The 13th-Gen Intel ' Raptor Lake ' $589 Core i9-13900K and the $319 Core i5-13600K bring groundbreaking levels of performance to their respective price points, with a ~20% generational jump in gaming performance taking the lead over competing chips from AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series. We tested all three of the new Raptor Lake chips with the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 to find the best CPU for gaming and the new leader of our CPU benchmark hierarchy. Raptor Lake’s performance gains come from record-high clock speeds that stretch up to 5.8 GHz, with a 6 GHz model coming, while Intel’s generous sprinkling of more cores throughout its product stack gives it the lead in core counts for the first time since AMD’s Ryzen debuted back in 2017.

In many respects, Raptor Lake is an iteration of the microarchitectures found in the previous-gen Alder Lake chips, but with expansive improvements that yield explosive performance gains. Even though Intel still uses the ‘Intel 7’ process node, it leveraged impressive advances in a newer revision of the silicon to push clock speeds higher while improving power efficiency. Intel also etched the cores on a new, larger die with more cores and L3 cache and exposed previously unused L2 cache.

Paired with fine-grained tuning and expanded use of features in the core, Raptor Lake yields the types of performance gains we would normally only expect from the transition to a new process node. Those types of advances are needed as Intel attempts to fend off the 5nm Ryzen 7000 processors, like the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X , that recently took the lead over Alder Lake.

Like its predecessor, Raptor Lake supports the latest connectivity standards, like PCIe 5.0 and DDR5, with the latter now supporting faster speeds of DDR5-5600. Intel also preserves DDR4 support for less-expensive build options — a pronounced advantage over AMD’s Ryzen 7000. Raptor Lake will also drop into existing motherboards to offer an upgrade path for Alder Lake users, but new 700-series motherboards offer slightly expanded connectivity options. Intel also introduced more CPU overclocking features, too.

Of course, there are caveats. Intel’s new chips are its most power-efficient yet, but like AMD, Intel has taken a power-be-damned approach to regain leadership, dialing up its power limits for all of its desktop PC chips to new heights. That means the heat can be hard to control, so you’ll need to plan for a beefy cooling solution. On the flip side, you can now easily overclock to the highest clock rates we’ve ever seen, and that's even without using exotic cooling. For instance, we dialed in 5.6 GHz all-core overclocks with relative ease with an AIO watercooler.

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Here’s the quick take on performance with our cumulative measurements, representing the averaged results of our gaming, single- and multi-threaded application benchmarks, respectively. We have far more expansive gaming and desktop PC application benchmarks below — including overclocked performance for all the new chips — but this gives a decent look at the big performance picture.

Raptor Lake delivers a 20% gen-on-gen improvement in gaming performance, taking the overall lead from AMD’s finest — including the vaunted Ryzen 7 5800X3D . On the application side of our testing, Intel claimed that Raptor Lake will have a 15% gain in single-threaded performance and a 41% gain in multi-threaded work compared to Alder Lake, which we found to be generally accurate in our own testing.

Intel did raise the price of the Core i5-13600K model, but it kept the same pricing for the Core i7 and i9. With the company’s continued aggressive chip pricing and options for lower-priced platforms and memory, the 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors are now the best CPUs for gaming and most other work, even if they don’t take the outright performance lead in all threaded workloads.

Intel 13th-Gen Raptor Lake Specifications and Pricing

Intel's initial Raptor Lake launch includes three overclockable chips, and each has two variants, giving you the option for cheaper graphics-less KF-series models. Intel is expected to release the remaining 16 processors in the lineup early next year. Just like the previous-gen chips, the 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors come with a mix of both big performance cores (p-cores) for latency-sensitive work and small efficiency cores (e-cores) for threaded and background applications. The e-cores stick with the same Gracemont architecture as before, but the p-cores move from the Golden Cove design to Raptor Cove. We'll cover the architecture more in-depth after the benchmarks.

The 24-core 32-thread $589 Core i9-13900K will square off with AMD's 16-core $699 Ryzen 9 7950X , so Intel has a pricing advantage. The Core i9-13900K has the highest clock rates of the new chips, with a 600 MHz generational improvement bringing it to a 5.8 GHz peak that sets a record for mainstream desktop PCs. Intel employs Thermal Velocity Boost and Turbo Boost 3.0 tech for the Raptor Lake Core i9 models, so the 13900K will have to meet certain temperature (under 70C) and power conditions to boost to 5.8 GHz on two cores. Intel has also raised the boost frequencies for both p-cores and e-cores on all Raptor Lake chips, but reduced the base clocks by 200 MHz. The latter shouldn't mean much in practical application — this is done to manage the Base Turbo Power (BTP) rating.

