Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" Desktop Processors Launched: +15% ST, +41% MT Uplift

[Bruno_O]

the cause for the high CPU temperatures is literally that it's difficult for heat to move away from the core.

Incorrect.

The cause for these temps is because AMD, much like what happens on all mobile SOCs, decided to boost the frequency (power and temperature) all the way to 95 degrees to achieve higher frequencies, so better cooling like an AIO don't decrease temps much, but instead produce higher clocks. This is the case since Ryzen 5000.

It is automated overclocking. It will use more power, generating more heat, in order to reach higher clocks, like your iPhone or Galaxy phones do.

There are a multitude of ways of limiting or disabling that. Some people just decrease PPT and other metrics in the BIOS, decreasing heat and power usage by like 40% while losing ~5% in performance. Or you can just disable boosting.

Again, these chips come literarily overclocked and not efficiently tuned, like most recent nVidia GPUs. You also don't need to have your fans at 100% at 95 degrees, since apart from CineBench, you'll never see these temps constantly during gaming, the most you'll see is 85 degree peaks and 70-75 on average.

Here I had a D15 and now an Arctic 280mm, and in both cases I set 80% fans at 95 degrees and a very slow ramp up of 6% per second (using Fan Control), resulting in a very quiet system that does not have constant ramp ups and downs. Still managed to achieve 16k on Cinebench on my 5.05 GHz 5800X.

 

[Valantar]

Incorrect.

The cause for these temps is because AMD, much like what happens on all mobile SOCs, decided to boost the frequency (power and temperature) all the way to 95 degrees to achieve higher frequencies, so better cooling like an AIO don't decrease temps much, but instead produce higher clocks. This is the case since Ryzen 5000.

It is automated overclocking. It will use more power, generating more heat, in order to reach higher clocks, like your iPhone or Galaxy phones do.

Yes ... and because of the thick IHS, it actually sits at and targets a 95C temperature, unlike literally every single desktop CPU before it. Remember, Ryzen 5000 has very nearly as aggressive boost behaviour - it just has a lower thermal target (75C before it starts dropping boost clocks), as (with good cooling) it hits its peak sustainable clocks at lower temperatures. If this had a thinner IHS, that thermal target would likely be lower (though likely not as low as Ryzen 5000) with the same boost behaviour. And the things is: this is fine. It works, it's not overheating, it's not throttling, and it won't damage the CPU. It's just not something people are used to.

You seem to not have read any of the previous discussion here at all.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Boycott, the only way....

Unfortunately people are still buying even when more expensive...

IDK... that anecdotal thing I saw where the 7950X sold out momentarily, seems to be a trend.

The #1/#2 selling CPUs on amazon are Zen 3. #3 is the 7950X. The 7900X is a distant #8, and 7700X very distant #20. The 7600X is way down there, thirty-something. At MC, it's way worse, all the Zen 4 SKUs show up on page 2 just before an out of stock $399 11700K that happens to have an open box buy available.

It makes sense. Nobody wants to upgrade to a $300 or $400 CPU when the rest of the platform (memory/mobo) will run you another $700. If you're going to spend $700 on the mobo / ram, you go for 7950X.

But most won't go for absolute max high end in the first place, so...

Might be a big miscalculation on AMDs part. Then again, they starved the market for Zen 3 and everyone bought Zen 2. Maybe they just price everyone into Zen 3 this time. Still, day 2 is almost done and I'm gonna call this a train wreck from a sales perspective.

 

[Valantar]

IDK... that anecdotal thing I saw where the 7950X sold out momentarily, seems to be a trend.

The #1/#2 selling CPUs on amazon are Zen 3. #3 is the 7950X. The 7900X is a distant #8, and 7700X very distant #20. The 7600X is way down there, thirty-something. At MC, it's way worse, all the Zen 4 SKUs show up on page 2 just before an out of stock $399 11700K that happens to have an open box buy available.

