Intel Core i7-13700K

[Wasteland]

Even if the cpu rendering lasts several hours and not two days, the power consumption and the high temps that come with it are a problem for all the people who care of the energy bill and of the room temperature. We live in a time where summers last longer and have higher temperatures: depending of what one does with his pc, that is something to care about before buying the cpu. The Ryzen chips with the ECO mode seem a better choice for the people who will keep their cpu on the limit for most of the time. That or they move to Alaska.

You can do "ECO mode" pretty easily on the Intel platform too--two seconds to type a power limit in BIOS. And the results should be similar. W1zzard actually wrote a whole article about Alder Lake's power scaling, which is worth a read. It showed that the chips' power efficiency goes through the roof if you dial back the limit. I dare say that dialing back the power limit by at least a few dozen watts is a worthwhile option for almost every reader here, because the performance differences will be small even in the worst case (full, all-core workloads), and non-existent in the vast majority of cases (lightly threaded workloads); the cooling difference, by contrast, will be considerable.

I don't mean to suggest that I approve of either AMD or Intel pushing their default power limits to the sky just to eke out a few extra percentage points on review benchmarks, but it is what it is, and I have a hard time getting worked up over this one aspect of Intel/AMD's highly competitive posture, because otherwise their tight competition is a huge boon to consumers. Still, it would be nice to see all hardware manufacturers put a little more emphasis on out-of-the-box efficiency.

 

[tussinman]

So should I buy this to upgrade from my aging 9900KS or should I hold out another year for a more efficient and less power hungry 14900K/14700K?

I'd wait. Even though the 9900KS is a power hog it still should offer pretty close to i5 12400 level performance in games.

That's good enough performance to where I would wait for 14th gen or wait for the 3D variants of Zen 4

 

[W1zzard]

Why is 5.4 GHz... a thumbs down?

Only two out of eight cores will ever hit 5.4 GHz. Even though they are all capable of doing that frequency. I'm not talking about "up to two threads = 5.4", what I'm saying is "core 4 and core 5 are the only ones allowed to do 5.4".

Does that help?

 

[tomfuegue]

I will continue another year very happy with my 12700KF, there are no major improvements in 4K and on top of that the power consumption and temperatures do not compensate at all.

 

[Garrus]

I will continue another year very happy with my 12700KF, there are no major improvements in 4K and on top of that the power consumption and temperatures do not compensate at all.

I bought an i5-12600 with the plan to upgrade on the same socket, but you can see as usual that doesn't work out well. I can't get anyone to buy my used CPU even with $100 CAD off, and the new CPUs are $100 price hikes versus the old ones here (the i5-13600k is a whopping $450 CAD plus tax, $500 basically just for the CPU, ouch). So really it is a large cost to upgrade for not much benefit. I'll probably just sell the entire computer.

Look for bundles. I can buy a high end wifi 6E B650 motherboard for just $146 USD (about $100 off) if I buy a Ryzen 7700X, which is a much better deal than launch MSRP. My local computer store chain started the bundle today. I'm just concerned that Raptor Lake might be a better buy for my emulation lifestyle but supposedly that has been fixed.

I do wish the RPCS3 results in this review would mention if he manually enabled AVX512 support for Ryzen 7000 or not. Results were lower than I expected since I believe there were reporst of the Ryzen 7700X in first place with AVX512 support now.

 

[c2DDragon]

VBS enabled (Windows 11 default)

Hmm..it should be for Windows 11 Pro and maybe for Windows 11 Family because I just installed Windows 11 Enterprise today (fresh & clean 10 to 11 then clean 11 recovery setup from cloud) and it's disabled, I didn't even touch it.

 

[Minus Infinity]

OK but there is not a lot of a difference in performance between the two. So where is that improvement if you do not consider frequency bump as a RL improvements over AL. Is that the only one improvement?

