Monday, July 18th 2022
Intel i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" ES Improves Gaming Minimum Framerates by 11-27% Over i9-12900KF
Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" is shaping up to be another leadership desktop processor lineup, with an engineering sample clocking significant increases in gaming minimum framerates over the preceding 12th Gen Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake." Extreme Player, a tech-blogger on Chinese video streaming site Bilibili, posted a comprehensive gaming performance review of an i9-13900K engineering sample covering eight games across three resolutions, comparing it with a retail i9-12900KF. The games include CS:GO, Final Fantasy IX: Endwalker, PUBG, Forza Horizon 5, Far Cry 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the synthetic benchmark 3DMark. Both processors were tested with a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, 32 GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and a 1.5 kW power supply.
The i9-13900K ES is shown posting performance leads ranging wildly between 1% to 2% in the graphics tests of 3DMark, but an incredible 36% to 38% gain in the CPU-intensive tests of the suite. This is explained not just by increased per-core performance of both the P-cores and E-cores, but also the addition of 8 more E-cores. Although the same "Gracemont" E-cores are used in "Raptor Lake," the L2 cache size per E-core cluster has been doubled in size. Horizon Zero Dawn sees -0.7% to 10.98% increase in frame rates. There are some anomalous 70% frame-rate increases in RDR2, discounting which, we still see a 2-9% increase. FC6 posts modest 2.4% increases. Forza Horizon 5, PUBG, Monster Hunter Rise, and FF IX, each report significant increases in minimum framerates, well above 20%.
The second graph below shows the highlight of these tests, significant increases in minimum frame-rates. Averaged across tests, the i9-13900K ES is shown posting a 11.65% min FPS gain at 4K UHD; 21.84% increase at 1440p, and 27.99% increase at 1080p.
A big caveat with all this testing are the CPU clock speeds. Engineering samples do not tend to come with the clock speeds or boosting behavior of the retail processors, and hence don't correctly reflect the end product, although some ES chips may come with unlocked multipliers. In this testing, the i9-13900K ES was set at a maximum P-core clock speed of 5.50 GHz all-core. 5.50 GHz was assumed to be the max boost frequency of the retail chip, and compared with an i9-12900KF that boosts up to 5.20 GHz for the P-cores, but was running at 4.90 GHz all-core.
The i9-13900K ES was also subjected to power-consumption testing, where it posted significant peak gaming power compared to the retail i9-12900KF. A retail i9-13900K will likely come with lower power-consumption than what is shown here, as it will follow boosting behavior typical of retail chips at stock frequencies, when compared to an ES that's been specified to run at a certain frequency.
Intel is preparing to launch its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processor family in the second half of 2022. This period could also see rival AMD introduce its Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors. "Raptor Lake" combines 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores with 16 "Gracemont" E-cores, and additional L2 cache for both core types. The I/O of these chips is expected to be similar to "Alder Lake," and hence they're built for the same LGA1700 platform.
Sources:
Extreme Play (Bilibili), harukaze5719 (Twitter), VideoCardz
The i9-13900K ES is shown posting performance leads ranging wildly between 1% to 2% in the graphics tests of 3DMark, but an incredible 36% to 38% gain in the CPU-intensive tests of the suite. This is explained not just by increased per-core performance of both the P-cores and E-cores, but also the addition of 8 more E-cores. Although the same "Gracemont" E-cores are used in "Raptor Lake," the L2 cache size per E-core cluster has been doubled in size. Horizon Zero Dawn sees -0.7% to 10.98% increase in frame rates. There are some anomalous 70% frame-rate increases in RDR2, discounting which, we still see a 2-9% increase. FC6 posts modest 2.4% increases. Forza Horizon 5, PUBG, Monster Hunter Rise, and FF IX, each report significant increases in minimum framerates, well above 20%.
A big caveat with all this testing are the CPU clock speeds. Engineering samples do not tend to come with the clock speeds or boosting behavior of the retail processors, and hence don't correctly reflect the end product, although some ES chips may come with unlocked multipliers. In this testing, the i9-13900K ES was set at a maximum P-core clock speed of 5.50 GHz all-core. 5.50 GHz was assumed to be the max boost frequency of the retail chip, and compared with an i9-12900KF that boosts up to 5.20 GHz for the P-cores, but was running at 4.90 GHz all-core.
The i9-13900K ES was also subjected to power-consumption testing, where it posted significant peak gaming power compared to the retail i9-12900KF. A retail i9-13900K will likely come with lower power-consumption than what is shown here, as it will follow boosting behavior typical of retail chips at stock frequencies, when compared to an ES that's been specified to run at a certain frequency.
Intel is preparing to launch its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processor family in the second half of 2022. This period could also see rival AMD introduce its Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors. "Raptor Lake" combines 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores with 16 "Gracemont" E-cores, and additional L2 cache for both core types. The I/O of these chips is expected to be similar to "Alder Lake," and hence they're built for the same LGA1700 platform.
76 Comments on Intel i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" ES Improves Gaming Minimum Framerates by 11-27% Over i9-12900KF
i9s are a joke. Intel keeps doing the same thing by increasing the power consumption unutil they get half fps over AMD counterparts....Ridiculous.
A 4.8Ghz 5800X3D will destroy all these jokes for cpus.
On the other hand, the i5 and i7 are very good cpus and are the real threat to AMD.
Anyway, we will see all of it when the reviews come.
Yeah, we were talking about top end SKUs, not the step below which has lower boost.
"He commented without actually reading"
Actually reading what, a rumor?
I had more Intel CPU based systems than AMD ones for two decades already, and i still have.
My 3600 isn't cool as i would expect, due to static OC (1.3V), as PBO and other boost stuff doesn't work for me.
However, I question the methodology of these tests. The 12900KF was gimped by setting it to an all-core 4.9 GHz, which is below the 5.1-5.2 GHz boost. Games in general do not benefit from manual overclocks, as they cannot fully utilize all the available threads. The 12900KF would have performed better with stock settings here, especially in ST limited titles.
The 13900K, on the other hand, was given an unfair advantage with a 5.5 GHz overclock across all cores, which is assumed to be its maximum boost frequency. And the perf/watt looks atrocious. I have no idea what quality settings were used, but here's a quick reference. A stock 5800X3D peaks at 71w and uses 51w on average in Forza Horizon 5 1080p benchmark, with maximum detail courtesy of a 6600XT.
Definitely looking forward to the 13700k.
Stop the insults.
I repeat: in games.
The test in the video is the Puget System Premiere Pro Benchmark. So what consumption are we talking about? At maximum consumption, AMD wins, but loses overall consumption and rendering time. And Puget has such tests and at least in the Adobe suite, Intel 12th is the right choice.
Still it'll be interesting to see the actual power usage comparisons of AL and RL. Intel did show changes to the design of RL that would lower power usage, so performance per watt is probably going to be better. But more cores will mean more power even if they are just pleb cores. The big test will be 13600K vs 12700K and 13700K vs 12900K for power usage, as they are the same core configs. If RL keeps power to the same or better with better performance (this part is guaranteed at least) then that's not too bad. Zen 4 will still probably beat it, but Zen 4 is getting large clock speed increases, so I'll bet it uses more power than Zen 3 for sure.
I'm of the opinion it will make little difference which cpu you get except 13900K will be power hungry. 13700/13600 will be much more desirable IMO. I'm still leaning toward Zen 4 since socket AM5 will be around probably until Zen 7 is released. Meteor Lake is all new MB again.