The 13900K has the same 125W BTP as before, but Intel increased the Maximum Turbo Power (MTP) by 12W, bringing it to 253W. That’s a new height for desktop processors, outstripping Ryzen 7000’s peak 230W rating.

The Core i9-13900K has eight more e-cores than its predecessor, delivering much more threaded horsepower and technically taking the core count lead on the mainstream desktop PC over the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X. In contrast, AMD’s design employs only cores that are analogous to ‘performance cores,’ so we’ll have to look to the benchmarks to suss out the winners instead of relying upon core counts alone. The e-cores come with a 400 MHz increase to the boost clock, bringing them to 4.3 GHz. Even though the e-cores use the same Gracemont architecture, Intel claims that changes to the caching policy and other fine-grained optimizations (more below) now yield the same IPC and frequency as the original 14nm Skylake cores, but at lower power.

The $409 Core i7-13700K received a 400 MHz p-core frequency bump to 5.4 GHz, an additional four e-cores for a total of eight, and a 400 MHz e-core boost to 4.2 GHz. Intel also increased the MTP for this chip to 253W, a 63W increase over the prior-gen Core i7-12700K (+33%).

The $319 Core i5-13600K has four more e-cores than the prior gen, and Intel increased the p-core clocks by 200 MHz to reach 5.1 GHz. Intel also bumped the e-cores up by 300 MHz to achieve a 3.9 GHz boost. Naturally, this means the chip will consume more power — the 13600K also has a 31W higher MTP than the prior gen, weighing in at 181W (+20%).

The Core i5-13600K looks to be the most impressive Raptor Lake chip if you’re willing to overclock, as we easily attained a 5.6 GHz overclock that nearly matches the stock Core i9-13900K’s gaming performance. You’ll have to pay for the privilege, though. The $319 Core i3-13600K is the lone chip to receive a price increase; both the full-fledged model and the graphics-less 13600KF are $30 more expensive than the prior gen. Intel has confirmed that e-cores are also coming to more of the Raptor Lake Core i5 lineup. Currently, only the Core i5 'K' Alder Lake model has four e-cores, while the others do not.

Some of the improvements apply to all three chips. For example, Intel increased the L2 cache from 1.25MB to 2MB for each p-core and doubled the amount of L2 cache for each cluster of e-cores to 4MB. The amount of L3 cache has also increased due to adding more e-core clusters, each of which has an adjacent L3 cache slice as part of the design. That leads to cache capacity increases for all K-series Raptor Lake chips.

Intel has increased its DDR5 memory support up to 5600 MT/s if you use one DIMM per channel (1DPC), a big increase over the prior 4800 MT/s speed with Alder Lake. Just as importantly, Intel increased 2DPC speeds up to 4400 MT/s, an improvement over the previous-gen 3600 MT/s. Raptor Lake also continues to support DDR4 memory, which Intel predicts will coexist in the market with DDR5 until the end of 2024. This approach ensures a value option for Intel platforms, unlike AMD's all-in approach with DDR5.

Both Raptor Lake and Alder Lake drop into motherboards with the LGA 1700 socket, so they’ll both work with existing 600-series or new 700-series chipsets. Intel says that, on a like-for-like basis, you shouldn’t see any performance differences if you use a previous-gen 600-series motherboard for Raptor Lake. As usual, Intel will bring its Z-series (Z790, in this case) motherboards to market first, with the value-centric B- and H-series coming when it launches the rest of the Raptor Lake lineup.

The 700-series motherboards bring minor improvements over the 600-series, but Intel has increased the number of PCIe 4.0 lanes hanging off the chipset to 20, an increase of eight additional lanes. Intel also added support for one more USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 200Gps port, bringing the total to five. As before, the Raptor Lake chip itself supports 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and four lanes of PCIe 4.0 for a storage device.

Intel doesn’t include a cooler with the Raptor Lake processors but recommends a 280mm AIO watercooler or air equivalent (or greater). Existing LGA 1700 coolers are compatible with the new Raptor Lake motherboards but bear in mind that the performance of your cooler can significantly limit performance, so it's best to overprovision. You’ll need to ensure you have a beefy cooler for stock operation with the Core i9 and i7 models, and even an overclocked Core i5-13600K can challenge lower-end 240mm AIOs.

