Test System – Intel Core i9-13900K

At the time of review, we do not have the video card at hand NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (is on tour) which we would have liked to use to see bottleneck tests with the processor Intel Core i9-13900K. So we use the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, the most powerful video card we have available.

If you are wondering where the results of the processors are located "Raphael" Zen 4 de AMD, 7000 series, because the company does not send a sample (or through its partners) so we can test for a limited time. Having your own sample for yourself reduces logistics times for loans and tests can be done when you want in the future. I don't want to say that "we have the right” to get samples, but you can't talk about a product either (whether the criticism is good or bad) if we do not have immediately available. That's another reason we can't test motherboards or X670/E o B650/E.

Hopefully we will have a 7000 series processor eventually, but we will base some results on what is publicly available on the internet. The main competition of Intel Core i9-13900K is the new flagship processor AMD, el Ryze 9 7950X.

Luckily, we have the Intel Core i9-12900KF processor (which has the same performance as a Core i9-12900K) so we can see what changes the top-of-the-range Intel processor offers Raptor Lake-S, 13th generation.

Intel Core i9-13900K Test System – DDR5

CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K (unlimited PL, not MCE)
Motherboard: Z790 AORUS MASTER (F4)
RAM: Kingston Fury DDR5 5200C40 – 2x16GB (https://amzn.to/3s8430y)
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition
AIO: Lian Li Galahad 360 (https://amzn.to/3TkBut4)
PSU Seasonic 1300W Gold (https://amzn.to/3saDUi0)
OS: Windows 11 Home 22H2 (Win Game Mode On, RSB On, HAGS ON).

Intel Core i9-12900K Test System – DDR5

CPU: Intel Core i9-12900KF (unlimited PL, not MCE) (https://amzn.to/3CNfX5d)
Motherboard: Z690 MAXIMUS HERO (2004) (https://amzn.to/3satq20)
RAM: Kingston Fury DDR5 5200C40 – 2x16GB (https://amzn.to/3s8430y)
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition
AIO: custom water loop
PSU EVGA 1300W P+ (https://amzn.to/3VGBC7G)
OS: Windows 11 Home 22H2 (Win Game Mode On, RSB On, HAGS ON).

Benchmarks – Productivity

We have data to compare both the processor Intel Core i9-13900K and the Core i9-12900K/KF in some productivity tests (as well as synthetic). We have test data that we use when we launch the review of the processor AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, a processor that has gained a lot of popularity lately for gaming. We hope to have more results in the future by adding more data over time.

Cinebench R23

The popular software for benchmarking MAXON and based on Cinema4D. This benchmark helps to measure the processor's single core performance, as well as multi-core performance with MAXON's render engine. This benchmark is one of the amd favorites to show its result in power. Let's see how the Intel Core i9-13900K performs.

Processor Intel Core i9-13900K completely displaces Core i9-12900K positioning itself as the new leader within the processors of the blue company, until its KS version (6 GHz) finally hit the market. There is an improvement of 47.48% between the new processor and its predecessor. The rise is steep and is due to the increased number of cores as well as the frequency improvement.

In single core, there is an improvement of 12.10% more compared to Core i9-12900K.

Although we do not have a processor AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, we can check online that AMD's top-of-the-line CPU average is around 38 thousand points in Cinebench R23 on multicore and 2000 points on single core. The Core i9-13900K is rendering approx. 8% more than AMD's top-of-the-range processor and in single core, a 13% more.

If we see only this benchmark (which is the favorite of the red company) the Core i9-13900K ends up displacing the Ryzen 9 7950X.

Blender – Cycles – Open Data Benchmark

Open Data Benchmark uses the Cycles engine which is a Path Tracer and you can measure the performance of a processor or a GPU. Open Data uses three different projects using Cycles and for this, we use the processor to see the performance of the Core i9-13900K compared to 12900K/KF.

The Core i9-13900K completely displaces the Core i9-12900K/KF processor for a massive increase in 54.80% more samples per second in the total of the three different projects. The performance increase is impressive.

The average result of processors AMD Ryzen 9 7950X it is slightly marginally better in performance, with a 2% advantage over the Core i9-13900K. Some will consider it a technical draw.

Crown Benchmark

The Corona benchmark is built using the company's renderer, version 1.3. The test measures the performance of processors and there is no option for performance with GPUs. The results are the seconds it takes to render the benchmark scene (smaller is better) or measure lightning strikes per second (larger is better).

The Core i9-13900K gets a render time reduction of 33.33%, a substantial upgrade for Intel's new top-of-the-line processor. A remarkable change for a generation jump; meanwhile, according to online information, the result shown to the Core i9-13900K would give a technical tie with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor.

Geekbench 5

Geekbench 5 it is a benchmark "synthetic" but it does different types of tests to the processor (there is also an option for GPU) which includes image process, learning through artificial intelligence, compression and decompression, among others. The benchmark has single core and multi core performance results and you can compare the results on different platforms.

The mono core improvement according to GB5, it's from a 10.61% more compared to the Core i9-12900K/KF. The multi-core improvement is much greater, with an increase in 32.93%. We have in the database our results of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor and despite the fact that the 5800X3D It is a fairly accessible solution for gaming (with the recent drop in prices), in terms of productivity it is not up to the task.

The results of the Ryzen 9 7950 times found in the Geekbench database, puts it on par with Core i9-13900K. Another technical tie with AMD's flagship processor.

