The Intel Core i9-13900KS Review: Taking Intel's Raptor Lake to 6 GHz
by Gavin Bonshor on January 27, 2023 10:00 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 12th and 13th Gen Core parts, as well as the Ryzen 7000 series, 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
When it comes to raw processor performance in gaming, lower resolutions showcase the ability best of all. In the case of the Core i9-13900KS and Core i9-13900K, both processes, as expected, are very competitive against each other. Sometimes, the higher-clocked KS SKU comes out on top, and sometimes it doesn't.
There can be some weight put on the fact in some cases, the Core i9-13900KS hits thermal limits much more easily, even with a premium 360mm CLC cooler that we are using. In World of Tanks at 768p, the Core i9-13900KS bridges the gap to the fast yet older Core i9-12900KS, which seems to benefit from a mixture of IPC, core frequency, and core count.
Looking at our Borderlands 3 results at 360p, the Core i9-13900KS plows through the test with flying colors, although the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and its 96 MB of 3D V-Cache make it competitive. This is relevant as AMD plans to release the updated Ryzen 7000 X3D SKUs very soon.
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Gavin Bonshor - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
It is doing weird and crazy things with all my chips. On half of them, it will even refuse to POST. I've reached out to MSI UK, but I'm yet to receive a response. At this point, I may as well re-test all the 13th Gen SKUs on another board for parity purposes.PeachNCream - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
I could think of better things to do with 360W of power like running ALL of the lights in my home, running my laptop at full load, charging and using my phone, and feeding the router necessary to support my internet connection (and I would still have close to 100W left for other things). With a 13900KS, you get a CPU and nothing else, not even cooling for said processor let alone the rest of the computer hardware in the system required to support it. Enthusiasts are apparently idiots with bottomless lines of credit that Intel thinks will brainlessly pay interest to VISA and, sadly, they might be right.jgrimm2364 - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
I paid cash for mine and love it. Cheaper than the i74930k I built 8 or 9 years ago. When a processor kicks most others butts for that long, it's worth paying for. It's like buying a performance car vs a grocery getter. It performs!PeachNCream - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
Car people "logic" also escapes me because of how self-centered it is to expend more of our limited energy resources than necessary to accomplish something, but huge pickup trucks, gigantic SUVs, and pointlessly overpowered cars are around in large numbers so at least you can safely say you followed the school of fish into the proverbial mouth of a demise of your own making as you suffer while living on a trashed planet. GG Earthdontlistentome - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
320w. Just disgusting waste.This is the most retarded CPU since the dying days of the Pentium 4.
blppt - Saturday, January 28, 2023 - link
I think you have blotted the 9590 out of your memory.Jorgp2 - Saturday, January 28, 2023 - link
Or the 7950x which still uses 260wemike09 - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
Please add Microsoft Flight Simulator to your benchmark tests. Few games are so demanding on the CPU as MSFS. When you look at the posted gaming benchmarks, there's little difference between most CPUs for each game benchmarked. Throw in a game that really showcases what a CPU can do in a CPU demanding title.ballsystemlord - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
Is MFS really CPU intensive? Or does it just use one thread much like Quake III? If that's the case then you can just benchmark ioquake or OpenArena.Or for an even more hilarious result, why not try a multi-threaded python program? Then you could watch that CPU intensive GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) wreak havoc on the tested CPUs via python's polling process.
ballsystemlord - Friday, January 27, 2023 - link
PS: You'd have to request a high frame rate, like 500fps, for a Quake III client to saturate the CPU.