The Raptor Lake iGPU is based on the same Xe-LP Gen 12.2 architecture found with Alder Lake. Aside from minor clock speed improvements, there aren’t any changes to the iGPU, so you shouldn’t expect any meaningful gaming performance.

We’ll jump to the test setup and benchmarks now, but we have more architectural details later in the review.

Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K Thermals, Benchmark Test Setup

We tested the 13th-Generation Raptor Lake processors with an MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi motherboard. Due to time constraints, we tested all Raptor Lake configurations with DDR5 memory. We'll add a baseline DDR4 comparison to our CPU Benchmark hierarchy in the coming days.

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Raptor Lake exposes the most robust overclocking features and the highest frequency ceilings we've seen with modern chips. We've heard that most units can manage 5.7 GHz all-core p-core overclocks on 360mm AIOs, and we reached 5.5 GHz on Core i7 and 5.6 GHz on Core i9 and i5, all with a 280mm Corsair H115i watercooler. We optimized the voltages carefully, but do note that we often peaked at ~96-98C during stressful applications — right below the 100C throttle point. For reference, we regularly hit 100C at stock settings with our 280mm cooler, as you can see above in the multi-threaded stress test with the Core i9-13900K. However, the chip did regularly hit 5.8 GHz, as advertised, during lightly threaded work (second slide), and we didn't experience nearly as much of a cooling challenge with the Core i7 and i5 models.

In either case, our overclocked config represented an improvement over the badly tuned power consumption when the chip is allowed to operate without power limits — the chip itself pulled 308W at stock settings during a Prime95 test, pegging all cores at 100C after about 10 seconds (third slide) . This behavior seems similar to Intel's Adaptive Boost Technology , which is designed to push the cores right to 100C, extracting the full amount of performance available within the tolerated temperature range.

Intel's chips are designed to sustain these temperatures over the span of their warranty, and as we've seen with Ryzen 7000's penchant for running at 95C at stock settings, higher temperatures have become the norm as the chipmakers battle for supremacy. Temperatures can limit your performance during stock operation, so if you purchase the 13900K, plan for a powerful cooler to extract the full performance. Temperatures, not silicon ability, were absolutely the limiting factor to our overclocks, so better cooling could yield better results.

The Core i9-13900K's 5.6 GHz overclock is lower than its 5.8 GHz peak, so we see some slight regressions in some single-threaded work. Interestingly, we found similar frequency ceilings with the Core i9, i7, and i5 models, making the 13600K particularly appealing. As always, you're at the whims of the silicon lottery, so your mileage may vary. Memory overclocking was a snap — we used an XMP 3.0 profile to run at DDR5-6800. Additionally, pre-certified XMP 3.0 DDR5-7200 kits are already on their way to market, and XMP 3.0 DDR5-8000 kits will arrive next month.

For our stock tests, we're sticking with our standard policy of allowing the motherboard to exceed Intel's recommended power limits, provided the chip remains within warrantied operating conditions. Our stock tests use the default lifted PL1 and PL2 restrictions. Almost all enthusiast-class motherboards come with similar settings, reflecting the out-of-box experience with a high-end motherboard. Naturally, these lifted power limits equate to more power consumption and, thus, more heat. Here are our overclocked configs:

• Intel Core i9-13900K @ 5.6 : 5.6 GHz all-core p-core, 4.4 GHz e-core, 1.32V vCore, DDR5-6800 XMP 3.0
• Intel Core i7-13700K @ 5.5 : 5.5 GHz all-core p-core, 4.2 GHz e-core, 1.31 vCore, DDR5-6800 XMP 3.0
• Intel Core i5-13600K @ 5.6 : 5.6 GHz all-core p-core, 4.0 GHz e-core, 1.33 vCore, DDR5-6800 XMP 3.0

We used an Asus RTX 4090 ROG Strix OC for gaming testing, with all testing conducted in the last five days with updated drivers, chipsets and motherboard firmwares, etc. The RTX 4090 delivers the biggest generational jump in GPU performance in recent memory, and we caution that we're using the first publicly available driver for this round of tests. That means we could see better performance in the future.

