I9 13900K tested, 50% gain vs 12900K

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Yesterday at 7pm, the performance of the Intel core i9 13900K was leaked on the Bilibili page of ECSM_Official in collaboration with OneRaichu. In this test, ECSM announces the launch of Raptor lake on September 28, 2022. This new range of processor still engraved in 10 nm will be able to reach frequencies 500 Mhz higher than Alder lake. The Ecore are doubled and the L2/L3 cache increased.

The test configuration used

  • Processor1: Intel Core i9 13900K
  • Processor2: Intel Core i9 12900KF
  • DRAM: DDR5-6000 CL30-38-76, DDR4-3600 CL17-19-39, Trefi=262143, other parameters=Auto.
  • Motherboard: Z690 Taichi Razer Edition and Z790****
  • BIOS version: 12.01 and ****
  • Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6900 XTXH OC 2700 MHz
  • Cooling: NZXT Kraken X73

The i9 13900K’s frequencies have been increased, as has the cache. For the Pcore we have:

  • 1-2C 58x / 3-8C 55x on the 13900K
  • 1-2C 52x / 3-8C 49X on the 12900K
  • 8x 2 MB L2 on the 13900K
  • 8x 1,25 MB L2 for the 12900K
  • L3 cache is increased from 30 MB to 36 MB

Here we have an increase in L2 cache, by 6 MB on all 8 cores combined. With the gain of 600 Mhz, this 13900K may dethrone a Ryzen 9 7950X not yet released. For the Ecore we have:

  • 1-16C 43X on the 13900K
  • 1-4C 39x / 5-8C 37X on 12900K
  • 4x 4 MB L2 for the 13900K
  • 2x 2 MB L2 for the 12900K

As we can see, the Ecore double their L2 cache by pack of 4 Ecore, in total we have 4x more cache on the Ecore. Added to that the gain in frequency from 400 to 600 Mhz and the gain of 8 Ecore we have here a non negligible gain on the global performances.

A new configuration on the cache

Unlike Alder lake, Raptor lake completely decouples the ring frequency between the Pcore and the Ecore. As a result, the cache frequency can remain at 4.7Ghz without dropping to 3.6Ghz like on Alder lake. Here, we are talking about a drop from 5Ghz to 4.6Ghz. So there will be no obvious access penalty when communicating between the Ecore and the Pcore.

As can be seen, the latency between Pcore and Ecore drops from 33 to 37 ns to 31 to 34 ns. With a drop to less than 30 ns when Pcore 8 communicates (Thread 14 and 15).

Raptor lake vs Alder lake performance

In this test we have a lot of information on performance, ranging from AIDA to Video Games through Cinebench and 3DMark. As we will see, this 13900K Raptor lake offers a significant performance gain over the 12900K Alderlake. AIDA 64 On AIDA64 we immediately notice the bandwidth gain on the L3 cache. This is due to the new cache configuration. The L2 and L1 caches gain in throughput thanks to the higher frequency of the cores but at the expense of latency because of a larger cache. This increase in L2 cache also leads to an increase in memory latency.

Cinebench and IPC On cinebench we can see that the single core score goes from 2020 to 2292 on R23. In multicore we go from 27682 to 40662 which is an increase of 47% in multi core performance.

If we go into details we can see that the CPI at equal frequency increases from 2.37% to 5.56% depending on the benchmark. 3DMark On 3D mark this time we have gains from 20.81% to 45.8%. With a score of 25267 for 5.5Ghz allcore we are well ahead of what a 12900KS can offer at 5.5GHz with serious memory and CPU overclocking. CPU Z Now we move to CPU-Z, we have a gain of 14.5% in single core and 49% in multi core compared to the 12900K.

7-zip and Winrar Another performance index here is the compression and decompression on 7-zip. Here we gain 55.6% on decompression and 15.2% on compression. Heterogeneous gains, we will have to investigate with our test platforms to see if it comes from the RAM. Performance summary To finish this comparison 12900K vs 13900K, a summary table allows us to see the overall gain in multicore according to all benchmarks tested. We can see that the average gain is around 41.78%, when the max and min are 76.72% and 0.33%.

Performance gain in game

We start with Counter strike Global offensive, in higher quality. Here the gain is 13.7% in 1080p with DDR5 and 11.8% with DDR4. The gains in 1440p are of the same order On Shadow of the tomb raider in high quality with TXAA. We have a gain of 7.3% in 1080p and DDR5, with DDR4 we are at 8.15% gain. In 1440P the gains range from 0% to 1.06%, very low. On Watch Dogs Legion in high quality, the gain in 1440p is zero. But we note a gain ranging from 4.7% to 3.26% in 1080p. We finish this round with Far Cry 6, in high quality. Here the gain in 1080p goes from 3.9% with DDR4 to 4.06% with DDR4. In 1440p the gain oscillates around 0.06%, a zero gain in itself.

Our first opinion on this 13900K

It goes without saying that this Intel core i9 13900K is a performance monster. It manages to hold a frequency of 5.5 GHz out of the box. Where the 12900KS, although very good, struggles to do so once overclocked. We add to that the gain of frequency on the Ecore and the gain of 8 Ecore and we have a Ryzen 9 7950X Killer.

Regarding temperatures, we don’t have too much information, but during this test the 13900K was running under a simple AIO Z73 from NZXT. And, with 343W of consumption at 1,4V in heavy load on Cinebench R23 this last one did not throttle. We are waiting impatiently to get our hands on some samples to see how far they can be pushed. Our community is also expecting a lot, especially on the 3DMark part.