If I'm not mistaken, 13600 is Alder Lake silicon, 13600k is Raptor Lake silicon, but I could be wrong. As far as I know there is a difference. This is what I read from Video Card Z.
You are 100% correct. I double checked as it came as big surprise to me.
Thats smashing me.. so its just matters if i wanna overclock i get 13600k and if notnit doesnt matter?
Scratch my earlier post, it appears the 13600 and 13600X are using different architectures. The 13600 is using the older Alder Lake Architecture. While gaming performance will be close between the two, application performance will be better on the 13600X.
With that in mind, I really don't think the 13600 is worth the $255 MSRP Intel is asking. It makes this a very tough choice. You can go 13600K for quite a bit more money or you can get Zen 4.
AMD is releasing the 7600 at $230 (which includes a decent cooler) in 5 days. Given that DDR5 prices have plummeted, a Ryzen 7600 CPU + Motherboard + RAM will end up costing around the same as a 13600 + RAM + Motherboard. The difference is the 7600 is going to be faster in both games and applications. It'll also use less power and the motherboard will support the next few CPU generations, meaning you'll have the option to easily upgrade in the future should you wish.
Of course this all depends on what you are going for. If you are doing more core heavy stuff, go 13600K. If you aren't, a 7600 would be a better choice.
Typically I'd say if you are fine with good but not the best Zen 3 (like the 5600X) or Alder lake are good choice but retail pricing of those CPUs is currently extremely disappointing. I'm not really sure what's going on with last gen CPU pricing right now but it seems to have spiked up after christmas and hopefully it's temporary and goes down. I do not want to see what happened to the GPU market to also happen to the CPU market. If you can snag a good used deal though, that would work. I wouldn't pay over $140 for a used 5600X or $160 for the motherboard.