In that vein, we did see performance inversions with the Ryzen 7000 processors in three of our eight tested titles — Warhammer 3 , Cyberpunk 2077 , and F1 2022 — wherein single-CCD (chiplet) Ryzen models outperformed dual-CCD models. We reached out to both AMD and Nvidia on the matter, and the former tells us that this could be unoptimized game code that has been exposed by the large jump in GPU compute, while the latter hasn't responded yet. AMD tells us it doesn't see entirely unexpected results, but it is following up with further testing and will work with game devs to patch any titles that might be adversely impacted.

Intel's Thread Director, which steers threads to the right type of core (p- or e-core) based on the type of workload, gets an upgrade in the Windows 11 22H2 update. Intel has updated the workload classification engine with machine learning algorithms and also improved the handling of foreground and background tasks, which will benefit both Alder and Raptor Lake processors in multi-tasking scenarios. However, Intel tells us this brings fairly minor improvements in multi-tasking, and no improvements if you aren't multitasking. Our test regimen executes serially. As such, we tested with our Windows 11 21H2 test image due to its known stability and several reports of performance issues with 22H2. We'll conduct some cursory tests with multi-tasking in 22H2 and will follow up if we see marked improvements.

Microsoft has recently issued advice to gamers to disable several security features to boost gaming performance. That has prompted a shift in our test policy — we used to test with secure boot, virtualization support, and fTPM/PTT active, which can result in slightly lower performance. We have now disabled those features for maximum performance. You can find further details on the Ryzen overclocks in the respective reviews, and hardware details in the table at the end of the article.

Gaming Performance on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K — The TLDR

Below you can see the geometric mean of our gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p, with each resolution split into its own chart. Be aware that a different mix of game titles could yield somewhat different results (particularly with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D), but this serves as a solid overall indicator of gaming performance. We're testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions and fidelity. You'll find further game-by-game breakdowns below.

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To simplify the charts, the first two slides feature only the stock configurations, while the remainder of the slides cover the same results but have the overclocked configurations added. We use that same approach for the individual gaming results below.

The $589 Core i9-13900K makes a case for being crowned the fastest 1080p gaming chip as it takes a 4% lead over the current champ, the $430 AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, at stock settings. However, unlike the 5800X3D, the 13900K offers a much more balanced profile that doesn't result in tradeoffs in applications, either. Notably, moving to 1440p shrinks the delta between the two chips to the imperceptible range. We'll see the winner between the Core i9-13900K and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D vary with different test suites, but here the Core i9-13900K is the overall gaming champ.

Zooming out to the Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 competitors, the 13900K is 14% faster than AMD's fastest standard chip, the $549 Ryzen 7 7900X. Of course, overclocking both chips shrinks the delta, but the 13900K maintains an insurmountable lead. The gen-on-gen comparison is pretty impressive, too: The Core i9-13900K is 19.8% faster than its prior-gen counterpart, the Core i9-12900K.

As always, if you aren't after performance in heavy productivity tasks, the Core i7 model takes the shine off the Core i9. The Core i7-13700K is a great high-performance gaming chip at its $409 price point, offering 95% of the 13900K's performance for $180 less. Better yet, you can overclock the chip and get basically identical performance to the Core i9-13900K. The 13700K is also 18.8% faster than the previous-gen 12700K.

But the Core i5 beats both of its pricier siblings in the price-to-performance department. The $319 Core i5-13600K is a stellar gaming chip — Intel raised the price by $30 over the prior-gen model, but here we can see the stock configuration beating AMD's entire Ryzen 7000 lineup at 1080p, albeit by slim margins. In addition, overclocking propels the Core i5-13600K to the same level as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, an impressive feat, as it lands within ~5% of the Core i9-13900K.

The deltas in these charts are slim, and large deltas in individual game titles, as we see with the 5800X3D, impact cumulative measurements. As mentioned in the test setup section, we've seen a few odd test results with the Ryzen 7000 processors that find dual-chiplet models trailing single-chiplet models in some titles, which also impacts these measurements.

The Nvidia RTX 4090 delivers the largest gen-on-gen increase in GPU compute power in recent history, so we could see a wave of game optimizations to fully exploit the increased resources. That means these results could change, and as always, the competition between AMD and Intel chips can vary based on the title and the GPU you use, so it's best to make an informed decision based on the types of titles you play frequently. Be sure to check out the individual tests below.

Cyberpunk 2077 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Cyberpunk 2077 finds the Intel processors taking the lead over the Ryzen 7000 models, but you'll notice that the dual-CCD Ryzen 9 7950X and 7900X trail the single-CCD Ryzen 5 and 7 models, implying this game could use some optimization. For now, the Core i5-13600K is 5% faster than the fastest AMD chip, while the Core i7-13700K and Core i9-13900K lead by 12% and 16%, respectively.