Speedometer 2.0 – Web // Javascript

“This test simulates user actions to add, complete, and remove to-do items using multiple examples in TodoMVC. Each TodoMVC example implements the same to-do application using the DOM APIs in different ways. Some call the DOM APIs directly from ECMAScript 5 (ES5), ECMASCript 2015 (ES6), ES6 transpiled to ES5, and Elm transpiled to ES5. Others use one of the eleven most popular JavaScript frameworks: React, React with Redux, Ember.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS, (new) Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Preact, Inferno, and Flight. Many of these frameworks are used by the world's most popular websites, such as Facebook and Twitter. The performance of these types of operations depends on the speed of the DOM APIs, the JavaScript engine, CSS style resolution, layout, and other technologies.”

Speedometer 2.0

The generational improvement in this test can be attributed to the improved frequency of the Intel Core i9-13900K processor. We've also noticed that the test is susceptible to RAM bandwidth, so we'll probably see better results with higher frequency/lower latency RAM kits.

Gaming – Rasterization

La NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition she's “on the road”, so we couldn't have her for today's tests. We hope to do all the tests one more time using the RTX 4090 when it returns to our hands. Meanwhile, we have GeForce RTX 3080 Ti who will accompany us on this adventure.

A statistic reminder...

Before detailing our configuration system, let's refresh a little what they are AVG FPS y 1% LOW.

AVG FPS (Average FPS): As the name says, it is the average number of frames per second within a specific sequence. It is the most used measure, but it does not detail the whole story, since there are FPS drops.

1%LOW: Within an entire frames per second dataset, the 1% LOW is the value equal to the lowest 1% within the frames dataset (of the specific sequence ordered ascending). In simpler terms, it is the frame where you see the FPS drop that exists within a specific sequence.

Assassin's Creed: Origins (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: AnvilNext 2.0

Borderlands 3 (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: Frostbite 3

Control (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: Northlight Engine

Death Stranding (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: Decima

F1 2022 (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: EGO “Boost” Engine 4.0

God of War (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: Proprietary

Shadow of the Tomb Raider DX 12 (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: Foundation

Shadow of War (720p, 1080p)

Game engine: LithTech Jupiter EX

Strange Brigade DX12+ Async (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: Asura

The Witcher 3 (720p, 1080p)

Game Engine: REDengine 3

Summary – Gaming benchmarks

There are certain games where the improvements of the new processor are seen Intel Core i9-13900K noticeable, although in many situations within the game list there is a bottleneck even at 720p. When we test the GeForce RTX 4090 one more time, I think you'll see something more noticeable. In some games you can see a 5% improvement and at best an 11% improvement. the processor AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D It's still quite a competitive option if you only consider gaming.

Consumption and temperature – Intel Core i9-13900K

The manufacturing node TSMC It is the most advanced on the planet and it is one of the advantages that AMD processors have compared to Intel. Intel has improved quite a bit, although the slow transition from 14nm to 10nm (Intel 7) over the years has taken its toll on the blue giant and the Core i9-13900K is tied to this, with consumption.

both Blender , the Cinebench R23, the maximum consumption was 330w approximately in the CPU Package, something quite high. The consumption of the Core i9-13900K is high as expected and Intel decided to put an injection of power to keep frequencies high for both performance and efficiency cores.

Consumption in Cinebench R23 – Intel Core i9-13900K

Blender Cycles – Intel Core i9-13900K

The size of the die is larger due to the increase in efficiency cores but despite this, the temperatures with a liquid cooling with a 360mm radiator did not exceed 93 degrees Celsius. Core temperature cap i9-13900K it is 100 degrees Celsius and the processor did not reach this limit, with an ambient temperature of 17.1 degrees Celsius.

It is curious that while the Ryzen 9 7950X reaches close to 95 degrees in tests similar to ours and consumes less than a Core i9-13900K, the temperatures are similar. Intel seems to have the upper hand in the heatsink department, because the Core i9-13900K processor is probably drawing 100W more than the 7950X.

We are not going to say that this temperature is “acceptable” is that it is “normal”, but the Core i9-13900K is “hot” in demanding scenarios such as productivity where all the cores are used at their maximum power. Gaming is another story and since consumption is much lower, it is not a concern.

Intel Core i9-13900K – Abysmal jump in performance, high consumption/temperatures and end of LGA1700

It will be very difficult to say that we have the new gaming champion, lacking a AMD Ryzen 9 7950X or Ryzen 7 7700X (apparently the 7700X is better for gaming) but compared to its predecessor, the Intel Core i9-13900K It offers better performance for gaming, which can vary between 5-10% in scenarios where the bottleneck is the video card. At resolutions like 2160p, the difference may be non-existent, unless it's a competitive game that demands a lot of the processor. The truth is, at that resolution the bottleneck will usually always be the video card (GPU).

The abysmal leap in performance occurs in productivity loads, especially those that demand partially single-core performance or are 100% multi-core. In those cases, the Core i9-13900K ($589) completely annihilate the Core i9-12900K and competes with AMD's top-of-the-range processor, the Ryze 9 7950X ($699) which has a higher cost.

If the consumption is not of importance for the end user, the cost of the platform (Intel) will be lower than the total cost of a PC with Ryzen 9 7950X, since the motherboards have a higher cost in AMD (in addition to the processor).

For users on Z690 boards who want to make the generation jump, it's quite good, but they have to remember that it will be the latest generation of processors that Intel will offer under this platform. The advantage that AMD currently has over its competition is that AM5 will offer more generations of processors, but the cost right now it is far from recommendable.

AMD needs to review a price reduction or put protection, since the competition is going to be tough in processors from Intel. And not only that, if there is no demand for Ryzen 7000 processors, those affected are also their partners that manufacture motherboards, having old inventory and a high price.

To the people putting together a new system, the Core i9-13900K it is the end of the road, but it shows good performance in a world scenario where the total cost of a platform is quite relevant. For those of us coming from a Core i9-12900K, we see the 13900K launch with better eyes than what Alder Lake-S originally was.