Again: people have been buying PC equipment like crazy for two years now. Things are bound to be slow at this point - the market is about as saturated as it has ever been. The 7950X is high up because it sells to the type of person who doesn't care about money, has plenty of it, and thus also doesn't care if it's a tiny improvement over their previous CPU.

It makes sense. Nobody wants to upgrade to a $300 or $400 CPU when the rest of the platform (memory/mobo) will run you another $700. If you're going to spend $700 on the mobo / ram, you go for 7950X.

This obviously also plays into the decision - but mostly it's just new platform tax, coupled with a saturated market and a recession making people wary of spending in general.

But most won't go for absolute max high end in the first place, so...

Might be a big miscalculation on AMDs part. Then again, they starved the market for Zen 3 and everyone bought Zen 2. Maybe they just price everyone into Zen 3 this time. Still, day 2 is almost done and I'm gonna call this a train wreck from a sales perspective.

It's not going to change, and literally nothing they could do woud have changed this. Even if the 7950X was $300, there just aren't enough people out there looking to upgrade their PCs, and certainly not with a ton of money lying around.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Again: people have been buying PC equipment like crazy for two years now. Things are bound to be slow at this point - the market is about as saturated as it has ever been. The 7950X is high up because it sells to the type of person who doesn't care about money, has plenty of it, and thus also doesn't care if it's a tiny improvement over their previous CPU.

They're selling worse than Intel AL. It's the platform cost that is killing everything below the 7950X.

Thread director 2, playing riftbreaker on p-cores while e-cores run a Blender render :

 

[JustBenching]

Can someone tell me what are the downsides to e-cores? In the recent Zen 4 cpu reviews, one of the negatives is "no problems with e-core compatibility" or something like that. Well what are the problems with e-cores at the moment and will it affect me in gaming?

I made a video for you on a 12900k running spiderman with HWunboxed settings and E cores on. Look at that CPU usage, it is using Ecores like crazy.

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered 2022.09.28 - 21.48.23.01.mp4 - VEED - Online Video Editor - Video Editing Made Simple

www.veed.io

I can make you one with e cores off to compare, the fps will drop drastically. So whoever says e cores are garbage, put them in your ignore list. Indefinitely.

 

[Valantar]

They're selling worse than Intel AL. It's the platform cost that is killing everything below the 7950X.

It's definitely affecting things, but the main thing that list shows is that Zen4 has been out for three days while the Intel chips have been on sale for the full week that's used to calculate the top sellers. There isn't enough pent-up demand to generate a launch sales boom, especially for an expensive platform, but lower costs wouldn't have alleviated that much - there just aren't that many people buying and building PCs right now. It's not a single factor, but a combination of many, and the one that could have overcome the others - a lot of pent-up demand - isn't there.

 

[Bwaze]

I think the winner of this generation of Intel and AMD CPUs might as well be 5800X3D. :-D Much cheaper platform, cheaper RAM...

 

[THU31]

I can make you one with e cores off to compare, the fps will drop drastically. So whoever says e cores are garbage, put them in your ignore list. Indefinitely.

You misunderstand the issue.
If Spider-Main is using E-cores on the 12900K, it is using them for extra performance on top of the P-cores. The problem is when games use fewer cores, but they allocate their tasks to E-cores instead of P-cores. That can happen in Windows 10 and older games specifically, but it has even been shown in Windows 11.

Your video is impressive. But what do you think your framerate would be like if your 12900K had 10 P-cores and no E-cores? Impossible to say right now. But this would be a good game to test 6P+8E vs. 8P+0E, as both these configurations would occupy roughly the same die space.

I find it surprising that a console port can benefit from more than 8C/16T, especially being a port of a port from PS4. But Nixxes is one of the best PC developers in history, so it is certainly possible.

If you had a bit of free time to spare, I would love to see the 6P+8E vs. 8P+0E comparison. Not to prove anyone right or wrong, but I am genuinely curious about the results.

 

[JustBenching]

You misunderstand the issue.
If Spider-Main is using E-cores on the 12900K, it is using them for extra performance on top of the P-cores. The problem is when games use fewer cores, but they allocate their tasks to E-cores instead of P-cores. That can happen in Windows 10 and older games specifically, but it has even been shown in Windows 11.