The second chart includes the overclocked configurations, and here we can see the Intel processors expand on their lead. Notably, the overclocked Core i9-13900K actually regresses compared to the stock config — that's because the 5.6 GHz all-core overclock isn't as fast as the 5.8 GHz boost speed. Surprisingly, the overclocked Core i7-13700K still carves out the win, possibly due to having fewer active e-cores.

Far Cry 6 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Far Cry 6 finds the Ryzen chips falling into a bit of a more predictable pecking order, but they still trail the Raptor Lake chips by significant margins at every price point. The Core i5-13600K continues to impress given its price tag, and it is simply stellar after overclocking.

F1 2021 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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F1 2021 finds the Ryzen 9 models again trailing the Ryzen 7 and 5 models significantly. This title tends to scale by core count, so any optimization here could yield big gains for AMD's core-heavy chips.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D reminds us of the power of its incredible 96MB of L3 cache here — despite its much lower 4.5 GHz clock rate, it is still 9% faster than the Core i9-13900K, and overclocking the latter does little to close the gap.

Hitman 3 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Hitman 3 finds the Ryzen 7000 processors scaling in a more predictable manner based on core count, but the Raptor Lake chips maintain a solid lead at their respective price points. Flipping over to the 1440p charts shows us that higher resolutions are often the great equalizer that levels the playing field for chips with similar accommodations.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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L3 cache obviously reigns supreme here as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is an incredible 20% faster than the Core i9-13900K. Here we see some odd performance trends with Ryzen 7000 processors once again, with the Ryzen 9 7900X inexplicably trailing the other chips regardless of how many times we retested. This suggests some game code tuning could be in order.

Red Dead Redemption 2 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Even though they were leaders in gaming performance just a few months ago, the Alder Lake chips now wallow at the bottom of the chart, perhaps justifying a gen-on-gen update, a rarity, if you're after the best performance from an Intel chip.

Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D once again exhibits its bipolar performance traits as it takes a sizeable lead in this title.

Warhammer 3 on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Watch Dogs Legion on Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Desktop PC Application Benchmarks on Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K — The TLDR:

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For simplicity's sake, the first two slides represent the test pool without overclocked configurations, while the latter slides add in the overclocked results. These cumulative measurements, comprised of the geometric mean of the most important application benchmarks below, give a good indication of overall performance and the trends you can expect from overclocking. As such, we won't include the overclocked results in the slides below.

For instance, we see huge gains in single-threaded work for the overclocked Core i5-13600K and Core i7-13700K, while the overclocked Core i9-13900K sees a slight reduction in most single-threaded work due to the 5.6 GHz all-core overclock. The overclocked Intel models all profit heavily from overclocking in threaded work, but we see very little improvement from overclocking the Ryzen chips.

At stock settings, the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X is roughly 3% faster than the $589 Core i9-13900K in multi-threaded workloads, barely holding on to its lead. Meanwhile, the Core i9-13900K is 22% faster in threaded work than the closer-priced $549 Ryzen 9 7900X.

We see larger advantages for Raptor Lake as we move down the stack. The $409 Core i7-13700K is 35% faster in threaded work than the similarly-priced $399 Ryzen 7 7700X, while the $319 Core i5-13600K takes a similar 34% lead over the $299 Ryzen 5 7600X.

Once again, we should take note of the explosive generational gains for Raptor Lake — we're looking at a 30% improvement for Core i5 and i7 in threaded work, and a whopping 40% improvement for the Core i9-13900K.

The Raptor Lake chips dominate in single-threaded work, leading the Ryzen comparables at every price point. The leads become far more pronounced after overclocking.

Here we also see the catch with the Zen 3-powered Ryzen 7 5800X3D — while this chip is incredibly potent in some games, compared to the newer processors, performance suffers in just about everything else.

Rendering Benchmarks on Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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It was initially surprising to see Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture largely beat Ryzen in threaded workloads after AMD had dominated these types of benchmarks for years, but the Ryzen 9 7950X quashed that uprising, at least until Raptor Lake arrived.