Hang on these use new Raptor Cove cores, not Golden cove cores for a start. 8-10% IPC uplift, a lot more cache on both P and E cores, the E cores have been upgraded as well and we have higher clocks and faster DDR5 is supported. I see nothing at all that wasn't expected. I said 3 months ago 13700K will be a fair bit stronger than 12900K. Don't forget the 13600K also gets rather close to 12900K in many benchmarks that aren't heavily MT and even in ones that are it's closer than I expected. Raptor Lake is a nice upgrade. Unluckily for AMD they had a huge chasm to span to overtake Alder Lake and now have to compete with even more cores from Intel and now it's Intel that is the MT kings in most caees. The Zen 4 cores though a good job in a many cases, but 24 cores will overwhelm 16 cores in many cases.

 

[qubit]

Right, this is it, this CPU is the trigger point at which I finally decide to upgrade my ancient 2700K CPU and its supporting components, especially given that W11 won't run on it without hacks. I just have to look at the money now, given the cost of living crisis here in England.

@W1zzard great review, as always. I dunno how you stay sane from doing so many hundreds of repetitive tests a year.

 

[tussinman]

I bought an i5-12600 with the plan to upgrade on the same socket, but you can see as usual that doesn't work out well. I can't get anyone to buy my used CPU even with $100 CAD off, and the new CPUs are $100 price hikes versus the old ones here (the i5-13600k is a whopping $450 CAD plus tax, $500 basically just for the CPU, ouch). So really it is a large cost to upgrade for not much benefit. I'll probably just sell the entire computer.

It almost always works out and it's still every likely it will. Those that bought an 8th gen i5 were able to get a heavily discounted 9th gen i7 when 10th gen came out and they had enough performance on that i7 to easily skip both 10th and 11th gen.

Same thing with the last socket. Those that bought a budget i5 10th gen were able to get either a discounted 10th or 11th gen i7 and currently have enough juice to skip this socket and wait for 14th gen.

I see the same thing happening again. Those that bought into the socket early and cheaply (12100, 12400, 12600) will eye a discounted 13600/13700 level CPU when 14th gen comes out and then will have enough power to wait for 16th gen lunar lake

 

[Garrus]

It almost always works out and it's still every likely it will. Those that bought an 8th gen i5 were able to get a heavily discounted 9th gen i7 when 10th gen came out and they had enough performance on that i7 to easily skip both 10th and 11th gen.

Same thing with the last socket. Those that bought a budget i5 10th gen were able to get either a discounted 10th or 11th gen i7 and currently have enough juice to skip this socket and wait for 14th gen.

I see the same thing happening again. Those that bought into the socket early and cheaply (12100, 12400, 12600) will eye a discounted 13600/13700 level CPU when 14th gen comes out and then will have enough power to wait for 16th gen lunar lake

Your 12600 won't be worth anything when the 14th gen comes out, I don't see that as a very effective method. But if it works for you I've tried it once now, and I prefer to sell the entire computer instead ha and just build everything newer. I don't expect any used 13th gen to be available.

 

[tussinman]

Your 12600 won't be worth anything when the 14th gen comes out,

Both the 8th gen and 10th gen i5s were selling for around 60-65% value once they were 2 generations old.

The profit from either of those (plus the price drops on the 1 generation newer i7) was like the equivalent of paying $125-160 out of pocket. Less than $200 out of pocket to jump to an i7 and be able to keep all of my parts the same (along with having enough juice to skip 14th and 15th gen) is a no brainer.

I don't expect any used 13th gen to be available.

Once 14th gen comes out 13th gen new prices will be basically used prices, especially the non-k variants

 

[Berfs1]

Only two out of eight cores will ever hit 5.4 GHz. Even though they are all capable of doing that frequency. I'm not talking about "up to two threads = 5.4", what I'm saying is "core 4 and core 5 are the only ones allowed to do 5.4".

So, you mean to say you have a problem when Intel pre-identifies the best cores on the CPU and sets them to a higher frequency by default (Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0)? I don't really get why that deserves a thumbs down. Sure you could put that as a side note, but I don't really see how that's a BAD thing.

 

[ModEl4]

Reality kicks in, below some interesting Microcenter offers!
Some examples if you break down price bundles:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X $299
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X $449
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X $599
G.Skill Flare X5 Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 $139.99
ASUS B650-PLUS Prime $109.99
Gigabyte B650 AORUS Elite AX $139.99
ASRock X670E Pro RS $189.99

Below additional promos applicable to both Intel & AMD (not included in the above prices that i quoted as an example)

 

[AusWolf]

If AMD has the better product than the price difference really is irrelevant … what’s an extra even $400? $40 a month in 1 year, $20 a month in 2 years etc none needs a new cpu every year.

