In a fall filled with {hardware} releases, Intel’s new 13th-generation Raptor Lake CPUs would be the most feral of the lot. Raw, unapologetic energy is one side of it—chip makers at the moment are capturing as a lot juice doable by processors to make them scream throughout duties, and Intel additional embraces this method.

But efficiency isn’t what makes Raptor Lake borderline savage. Certainly, Intel’s newest is spectacular, as demonstrated by the top-end Core i9-13900Okay. The means it posts benchmark numbers brings to thoughts loud, ferocious American muscle vehicles.

No, it’s the timing of its arrival. AMD and Intel’s struggle for superiority is now not a genteel, scripted affair. Instead, we’ve moved into blood sport. Several weeks in the past, Intel solid a shadow over the launch of AMD’s juggernaut Ryzen 7000 chips by asserting 13th-gen particulars. Today, its flagship processor now slips into the lead on a number of fronts—leaving AMD with barely any time to savor the triumph of its Zen 4 release.

An enormous improve, gen-on-gen

Intel’s contemporary edge on AMD is a product of considerable enhancements on its 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs, which had been already no slouch once they launched. Built on the identical Intel 7 course of, Raptor Lake boasts a lot sooner clock speeds and extra cores. It additionally comes with a rise in energy draw.

The preliminary line-up consists of the $589 Core i9-13900Okay, $409 Core i7-13700Okay, and $319 Core i5-13600Okay, in addition to their KF counterparts missing built-in graphics. (You can learn extra concerning the full plans for Raptor Lake and its technical particulars in our overview of the initial announcement.) The flagship 13900Okay truly prices much less than its AMD rival, the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X. 

AMD

Raptor Lake additionally has the benefit of launching into extra plentiful motherboard and reminiscence choices than Ryzen 7000. Since these 13th-gen components are an iteration of Alder Lake, they use the identical LGA 1700 socket, supply the identical variety of PCIe 5 and PCIe 4 lanes (16 and 4, respectively), and nonetheless help DDR4 reminiscence. Accordingly, they’re suitable with 12th-gen motherboards. No want to attend for Z790 when you’ve noticed a greater (and cheaper) selection accessible now. You can even go for slower DDR4 RAM with some Intel motherboards if you’ll want to save money, whereas AMD’s AM5 motherboards—with an eye fixed in the direction of a multi-year CPU improve path—require DDR5.

Because of its lineage, some web commenters could dismiss Raptor Lake as merely an unplanned refresh, meant to maintain Intel related. But make no mistake—this isn’t a minor replace. Intel’s pre-launch claims of a 15 p.c uptick for single-threaded efficiency and as much as 41 p.c for multithreaded in comparison with 12th-gen Alder Lake aren’t far off the mark.

Intel Core i9-13900Okay efficiency

For this explicit assessment, we’ll be taking a look at Intel and AMD’s flagship chips, each previous and current. The brawl is primarily between Intel’s 24-core, 32-thread Core i9-13900Okay and AMD’s 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X, after all. But seeing how they evaluate in opposition to the earlier era 16-core, 24-thread Core i9-12900K and 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X is helpful too.

These benchmark outcomes are significantly essential when evaluating Intel and AMD’s choices—due to Intel’s hybrid structure that mixes lower-power effectivity cores and higher-octane efficiency cores, you’ll be able to’t evaluate its core counts instantly in opposition to AMD’s. You have to look at the numbers to get a bead on efficiency variations, particularly within the apps you’ll use most.

In common, each the Core i9-13900Okay and 7950X put up extremely quick scores and simply tear previous their predecessors. But every holds a lead in numerous areas, and when you’re an individual eyeing this chip for heavy workloads, Ryzen 7000 might nonetheless be the higher selection. Our YouTube assessment (embedded above) dives deep into the small print, however for the primary takeaways, learn on.

Note: Our benchmarks had been carried out by pairing every of the 4 chips talked about above (13900Okay, 12900Okay, 7950X, 5950X) with an RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics card, AIO CPU cooler, PCIe 4.0 SSD, and 32GB RAM (DDR5-6000 MT/s for the Intel CPUs and 7950X, DDR4-3600 MT/s for the 5950X). Software was run in Windows 11 Home (22H1). For full take a look at bench particulars, leap to the top of this text.

Production

We’ll begin with the primary purpose to purchase a Core i9-13900Okay—multithreaded duties that put each little bit of the processor to work.

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

^{To view these benchmark charts at full dimension, right-click (PC) or lengthy press (cell) on the picture after which open it in a brand new tab or window.}

Looking on the uncooked scaling of multithreaded efficiency in Cinebench’s R23 rendering benchmark, you’ll be able to see the big good points of the Core i9-13900Okay over the 12900Okay. Accordingly, as you would possibly count on, the 13900Okay leaves its predecessor within the mud in rendering and encoding. Across our related benchmarks, it breezed previous the 12900Okay, even exceeding Intel’s early statements that promised an uplift of as much as 41 p.c. Our excessive was a 48 p.c enchancment in V-Ray.

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

^{For benchmarks measured in time (seconds), shorter bars are higher. Otherwise, longer bars point out higher efficiency. To view our benchmark charts at full dimension, right-click (PC) or lengthy press (cell) on the picture after which open it in a brand new tab or window.}

These efficiency good points enable the 13900Okay to scrap with the 7950X on near-even footing. In some apps, like Cinebench, Intel comes out because the frontrunner. In different functions, like Blender and V-Ray, the 7950X nonetheless hangs onto the highest spot. And each chips nonetheless comfortably maintain their very own when not in first place.

