2:1 ratio, Intel’s monolithic design adjustments how we evaluate these numbers.

Take, for instance, AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X. It is a 16-core processor with 32 threads to work with. The Core i9-13900K is a 24-core processor that additionally has 32 threads to work with. How does that math out? Like this: of its 24 cores, 8 are hyperthreaded P-cores, which means that they symbolize 16 of the 13900K’s 32 threads. The different threads are represented by the 16 E-cores.

Alder Lake launched us to this new method of counting cores and threads, however Raptor Lake piles extra E-cores into the celebration. The Core i5-13600K provides 4 extra E-cores to its structure whereas the Core i9-13900K takes on eight extra! If you’re retaining depend, that’s double the E-cores of their respective predecessors. At the second, the identified processors within the Raptor Lake household have E-cores and P-cores, but when the sequence follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, we might see thirteenth Generation Core CPUs with out E-cores.

That isn’t the one factor that has elevated throughout the era. The thirteenth Gen CPUs are receiving bumps in each L2 and L3 cache as effectively. The Core i9-13900K comes geared up with 32MB L2- and 36MB L3 cache, a rise of 6MB at L3 and 18 MB at L2. The Core i5-13600K noticed a modest bump of 4MB at L2 – shifting its complete L2 cache to 24MB. The Core i5’s L3 cache, nonetheless, greater than doubled, shifting from 9.5MB to 20MB.

Speaking of modest will increase, the clock speeds for P-cores and E-cores are noteworthy, however not astronomical. For the 13900K, the max turbo frequency is listed at 5.8 GHz on P-cores and 4.3 GHz on E-cores. That is round 700 MHz on the P-cores and 400 MHz on E-cores. The story is completely different, nonetheless, with base clock frequencies. The 13900K dials again the bottom frequency by round 200 MHz. The story is comparable with the Core i5-13600K, decrease base frequency from the earlier era with a modest uplift within the turbo frequencies – an uplift of round 200 MHz on the P-cores and 300 MHz on the E-cores.

While frequency uplift is part of the thirteenth Gen story, it isn’t the entire story. With extra E-cores to work with and extra highly effective P-cores, these processors are going to be demanding extra energy. That’s proper: if Alder Lake was power-hungry, Raptor Lake is HUNGRY hungry. While the processor’s base energy stays the identical at 125W, the Core i5 jumps from 150W to 181W at most turbo energy whereas the Core i9 jumps from 241W to 253W.

Even with this energy enhance, there may be some nice information: Raptor Lake makes use of the identical LGA1700 socket as Alder Lake, so this excessive demand will not be new to producers. What can also be nice information is that Z690 motherboards from the earlier era will assist thirteenth Gen processors with the suitable BIOS updates. Newer Z790 motherboards can be launched alongside the CPUs with expanded bus assist for PCIe 5.0 alongside providing options like WiFi 6 and Thunderbolt 4, identical to its predecessor.

But, that’s not all.

Unlike AMD’s “all-in” strategy to DDR5, Raptor Lake CPUs and Z790 motherboards have choices to make use of both DDR4 or DDR5. Keep in thoughts, DDR4 and DDR5 are usually not interchangeable. Having the choice to buy a motherboard that makes use of DDR4 as an alternative of DDR5 could possibly be a cost-saving possibility for a system builder upgrading from a newer platform. We will speak about this later, nevertheless it does make the dialog about shifting to a brand new platform a bit extra attractive.

Now that we’ve talked in regards to the particulars, the true query is that this: how do they work?

Let’s speak in regards to the numbers.

Performance and Power Comparisons

Much like our overview of the Ryzen 7000 Series, we can be operating a battery of exams that can give us an image of Raptor Lake’s efficiency in day-to-day operations whereas offering some benchmarks for gaming and inventive functions. Keep in thoughts, we aren’t doing efficiency tweaking outdoors of operating XMP for reminiscence optimization much like operating EXPO for AMD’s CPUs.

When it involves comparisons, we’ve an fascinating state of affairs: the Core i9-13900K is positioned nearer price-wise to the Ryzen 9 7900X at $549 than the Ryzen 9 7950X at $699. Since that’s the case, we can be together with knowledge from each CPUs in addition to knowledge Sarah Jacobsson collected for our Alder Lake overview. For the Core i5-13600K, we are going to carry over the 12600K’s knowledge to point out enchancment from the earlier era and we can be drawing comparisons with AMD’s Ryzen 5 7600X.

For our check bench, we tried to maintain elements as related as compatibility would enable. Here is the {hardware} we used: ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z760 EXTREME motherboard, NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition GPU, 32 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR5-6600 RAM, 1TB WD_Black SN770 M.2 NVMe SSD, NZXT C1000 Gold 1000W PSU, NZXT Kraken Z73 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler with three 120mm followers, and an NZXT H7 Elite mid-tower PC case geared up with 4 140mm followers.

Now, let’s see what these items can do!