The Core i9-13900K takes the lead in the threaded Cinebench and POV-Ray tests, but the Ryzen 9 7950X dominates the Blender and V-Ray benchmarks. Performance in threaded rendering engines ends up being a bit of a toss-up between Core i9 and Ryzen 9, but we do have to remember that the Ryzen 9 7950X costs $100 more than the 13900K. The Ryzen 9 7900X is actually closer at $50 less than the 13900K, but it trails in every workload. Additionally, the Core i9-13900K takes a convincing lead in all single-threaded rendering tasks over both Ryzen 9 chips.

Looking to the lower end of the product stacks, the Core i5-13600K's four extra e-cores and higher power limits pay dividends as it cruises to easy wins over the Ryzen 7 and 5 processors.

Again, pay attention to the gen-on-gen improvements over Alder Lake — they're impressive.

Encoding Benchmarks on Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded, and it takes an agile chip to master both disciplines.

The Corfe i9-13900K takes slim leads in the single-threaded LAME, WebP, and FLAC encoders, but the Ryzen 9 7950X is competitive across the board. The Core i5-13600K again leverages its extra cores and higher power limits to be exceptionally competitive given its price point.

As an interesting aside, the speed of these modern chips has broken our AV1 1080p benchmark; the chips are fast enough that they all plateau at the top speed seen in the chart (especially the overclocked configurations that aren't shown). We'll update with a suitable replacement in the future.

Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Lightroom on Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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The UL Benchmarks Procyon benchmarks run complex Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom workflows with the actual software, making for a great real-world test suite.

Aside from the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the Ryzen 7000 processors take a clear lead in all but the batch processing sub-test.

Web Browsing, Office and Productivity on Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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The ubiquitous web browser is one of the most frequently used applications. These latency-sensitive tests tend to be lightly threaded, so a fast response time is critical. The Application Start-up benchmark compares how long it takes to open various applications, thus serving as a great measure of system snappiness. Ryzen 7000 goes a long way to improving AMD’s performance here.

Compilation, Compression, AVX-512 Performance on Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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This selection of tests runs the gamut from the exceedingly branchy code in the LLVM compilation workload to the massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to encryption and compression/decompression performance.

Y-cruncher computes Pi with the AVX instruction set, making for an exceedingly demanding benchmark. We employed the latest version of y-cruncher that has added support for Zen 4, and here we can see the benefits of AVX-512 become apparent in the single-threaded benchmark as the Ryzen 7000 chips all lead. Spreading the workload out among the cores in the threaded portion of the y-cruncher test yields a tie between the Core i9 and Ryzen 9 7950X.

We’re accustomed to Ryzen displaying bipolar performance in compression/decompression workloads, with decompression being a strength while compression suffered compared to other chips. The Zen 4 architecture makes big strides here, delivering incredible performance in both workloads with the Ryzen 9 7950X.

Power Consumption and Efficiency Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K

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Both chipmakers are dialing up power as they grapple for the lead, but AMD has the advantage of the denser 5nm TSMC node. Despite Ryzen 7000’s substantial gen-on-gen increase in power consumption, Intel’s Raptor Lake processors still consume more power. However, they also deliver more performance in some types of work.

The renders-per-day-per-watt charts show that the Core i9-13900K is more efficient than the previous-gen Core i9-12900K, while the Core i5-13600K's increased power consumption and tuning for the higher end of the V/F curve has led to a generational decline in efficiency.

Unfortunately, we had to remove the Core i7-13700K results from these charts, as an error in the power telemetry has led to inaccurate power figures that don't match what we measured at the 8-pin connectors. We're troubleshooting the matter and will add the chip to the slides as soon as we find a fix.

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Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart.

Remember that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are the best. Here we can see that the Core i9-13900K isn't as efficient as the Ryzen 9 7950X, but it does make a marked improvement over the previous-gen 12900K. In contrast, the 13600K is faster than the 12600K, but it takes much more power to get there.

Intel 13th-Gen Raptor Lake Architecture

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Intel significantly improved its 'Intel 7' process node by employing faster third-gen SuperFin transistors and increasing the channel mobility (Intel hasn't provided more specifics on the latter). Intel claims this yielded what would typically be considered a full node's worth of performance improvement. As you can see above, Intel shifted and extended the voltage/frequency curve to deliver better performance at both high and low voltages (>50mV reduction at the same frequency, or a 200 MHz increase at the same voltage).