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

^{For benchmarks measured in time (seconds), shorter bars are higher. Otherwise, longer bars point out higher efficiency. To view our benchmark charts at full dimension, right-click (PC) or lengthy press (cell) on the picture after which open it in a brand new tab or window.}

But Intel is extra of the winner general on this dustup, thanks to higher integration with standard software program like Adobe Creative Suite and its lead in single- and frivolously threaded efficiency. Pragmatically talking, when you’re a content material creator trying solely at numbers and never serious about exterior components, Intel’s scores common out to type a extra interesting image. The 13900Okay affords as a lot as 25 p.c larger efficiency in Adobe Premiere, as Premiere can lean on the chip’s built-in graphics to hurry up duties like enhancing. Until AMD can get related help for Ryzen 7000’s built-in graphics, the real-world benefit goes to Intel.

Not everybody makes use of the identical functions, after all. The 7950X isn’t completely out within the chilly—utilizing Premiere once more as instance, the hole in efficiency is barely 2 p.c when solely uncooked efficiency is examined. If you’ve gone all in on Davinci Resolve or as a substitute have a workload that includes enormous units of numbers in Excel, chances are you’ll not likely see as a lot of a distinction between Intel and AMD. These two chips preserve one another on their toes, with the efficiency deltas usually within the vary of single-digit percentages.

Gaming

Superior gaming efficiency is extra of a bragging proper than a major concern for chips just like the 13900Okay—however with pre-launch whispers on the web about Intel claiming up to 11 percent higher performance in games, it bears a glance.

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

The Core i9-13900Okay does attain that 11 p.c quantity (and truly exceeds it) in one in all our benchmarks, Ashes of the Singularity. But within the others, the distinction is way smaller, and extra importantly, if you truly have a look at the numbers themselves, the hole is commonly only a few frames per second at already excessive body charges.

Why the discrepancy? Very probably, variations in testing standards. Reviewers can select to isolate CPU efficiency when benchmarking by dropping to a decrease decision or decrease graphics settings. Such settings put much less stress on the graphics card, so the burden of labor goes again to the CPU. This method helps determine who has the upper performing structure.

However, such take a look at situations typically are pretty disconnected from real-world eventualities. So as a substitute, you’ll be able to take a look at at a extra normal decision (1080p is at present the preferred) and push up the graphics settings to ranges that extra folks chase. In many gaming PCs, the graphics card is the constraining issue, not the CPU.

Our gaming benchmarks mirror the latter method, which is why the efficiency distinction seems comparatively small. But no matter what evaluations you learn and what information you see, the primary level right here is that you simply’re not getting a significant enhance gen-over-gen, and each the 13900Okay and 7950X rock. However, the Core i9-13900Okay has extra proper to strut concerning the barnyard. It’s certainly the world’s quickest gaming chip.

Power draw

Just a few years in the past, energy consumption was not a scorching matter when evaluating processors. But at the moment’s chips are pursuing record-breaking efficiency numbers with much less regard to power use. More gasoline for extra firepower—proper as power prices are rising or outright spiking. 

Intel began down this path with 12th-gen Alder Lake, and the facility ranking for 13th-gen Raptor Lake has solely ramped up. The 12900Okay has a most turbo energy (or TDP) of 241W, whereas the Core i9-13900Okay sits at 253W.

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

The excellent news is that Intel squeezes a heck of quite a lot of every watt. Even if you dramatically restrict the facility of the 13900Okay—as you would possibly do in an effort to curb its power use—it could nonetheless carry out about the identical because the 12900Okay at its full 241W. Pretty thrilling stuff.

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld

^{To view our benchmark charts at full dimension, right-click (PC) or lengthy press (cell) on the picture after which open it in a brand new tab or window.}

As for energy draw, it will get a bit extra sophisticated. We’ll cowl extra of the small print in a later article for all of the power nerds on the market (hello), however simply know that winner on this level depends upon the state of affairs. Sometimes the 13900Okay is the higher chip for conserving electrical energy, like when energy limits are dropped. But beneath inventory eventualities when each chips are at full throttle, the settings most individuals depend on, AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X will web you financial savings in month-to-month payments.

Overall, simply know that the Core i9-13900Okay can greatest the 7950X in efficiency benchmarks, however you’ll spend a bit extra in electrical energy for that privilege.

Final ideas

Adam Patrick Murray / IDG

The tempo of recent know-how slowed to a crawl since a pandemic enveloped the earth. Now each firm is leaping forward to a brand new era . Since fall began, it’s been a rolling wave of CPU and GPU launches—and these chips are extra sophisticated than earlier than. With the exhausting flip into architectures actually put the pedal to the steel (and to heck with the power prices), you typically have to contemplate extra than simply efficiency numbers when shopping for a processor.

That mentioned, a high-end chip just like the Core i9-13900Okay is definitely a straightforward chip to determine upon. It evokes the muscle vehicles of outdated greater than any of the opposite rip-roaring current PC releases (Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 probably excepted). If you spend most of your time in standard packages like Adobe Premiere or video games and wish the completely, positively quickest speeds doable—energy be damned, efficiency be praised—it’s the clear winner. And when you can wait a bit longer, keep tuned for subsequent yr, when Intel says it’ll launch a restricted quantity of Raptor Lake processors able to crossing the 6GHz threshold.

These developments are tough for AMD, which ought to have been in a position to sit fairly with the 7950X for longer. But as heartless as it’s to say, the loss for AMD doesn’t matter a lot for us within the stands. Its Ryzen flagship chip remains to be a superb choice, particularly in case your wants fall exterior the parameters that makes Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake CPU so interesting. (And if you need future CPU improve choices, Intel’s present motherboard lineup might be at a lifeless finish, whereas AMD’s AM5 is simply getting began.) Great {hardware} is popping up in spades proper now—which implies customers win regardless.

Intel Core i9-13900Okay take a look at machine data

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