Your video is impressive. But what do you think your framerate would be like if your 12900K had 10 P-cores and no E-cores? Impossible to say right now. But this would be a good game to test 6P+8E vs. 8P+0E, as both these configurations would occupy roughly the same die space.

I find it surprising that a console port can benefit from more than 8C/16T, especially being a port of a port from PS4. But Nixxes is one of the best PC developers in history, so it is certainly possible.

If you had a bit of free time to spare, I would love to see the 6P+8E vs. 8P+0E comparison. Not to prove anyone right or wrong, but I am genuinely curious about the results.

In terms of gaming, yeah i assume 10p cores would be equal in most games and better in a few edge cases that scale beyond 8 cores. Spiderman benefits a lot from ecores because they are not running game logic, they are actually decompressing assets on the fly. Farcry 6 exhibits the same behavior, ecores off drop framerate and especially frametimes.

Even if we had a 10p core part though, if its running all cores at 4.9 it would use considerably more power in gaming than an 8+8 configuration. So i think its a balancing act. I dont want to see ecores gone, but im not entirely sure that 16 of them is the way to go either, at least not for a gaming pc. 10+8 would probably be better than the 13900k we are getting

Sure ill test in the afternoon

 

[THU31]

Spiderman benefits a lot from ecores because they are not running game logic, they are actually decompressing assets on the fly. Farcry 6 exhibits the same behavior, ecores off drop framerate and especially frametimes.

So you are saying that these games actually recognize the E-cores and allocate specific tasks to them? That sounds like a lot of work for PC ports (and Far Cry 6 is AMD sponsored), but it is very interesting if true.

I would definitely get on board with E-cores if devs started using them specifically.

 

[Melvis]

You're right. Most reviews show the 12900k as leading the 7950X in gaming; at best, it may be a match for the 12900k, but I haven't seen one beating it.

 

[Vario]

So you are saying that these games actually recognize the E-cores and allocate specific tasks to them? That sounds like a lot of work for PC ports (and Far Cry 6 is AMD sponsored), but it is very interesting if true.

I would definitely get on board with E-cores if devs started using them specifically.

I believe the theory is the Thread Director 2, and Windows Scheduler, should figure out how to allocate it.

 

[THU31]

I believe the theory is the Thread Director 2, and Windows Scheduler, should figure out how to allocate it.

I do not think that is possible. Surely the thread director and Windows can only allocate the entire application to specific cores, but not certain tasks within the application. That would require a really integrated ecosystem where the application would tell the system everything it is doing.

 

[JustBenching]

So you are saying that these games actually recognize the E-cores and allocate specific tasks to them? That sounds like a lot of work for PC ports (and Far Cry 6 is AMD sponsored), but it is very interesting if true.

I would definitely get on board with E-cores if devs started using them specifically.

Im not sure, i know for a fact some game developers are in fact now programming tasks to offload to ecores but i dont think any of those games are out yet

 

[mahirzukic2]

This entire cycle may be a dud. I expected a lot of people to run out and buy Zen 4, but my local Microcenter still has plenty of stock of all SKUs (shows 25+ for all of them). The only one I've seen sell out anywhere was the 7950X at Best Buy, but it came right back in stock.

Same deal with motherboards. Also as you say, very expensive, the *least* expensive AM5 is $260 - and that is an ASRock PG Lightning 14 phase VRM board. Move up just a tad to the Steel Legend, which has an "ok" reputation, and it's $299. The Z690 version of that board is $209. Maybe ASRock did better this time, but their low and midrange board VRM designs were total garbage on Alder Lake. The board next up is $470.

I think this might be more of a macro-economic thing than having anything to do with performance. If there is still a bunch of supply after this weekend, the whole PC / electronics space might be in trouble. I still don't know a single person who bought an iPhone 14, for example.