Benchmark Breakdown: Productivity

We ran the identical suite of software program benchmarks as we did in our Ryzen 7000 sequence critiques to showcase single- and multi-thread efficiency. These artificial benchmarks create constant eventualities to provide us an image of how every CPU performs the identical duties.

Beginning with Geekbench 5, we began to see the uplift from era to era. For the Core i5-13600K, we see a ~9.4% enhance over the 12600K and ~3.9% over the 12900K in single tread duties – operations similar to internet navigation, picture and textual content compression, PDF rendering, and machine studying. It did, nonetheless, path behind its competitors, the Ryzen 5 7600X, by ~6.7%.

The Core i9-13900K, nonetheless, takes a ~14.5% leap forward of its predecessor whereas going toe-to-toe with the Ryzen 9s, positioning itself inside ~1.1% of the 7950X’s efficiency! Remember: we’re speaking about single-thread efficiency right here. This is often the area Intel has been dominant whereas AMD has traditionally been the king of the cores.

Geekbench 5’s multithread scores, nonetheless, inform a really completely different story.

When final we visited this check, the Ryzen 9 7950X had dominated the 12900K by ~28.8%. With the 13900K, Geekbench 5’s multi-core, multi-thread benchmarks confirmed Intel leaping ~10.5% forward of AMD’s flagship. The 13600K isn’t any slouch both; with its further E-cores, the brand new Core i5 takes a formidable ~34.2% lead over its predecessor whereas beating the Ryzen 5 by over 50% of its efficiency inside this benchmark. The latter level was not tough to do, nonetheless, as we did notice that multi-thread operations weren’t the Ryzen 5’s strongest exhibiting.

Moving on to video encoding, we moved our testing to Handbrake, changing a 4K video file to a 1080p30 format. The 13600K was much less pokey than its predecessor, shaving 40 seconds off of the overall time for encoding, putting it in nearer competitors with the 12900K and the Ryzen 9 7900X. The 13900K alternatively shaved 16 seconds off of the 7950X’s greatest time—a ~14.4% enchancment over the earlier era and ~8.5% enchancment over its competitors.

It’s not all high-fives and residential runs for the 13900K; in Blender, Intel’s sizzling new CPU couldn’t fairly edge out the 7950X. Clocking in at 61 seconds, Team Blue missed out on the crown by one second. The 13600K, nonetheless, made marked enchancment over the earlier era once more, putting its efficiency in nearer competitors with the 12900K and the 7900X. For Intel’s “entry-level” processor, the Core i5 is aware of put within the work – at the very least, that’s the image we get from our productiveness exams!

Benchmark Breakdown: Gaming

In our gaming benchmarks, we ran all of our gaming exams at 1080p to get the clearest image of the CPU’s affect on efficiency, limiting GPU dependency. These exams have been taken from video games that had artificial benchmarks, permitting for repeatable, constant knowledge throughout quite a few completely different APIs.

Our image in gaming benchmarks is much completely different than what we noticed with Zen 4. While AMD’s efficiency was pretty related, we noticed a definite distinction between the 13600K and the 13900K. In every of our gaming benchmarks, Intel’s thirteenth Generation Core processors traded blows with Ryzen 7000. While the numbers throughout the board have been spectacular, there may be one stand-out value noting.

In our check of Metro Exodus, there’s a department of the benchmark that makes use of ray tracing. Like our Ryzen exams, we didn’t allow any additional benefit inside these scans—no DLSS, no ReSizable Bar, no Smart Access Memory. While it solely took a lead of 10 frames per second (~7.7% over the 7950X), the Core i9 appeared to deal with the additional load like a champ.

The Core i5-13600K didn’t do half unhealthy itself. In every check, it hung with the pack and even beat the competitors in some instances. Both CPUs put up numbers corresponding to Ryzen 7000 with completely different functions favoring one workforce or the opposite at 1080p. In gaming use instances, Raptor Lake offered stable body charges in efficiency.

There is, nonetheless, extra to the story.

Energy Efficiency and Thermal Performance

As we have been recording our knowledge, we collected data on thermal efficiency and wattage. To preserve our CPU thermal administration per our Ryzen 7000 sequence critiques, we used NZXT’s Z73 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler, setting the pump motor to efficiency mode and case followers to silent mode. This meant that the pump would function at about 70% capability, then begin ramping as much as 100% if the CPU temperatures crossed over 55° C – which occurred usually. The accompanying radiator and case followers have been working in silent mode – operating at 40% capability till 65° C, ramping as much as 70% till it hit 85° C, then opening as much as 100% energy at 90° C till temperatures got here right down to cheap ranges.

Here is what we discovered:

Across the board, the temperature averages hover within the mid to excessive 40° C vary over ambient temperatures in most of our gaming exams, much like the efficiency we noticed with the Ryzen 7000 sequence. However, in a few of our productiveness exams like Blender and Handbrake, the Raptor Lake CPUs ran a number of levels hotter.