We'll soon see a 6 GHz Raptor Lake model because the improved node performance paired with optimized speed paths within the design (faster, leakier transistors in key paths) allowed Intel to dial up the peak clock rates by 600 MHz. Intel says that Raptor Cove is the fastest core it's ever built, but the node's improved dynamic range can be tuned more for the lower-power end of the V/F curve to improve efficiency for the Raptor Lake mobile chips.

Intel's larger 4MB L2 cache on the e-core clusters also employs a new dynamic prefetching algorithm that uses real-time telemetry data and machine learning to dynamically adjust the prefetch algorithm based on the type of workload it is executing. Intel says this helps improve performance in some types of applications by ~2%, like Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Lightroom, and in an unspecified application by up to 16%.

Intel also employs a different dynamic 'Inclusive/non-inclusive' (INI) approach for its L3 cache, but this adjusts between inclusive and non-inclusive caching schemes on the fly. Caches are typically hard-coded to run with either of these policies and can't be changed. As a reminder, inclusive caching keeps a copy of L2 data in the L3 cache and typically improves performance in single-threaded work by providing a faster hit rate for serial workloads, while non-inclusive caching only keeps part of the L2 cache in L3 to improve performance in threaded workloads. Intel's INI uses machine learning and real-time telemetry to make changes to this policy on the fly, thus providing the best of both worlds.

This new feature comes courtesy of a microcontroller unit (MCU) that Intel originally designed into each Alder Lake core, but hadn't yet fully used. Intel was the first to employ a microcontroller built directly into each core, but the controller was only used for SoC-level power management in Alder Lake. With Raptor Lake it now manages power on a per-core basis and provides real-time control of certain characteristics while providing a foundation for new functionalities in the future.

New firmware updates to this microcontroller employ machine learning algorithms that better analyze telemetry data to characterize workloads, thus allowing the MCU to make adjustments to power management, the caching scheme, and prefetch characteristics at a 200-microsecond granularity. The telemetry data is sent from another unit in the core.

Interestingly, the MCU can be further tuned via uploadable firmwares, and such updates could even conceivably be added to Alder and Raptor Lake chips in the field via microcode updates, thus providing a performance upgrade. Intel says there are no firm plans for this option as of yet.

Intel also increased the L2 cache from 1.25MB to 2MB for each Raptor Cove p-core but didn't need to make any significant architectural changes to enable the increased capacity. This cache, and some other features like increased vector compute, were already designed into the edge of the die in the previous-gen Golden Cove architecture, but they were only used for the Sapphire Rapids server processors. Intel's architects can exercise a 'chop option' to remove those features for processors that didn't need them, like Alder Lake.

This approach speeds design and validation while leaving room for future revisions of the same architecture. With Raptor Lake, Intel chose to leave the L2 cache active. This adds roughly 1 cycle of extra latency, a byproduct of having to travel further across the die to access the extra capacity.

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Neither the p-cores nor e-cores come with any meaningful IPC increase — we're told the 'one to two percent' increase comes largely from improved memory throughput and higher clock rates. Roughly half of Raptor Lake's frequency improvement stems from the Intel 7 process node's improved capacitance and speed, while the remainder comes from improved instruction timing and fine-grained power optimizations. Intel originally designed the Golden Cove architecture to achieve such speeds, but some headroom was left on the table in order to speed time to market for Alder Lake.

As a result of frequency, memory, cache optimizations, and more threads, Intel claims that Raptor Lake provides 15% more single-threaded performance than Alder Lake and 41% more multi-threaded performance, which was largely borne out in our own testing.

Intel also says that Raptor Lake can provide the same performance as Alder Lake in multi-threaded work at a mere quarter of the power. Yes, you read that right -- Intel says Raptor can match a 241W Alder lake chip, but with only 65W of power. We're putting that to the test; stay tuned. Intel also says it is working on a new dynamic core parking feature for Raptor mobile chips, but the company will share more details later.

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Intel’s Core i9, i7, and some i5 models come with the new larger Raptor Lake 8+16 die (8 P-core + 16 E-core). Above, you can see an image of the Raptor Lake die, with the e-cores highlighted in blue. Intel has added two additional quad-core e-core clusters to the die, elongating the die and adding two more ring stops and two more L3 cache slices that are shared among the cores.

As you can see from the unofficial die measurements we have in the table below, the die is also slightly wider. We theorize that the wider dimensions stem from the extra L2 cache placed at the edge of the die. The larger die allows Intel to stay competitive with AMD, but it will also inevitably lead to higher costs. We see that passed on with the Core i5 model, but Intel is obviously absorbing the cost increase with the Core i7 and i9 models.