Yeah, that's the thing. The AM5 platform is really expensive, and naturally people are not flocking to buy it outright. Like they shouldn't.
So everybody will have to play the waiting game until the prices come down, just like with the GPUs after the Proof of Stake for the Etherum.
Just gotta have some patience, that's all. This might be hard for some people though.

IDK... that anecdotal thing I saw where the 7950X sold out momentarily, seems to be a trend.

The #1/#2 selling CPUs on amazon are Zen 3. #3 is the 7950X. The 7900X is a distant #8, and 7700X very distant #20. The 7600X is way down there, thirty-something. At MC, it's way worse, all the Zen 4 SKUs show up on page 2 just before an out of stock $399 11700K that happens to have an open box buy available.

It makes sense. Nobody wants to upgrade to a $300 or $400 CPU when the rest of the platform (memory/mobo) will run you another $700. If you're going to spend $700 on the mobo / ram, you go for 7950X.

But most won't go for absolute max high end in the first place, so...

Might be a big miscalculation on AMDs part. Then again, they starved the market for Zen 3 and everyone bought Zen 2. Maybe they just price everyone into Zen 3 this time. Still, day 2 is almost done and I'm gonna call this a train wreck from a sales perspective.

I also saw only the 7950X sold out on the German Amazon website. I have checked US's and it was the same story.

 

[thelawnet]

I think the winner of this generation of Intel and AMD CPUs might as well be 5800X3D. :-D Much cheaper platform, cheaper RAM...

'cheaper' = $430.

13400f at $180 will offer most of the performance at a fraction of the price.

 

[Bwaze]

Yeah, it's not dirt cheap, but for gaming it will apparently be comparable to the best and most expensive from AMD and Intel, and it can do it with a cheap motherboard and cheap RAM.

Of course by lowering requirements we can look at cheaper processors, and if we don't require ultra high FPS at low resolutions, almost everything in the last several years is GPU limited then.

 

[RandallFlagg]

I also saw only the 7950X sold out on the German Amazon website. I have checked US's and it was the same story.

Looks like the surge for the 7950X is over. It's fallen to #5, 7900X fell to #13 from 8, and 7700X to 29 from 20. 7600X went from 30-something to 46. BBuy is little better, with 7700X at #9. 7950X is showing sold out there, but is way down the list on best sellers (page 2) right next to a still available 7900X.

This has to be the slowest selling launch I've ever seen.

 

[JustBenching]

I do not think that is possible. Surely the thread director and Windows can only allocate the entire application to specific cores, but not certain tasks within the application. That would require a really integrated ecosystem where the application would tell the system everything it is doing.

Im uploading the 6+8 and 8+0 comparison. Not much between them, I think they are pretty similar, although the 8+0 consumes 25% more wattage.

Don't pay much attention to temps and wattage though, I just threw 1.3 volts just for testing stability reasons. The 8+0 is running all cores at 5ghz and the cache at 4.7, since generally speaking the main reason to turn off E cores is to clock the cache thought it would be fair. The 6+8 configuration is running stock cache, P cores at 5ghz and E cores at 4ghz.

8+0

6+8

 

[wheresmycar]

Looks like the surge for the 7950X is over. It's fallen to #5, 7900X fell to #13 from 8, and 7700X to 29 from 20. 7600X went from 30-something to 46. BBuy is little better, with 7700X at #9. 7950X is showing sold out there, but is way down the list on best sellers (page 2) right next to a still available 7900X.

This has to be the slowest selling launch I've ever seen.

If this is true, its possibly the best case scenario for the price conscious buyer. Not interested in the 7900X/7950X but would love to see some combatant 7600X/7700X price discounted action. Paired with an affordable B-series board, we the value hunters might just have something to applaud. The 13600KF/13600K @ $300-$320 and presumably 13400F for $180-$200 sets an exciting reference point for both AMD and Intel battling it out.... there's gonna be blood on the battlefield (we just need to throw an unarmed NVIDIA in the midst of it all).