The numbers that aren’t in these charts are the utmost temperatures that we recorded throughout testing. It was not unusual to see Intel’s CPUs hit their thermal junction most temperature of 100° C throughout our benchmarking. Keep in thoughts that we did see moderately excessive temperatures on the AMD aspect, too. However, there have been only a few cases the place we went over 95° C and, if we did, these have been very temporary moments.

In our overview of Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs, Sarah Jacobsson famous that whereas the twelfth Generation Core CPUs carried out effectively, their power effectivity was questionable. My findings with the thirteenth Generation weren’t a lot completely different.

While it’s true that the general efficiency of each Intel’s thirteenth Generation Core CPUs is astoundingly good, energy consumption has room for enchancment. They are demanding and lose out to Zen 4 in relation to effectivity in quite a few instances.

Take Blender for instance. While the Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X come shut of their encoding time, the 13900K required ~17% extra energy than the 7950X to attain related efficiency. The state of affairs with the Core i5-13600K is comparable—greater efficiency at a better energy draw. We see this in our gaming knowledge, too, with Far Cry 5 serving as our most excessive case.

In this benchmark, the Ryzen 5 7600X had a mean energy draw of 64W with the Core i5 at 102W and the Core i9 greater than doubling the Ryzen 5’s energy draw at 143W. This is a particularly brief benchmark – and people are the averages. That translated right into a 33% distinction in body charges in favor of the Core i9 and 23% for the Core i5. That is a major return and important quantity of energy, nevertheless it was additionally the Ryzen 5’s weakest performing benchmark. When we begin to take a look at the facility draw and efficiency numbers for benchmarks like Wolfenstein, the 7600X drew ~30% much less energy for related efficiency between it and the 13600K.

Again, we’re taking a look at astounding efficiency, however the price of that efficiency is a better total energy draw.

You Are Here: Raptor Lake, Raphael, and the CPU Arms Race

As customers and PC fans, we discover ourselves in an extremely fascinating place. While AMD’s new platform launched with unimaginable efficiency over the earlier era and confirmed some benefits in comparative effectivity, that efficiency has been coupled with the awkwardness of adopting a brand new platform. The entry payment – outdoors of the monetary value – is that you simply, the top consumer, function one other layer of product testing whereas the problems are ironed out. This, nonetheless, is the place Intel has a bonus: Alder Lake was the brand new platform, however Raptor Lake is the polished enchancment.

Alongside Intel’s thirteenth Generation Core CPUs are quite a few supporting merchandise and platforms which have had 11 months to mature. LGA1700 will not be a brand new socket and DDR5 has already had integration with the prior era of CPUs, so producers have had that a lot time to kind out points and immaturities of a brand new platform. Pair that with BIOS updates to proceed future assist and you’ve got an fascinating proposition to improve.

One of my largest criticisms of the Ryzen 7000 Series was that the Ryzen 5 7600X, whereas a stellar CPU, didn’t launch with ample assist within the realm of finances RAM and motherboard choices. Though it’s ever-so-slightly dearer than its competitors, Core i5-13600K doesn’t have the 7600X’s drawback. With a whole era of year-old Z690 and B660 motherboards which might be doubtless a firmware replace away from supporting it in addition to the choice to stick with DDR4, the price of entry is decrease. This is unimaginable information for you, the patron.

What is even higher is that each corporations are pushing their applied sciences to sooner speeds, extra highly effective efficiency, and better ranges of effectivity. The extra they preserve pushing one another, the extra we turn out to be the beneficiaries of higher merchandise – that’s, at the very least, so long as the price of know-how stays accessible.

Final Thoughts

Raptor Lake represents a stable maturation of Intel’s hybrid structure and an optimistic take a look at the place future CPUs would possibly go. The features in efficiency over the previous era are beautiful and the competitors inside the multi-threading area is extremely promising.

As far as worth goes, Intel made an extremely calculated determination to maintain the price of their flagship CPU on the identical worth level because the earlier era – $589 USD. The efficiency of the Core i9-13900K retains in stride with the Ryzen 9 7950X at a decrease value whereas the Core i5-13600K blows previous its nearest competitors. The Core i5 is $30 USD dearer than the earlier era however punches above its weight class. With what we noticed out of each CPUs, I’m extremely curious in regards to the efficiency of the Core i7-13700K. I assume we must wait till they’re launched into the wild!

For system builders trying to transfer to the LGA1700 platform, Alder Lake paved the way in which for a extra steady expertise out of the gate. And, should you aren’t planning on going all-in on DDR5 or Z790, there are some simple methods to economize on barely older know-how whereas getting access to higher-performing CPU know-how provided by Raptor Lake. If you’ve been ready to improve and you’re contemplating an Intel construct, this could possibly be a good time to dive in.

Oh, and one closing piece of recommendation earlier than I shut out. If you’re contemplating enthusiast-grade elements just like the 13900K, please do your self a favor and purchase a dependable, high-wattage energy provide when you’re at it. You’re going to want it, particularly should you pair it with an RTX 4090! Then once more, you would possibly wish to think about a much bigger PC case, too.

The product mentioned on this article together with the CPUs, motherboard, and RAM have been offered by the producers for the needs of overview.