Erm... no. Just because a Mustang is better than my Fiesta, I'm still not gonna buy one because it's out of my budget.

Not everybody has $40 a month to spare for a slightly better CPU.

 

[vmarv]

A month from now there will be the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. So, if someone is thinking to upgrade soon, he could wait until then.

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard great review, as always. I dunno how you stay sane from doing so many hundreds of repetitive tests a year.

More like thousands

 

[Nopa]

wow the frametimes consistency of 13700K is certainly amazing, 95th and 99th percentile beating 5800X3D by 10% while avg FPS is not much faster


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The king has been defeated... Took Intel just one gen to caught up and completely beat X3D which indicates the CPU market is healthy and very competitive.

 

[qubit]

More like thousands

U mad bro.

 

[Ferrum Master]

U mad bro.

Nah.

Things actually change. You get older... sometimes you have admit... you cannot handle everything. Please W1z sorry...

 

[W1zzard]

sometimes you have admit... you cannot handle everything

Some days I actually wonder why I don't just test 1 GPU instead of 6, and 5 games instead of 25, and 1 or 2 resolutions instead of 3 or 4

 

[AusWolf]

Some days I actually wonder why I don't just test 1 GPU instead of 6, and 5 games instead of 25, and 1 or 2 resolutions instead of 3 or 4

Because that's how you keep TPU at a high standard, and we're grateful for that.

 

[qubit]

Some days I actually wonder why I don't just test 1 GPU instead of 6, and 5 games instead of 25, and 1 or 2 resolutions instead of 3 or 4

Kuzz ya like the pain, bruh.

Really pays off though.

 

[ARF]

The king has been defeated... Took Intel just one gen to caught up and completely beat X3D which indicates the CPU market is healthy and very competitive.

Intel's architecture has been better suited for gaming loads for years, and AMD's X3D is more like one bird doesn't make the spring situation. Of course, Ryzen will be slower in gaming.

The thing we see here is something else - AMD is forced to such weird promos - "free DDR5-5600", "50$ off motherboard" just to make their sales a little wet, not to dry out completely.

 

[Vario]

Intel's architecture has been better suited for gaming loads for years, and AMD's X3D is more like one bird doesn't make the spring situation. Of course, Ryzen will be slower in gaming.

The thing we see here is something else - AMD is forced to such weird promos - "free DDR5-5600", "50$ off motherboard" just to make their sales a little wet, not to dry out completely.

Unless I am wrong, that is purely a Microcenter promo. They know that a barrier to existing AM4 users is the DDR5 transition, so its a good way to sell inventory to these consumers. The hope is probably in selling enough peripherals at the same time to offset the loss.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Unless I am wrong, that is purely a Microcenter promo. They know that a barrier to existing AM4 users is the DDR5 transition, so its a good way to sell inventory to these consumers. The hope is probably in selling enough peripherals at the same time to offset the loss.

The thing that is strange is that no one is dropping Zen 4 prices despite obviously bad sales numbers.

That tells me one of two things.

Either AMD has restricted retailers from selling below the MSRP - something Apple has long done on iPhones and such - *or* there is no margin on Zen 4 chips. Of those two, I would bet that the first is in play with the 2nd a far distant possibility.

Why? If retailers were free to sell at whatever price they wanted, we'd see various combinations of 'deals' to move product, not fixed prices and stuff like free RAM on the side.

This becomes a big problem for them, because their capital is tied up on those chips and can't be used to order other stuff - that's the way buyers/purchasing works in every retail company whether you're selling underwear or $50,000 cars. If you can't keep merchandise turning over so you can get the next big thing on the shelf, you're sunk, that's how retailers go under.

I certainly expected it to sell pretty well in the DIY space at least at first, even expected it to drive up DDR5 prices for a month or two. Not like 2020 no, but it really didn't enter my mind that it would flop like this. AMD doesn't release new CPUs but every 2 years. The almost total lack of interest is, frankly, shocking.