BTW, here in the UK 5000-series is taking up all the top spots in the Best Seller count. Even the 3XD is now quickly climbing the ladder. I bet AMD anticipated the slow AM5 admission... maybe the 5800X3D and slashed non-X3D variants was a foreseen countermeasure? With X-series boards starting from £350 in the UK... i don't expect 7000-series to top the charts anytime soon.... maybe 7950X/7900X but the rest (majority) is a no-go. I thought pre-launch earlier speculations - "increased build cost" was evident in itself that Zen 4 wouldn't come out with a bang bang? Even if the reviews saw the 7600X outpacing the 12600K by a clear mile... i still wouldn't splurge up for a super expensive platform upgrade. I'm sure many (like myself) are waiting to see how B-series boards hold up, possibly small but relevant further trim on DDR5 prices and no doubt some Intel-AMD price war action at the close of 2022.

Back to the battleground... any ideas how to throw Nvidia in the midst of clashing axes and swords? That would be the prettiest achievement of all!

 

[THU31]

Im uploading the 6+8 and 8+0 comparison. Not much between them, I think they are pretty similar, although the 8+0 consumes 25% more wattage.

Don't pay much attention to temps and wattage though, I just threw 1.3 volts just for testing stability reasons. The 8+0 is running all cores at 5ghz and the cache at 4.7, since generally speaking the main reason to turn off E cores is to clock the cache thought it would be fair. The 6+8 configuration is running stock cache, P cores at 5ghz and E cores at 4ghz.

8+0

6+8

Thank you!

Main thing I noticed is that with E-cores disabled the CPU usage is over 90% a lot of the time, and it almost maxes out sometimes. That is pretty crazy for a top end CPU with 8C/16T at 5 GHz. Game is definitely CPU-bound in 1080p on both configurations.

I think this thread count will be optimal for a long time and IPC will be the main factor for increasing gaming performance. Meteor Lake is supposed to have lower clock speeds with only a small IPC increase, so I think AL/RL are the ones to get for high framerate gaming.
I am really curious about Zen 4 with 3D cache. Those definitely have a chance of taking the crown.

And it seems that Ada Lovelace and RDNA3 GPUs will be severely CPU-limited in 1080p. Probably even in 1440p in some cases.
Good thing I game in 4K60, so I do not have to worry about CPU performance.

 

[ARF]

Yes ... and because of the thick IHS, it actually sits at and targets a 95C temperature, unlike literally every single desktop CPU before it. Remember, Ryzen 5000 has very nearly as aggressive boost behaviour - it just has a lower thermal target (75C before it starts dropping boost clocks), as (with good cooling) it hits its peak sustainable clocks at lower temperatures. If this had a thinner IHS, that thermal target would likely be lower (though likely not as low as Ryzen 5000) with the same boost behaviour. And the things is: this is fine. It works, it's not overheating, it's not throttling, and it won't damage the CPU. It's just not something people are used to.

You seem to not have read any of the previous discussion here at all.

Maybe it works in the ideal scenario when everything is still new. Try it with an air cooler some months later with dust bunnies and old thermal paste.
It will either begin to throttle or will cause system instabilities - either dead chip or system shut downs.

Before we dig into our test results, we need to talk briefly about overclocking with the Ryzen 9 7950X. This processor is rated with a maximum safe operating temperature of 95 degrees C. Even with our 240mm water cooler and the system installed in an open-air test bed, our processor still ended up hitting 95 degrees C during some of our tests. This is likely why AMD does not ship a stock cooler with the Ryzen 9 7950X; if a 240mm water cooler is barely up to the job of keeping this beast below 90 degrees, a stock air cooler certainly wouldn't be.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Review | PCMag

 

[JustBenching]

Thank you!

Main thing I noticed is that with E-cores disabled the CPU usage is over 90% a lot of the time, and it almost maxes out sometimes. That is pretty crazy for a top end CPU with 8C/16T at 5 GHz. Game is definitely CPU-bound in 1080p on both configurations.

I think this thread count will be optimal for a long time and IPC will be the main factor for increasing gaming performance. Meteor Lake is supposed to have lower clock speeds with only a small IPC increase, so I think AL/RL are the ones to get for high framerate gaming.
I am really curious about Zen 4 with 3D cache. Those definitely have a chance of taking the crown.