Raptor Lake sees significant improvements to DDR5 throughput, but leveraging faster DDR5 memory speeds requires a faster fabric. Intel has increased the ring bus frequency to 5 GHz and it is 900 MHz faster during all-core turbo, addressing a glaring issue we saw with Alder Lake. Intel says the ring bus enhancements alone can result in 5% higher framerates (we've long seen big performance increases from overclocking this setting on Alder Lake, but this will now yield negligible results with Raptor Lake due to the higher native speed).

The Raptors Are Out

Intel's 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors deliver explosive generational performance increases that beat AMD's similarly-priced Ryzen chips in gaming, single- and multi-threaded work at every price point.

Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and 1440p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an Nvidia RTX 4090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings.

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The $589 Core i9-13900K beat the reigning gaming champ, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, by 4% in our 1080p benchmarks. We have to remember that the 5800X3D's ranking could change based on the games tested, and we used an RTX 4090 for our tests. Most gamers won't have access to such a powerful GPU, so the differences could be slight in the real world. In either case, the 13900K is also 14% faster than AMD's fastest standard chip for gaming, the $549 Ryzen 7 7900X.

However, if you're looking for the best value on a high-performance chip for gaming, the 13900K is overshadowed by its sibling, the $409 Core i7-13700K. This chip delivers 95% of the 13900K's performance in gaming, but for $180 less.

The Core i5-13600K is the best value for most gamers, though, at least until the non-K Core i5s arrive next year. For $319, or $294 for the graphics-less variant, the 13600K is slightly faster than all the Ryzen 7000 chips at gaming, and tapping the incredible overclocking potential propels it into 5800X3D territory.

The Core i9-13900K is best suited for productivity workloads, and here it offers nearly the same threaded horsepower as the Ryzen 9 7950X, but for $100 less. It also beats the 7950X in single-threaded applications. At their respective price points, the Core i7-13700K and Core i5-13600K deliver Ryzen 7000-beating performance in both single- and multi-threaded applications.

Overall, the Raptor Lake lineup offers a balanced performance profile with no clear weaknesses in specific types of workloads, making them agile all-rounder chips for productivity work.

Intel preserved support for DDR4 memory, providing a pathway to significantly lower memory and motherboard costs than you'll currently find with AMD's AM5 ecosystem, which requires DDR5 memory. If you're interested in DDR5, Raptor Lake has incredible overclocking headroom, and pre-certified XMP DDR5-8000 kits are already headed to market. Intel also says you won't lose any performance by going with a previous-gen 600-series motherboard if it has adequate power delivery, opening another pathway for value seekers.

Speaking of power, the 13th-Gen chips are more efficient but remain power hungry due to heavy tuning for extreme performance. You'll need to top the Core i9-13900K with a beefy cooler because insufficient cooling will hamstring performance. Cooling requirements for the downstream models aren't quite as stringent, but the Core i5 and i7 models have expanded power budgets that require more capable coolers than we're accustomed to using with lower-end chips. AMD's chips consume less power and are more efficient, but like the Raptor Lake chips, they also operate at elevated temperatures (95C is expected) and now stretch up to 230W, so the differences aren't quite as pronounced as they used to be.

The Raptor Lake processors provide the highest overclocking ceilings we've ever seen at 5.6 GHz. All three chips we tested reached incredible clock speeds with little effort (ceilings in the 5.5 to 5.7 GHz range with beefy ambient cooling are said to be common). Raptor's overclockability is far more useful in the Core i7 and i5 models, as most of the headroom (and more) is already exposed in the Core i9-13900K right out of the box.

AMD has a Zen 4D chip slated for release later this year, while Intel has a 6 GHz special edition Raptor Lake waiting in the wings. We even recently spotted an unannounced 34-core Raptor Lake at a tradeshow, suggesting that Intel might create a new HEDT platform.

These events will take place as the year progresses, but AMD will need to reduce pricing on its Ryzen 7000 models to stay competitive with Raptor Lake.

For now, the Core i9-13900K reigns as the fastest gaming chip on the market, albeit by a slim margin, and offers impressive performance in all manner of productivity workloads. Meanwhile, despite a $30 price increase, the Core i5-13600K is equally impressive with class-leading performance at its price point, slotting in as the best value chip for gaming. It also happens to be a great all-rounder, too.

• MORE: AMD vs Intel
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• MORE: Raptor Lake All We Know