And it seems that Ada Lovelace and RDNA3 GPUs will be severely CPU-limited in 1080p. Probably even in 1440p in some cases.
Good thing I game in 4K60, so I do not have to worry about CPU performance.

Actually lots of games, when you optimize your ram, can hit similar high % usages with 8 cores cpu. Of course we have to keep in mind thats at extremely high framerates. Especially when it comes to intel cpus that have really good imcs compared to amd, ram can keep these cores fed like crazy and constantly hit 90+% utilization. My 10900k was maxing out in sotr / ac odyssey / watchdogs 2 etcetera with 4400c16 ram

 

[RandallFlagg]

If this is true, its possibly the best case scenario for the price conscious buyer. Not interested in the 7900X/7950X but would love to see some combatant 7600X/7700X price discounted action. Paired with an affordable B-series board, we the value hunters might just have something to applaud. The 13600KF/13600K @ $300-$320 and presumably 13400F for $180-$200 sets an exciting reference point for both AMD and Intel battling it out.... there's gonna be blood on the battlefield (we just need to throw an unarmed NVIDIA in the midst of it all).

BTW, here in the UK 5000-series is taking up all the top spots in the Best Seller count. Even the 3XD is now quickly climbing the ladder. I bet AMD anticipated the slow AM5 admission... maybe the 5800X3D and slashed non-X3D variants was a foreseen countermeasure? With X-series boards starting from £350 in the UK... i don't expect 7000-series to top the charts anytime soon.... maybe 7950X/7900X but the rest (majority) is a no-go. I thought pre-launch earlier speculations - "increased build cost" was evident in itself that Zen 4 wouldn't come out with a bang bang? Even if the reviews saw the 7600X outpacing the 12600K by a clear mile... i still wouldn't splurge up for a super expensive platform upgrade. I'm sure many (like myself) are waiting to see how B-series boards hold up, possibly small but relevant further trim on DDR5 prices and no doubt some Intel-AMD price war action at the close of 2022.

Back to the battleground... any ideas how to throw Nvidia in the midst of clashing axes and swords? That would be the prettiest achievement of all!

I really don't think the price of the CPUs themselves is the hindrance here.

Consider, cheapest 7600X / 7700X 32GB DDR5-5600 build I can do at Microcenter:
Assumption : You've got a case, PSU, KB / mouse, Wifi Card/wired connection, OS license, CPU cooler, and drives

ASRock X670E PG Lightning AMD AM5 : $259 (note, this just dopped $10 in price)
Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-5600 C36 : $157
7600X : $299
$20 discount on MB/CPU combo : -$20
Total : $695

Sub 7700X @$399:
Total : $795

So, lets say AMD lopped off $50 on the CPU price. That would save you 7% on the 7600X build, and 6.2% on the 7700X build.

Also keep in mind, with the build above, you're not going to see the kind of numbers in the reviews with it.

You need faster memory, and a better cooler than a typical Zen 2/Zen 3 user has. Assuming this mobo can actually hit DDR5-6000, you need to spend about $90 more on RAM and $120 on an AIO that can handle the heat. That brings the totals up to $815 for 7600X build and $915 for 7700X build. This still might not be enough, this is the cheapest ASRock mobo available, no idea how good it is but ASRock doesn't have a good rep right now on low and midrange boards, and most of the cheap boards you're *lucky* if you can hit DDR5-6000 (at least on Alder Lake).

None of these boards seem to have Wifi either, whereas Z690 / Z790 chipsets have a built in AX211 wifi 6E controller - so many of the boards have this for just $10-$20 more. For example, the MSI Z690-A Pro Wifi DDR5 is $239 from MC (no markdown). The Same Z690-A Pro DDR5 without Wifi is only $179 (marked down from $209).

i.e. if you have to buy a Wifi card, that's another $50 or so.

At these prices, lowering the CPU cost $50 - helps - but not much.