Intel Core i9-13900KS Review - The Empire Strikes Back

Legendary Gamer said:
Not everyone cares about efficiency these days so long as the processors do what people need em to do. Intel does have TDP limited processors for OEMs, they can be run more efficiently at performance loss. However, Lakados has a point. Intel is churning out these processors on a mature 10nm node. The cost to produce these has to be low. Plus, it's all done in house. A huge cost savings.

Intel has widespread adoption. It's everywhere in every company. I have never seen someone go exclusively Team Red. AMD is gaining but for how long, no idea. They do seem to be kicking ass with their Epyc processors though. Only time will tell.
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Everyone cares about performance and AMD has that belt and the efficiency belt. Ez.
 
NightReaver said:
Is 6ghz going to become the new "but can it hit 5ghz?"
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It's about all Intel has going for them at this point. They can claim the frequency crown. Just wait until AMD releases their Big/Little Cores in the next year or so.
Stryker7314 said:
Everyone cares about performance and AMD has that belt and the efficiency belt. Ez.
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While everyone cares about performance, many here and elsewhere will happily not care about efficiency as much to get said performance.

I had been arguing about AMD's efficiency for years now. But they never quite take the crown in everything and that it STILL THE CASE. My 13900K still beats even the X3D parts in a couple benchmarks (and yes the cost to do so is high). the 13900KS will totally do that and more if you mount a small cooler from a Fusion Reactor on it :eek:
 
Furious_Styles said:
Bet it can get damn close if you disable all e cores and HT.
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I suspect you are correct. My 13900K lights on fire past 5.85 or so. I had disabled all my E Cores and ran the thing balls out with the extra 100 Mhz Turbo option on in my Tomahawk's Bios and I recall my system force shutting down. It exceeded thermal limits. It's good but it's not golden sample good. Guessing that's the same across the board with an exception here or there on rare occasions. I may have to go home and try that again...

I am getting a bit bummed, I had thought that the Raptor Lake Refresh due this year might still be on the same socket but I am beginning to think it's gonna usher in a new chipset for the Meteor Lake Desktop Stuff next Year (think it's just Meteor Lake Mobile this year).
 
The 7950X3D is among the fastest in gaming and applications, but requires custom AMD software for game detection and processor thread management that doesn't always do the right thing
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This is exactly what frustrated me so much about how AMD has handled the 7950X3D so far as we were discussing in the other thread - when all is going well, the chip should be a favorable comparison vs Raptor Lake up to and including the 13900KS, but they've done the bare minimum which will lead to the exact sort of needlessly negative points like the one being made here. Unless something happened recently of which I am not aware. "Custom AMD software" isn't even accurate, as it seems that AMD is depending on the Xbox Game Bar feature of Windows in order to decide what is flagged as a game and thereby gets pinned to the cache-having cores (for the moment, those gaming on Linux seem to be left to their own devices despite AMD's acclaimed FOSS and Linux friendly solutions in the past) There are numerous gaps in this approach, especially when compared to what I am to understand is Intel's on-die monitoring, but with smart use of firmware/motherboard features and actual custom driver/software (ideally open source, for Linux and WIndows alike) that includes frequently updated prefab profiles for optimal behavior under certain applications, the ability for users to manually tweak or create their own, and perhaps some heuristic/algorithmic monitoring option to predict and then analyze/benchmark, I imagine the 7950X3D could be allowed to "just work" optimally the vast majority of the time.

Perhaps AMD will see that, especially on the high end 3D cache CPUs meant to compete with Intel's best, these kinds of quotes will continue to undermine the confidence of reviewer suggestions until a proper solution is implemented, hopefully sooner rather than later.
 
Legendary Gamer said:
Because the 13700K can't hit 6 Ghz would be my guess
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I think at that point I would just get a 7800x3d lol. Why pay all that money for a 13900K to disable the E cores and HT....to say you can reach 6ghz? I mean if a CPU can do the same performance at a lower frequency and power usage while being cheaper.....well you get the point
 
Brackle said:
I think at that point I would just get a 7800x3d lol. Why pay all that money for a 13900K to disable the E cores and HT....to say you can reach 6ghz?
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Because Intel gets people obsessed with arbitrary ghz points, as if you somehow enter a whole different plane of pc power just by hitting those mystical figures. Used to be 5ghz, right up until the point Ryzens were hitting that...
 
NightReaver said:
Is 6ghz going to become the new "but can it hit 5ghz?"
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Well yea lol my 13900KS can hit 6GHz all core full time not just one or two cores but all 8 P cores If I want to set it up that way. I have adequate cooling for it also. Of course the voltage will be to high for me personally in the 1.5v range iirc I have a thread here somewhere discussing it's clock speeds and voltages and will use over 300w but it is quite easily possible if you don't mind 1.5v which some people will run all day no worries. Just saying lol
 
Brackle said:
I think at that point I would just get a 7800x3d lol. Why pay all that money for a 13900K to disable the E cores and HT....to say you can reach 6ghz? I mean if a CPU can do the same performance at a lower frequency and power usage while being cheaper.....well you get the point
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Well because for gaming you don't need all those extra e cores and hyper threads. So if you are running and strictly gaming only machine like mine, it makes a lot of sense. Also the 13900KS goes head to head with any other processors stock that is not including the 6GHz all core OC and 8000 RAM it can support with it at which point it would most likely be on the top of the charts would be my guess.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Well because for gaming you don't need all those extra e cores and hyper threads. So if you are running and strictly gaming only machine like mine, it makes a lot of sense. Also the 13900KS goes head to head with any other processors stock that is not including the 6GHz all core OC and 8000 RAM it can support with it at which point it would most likely be on the top of the charts would be my guess.
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Still doesn't make sense. Get a 7800x3d....cheaper, faster, lower power....dont have to disable anything.

I mean it makes sense to you. But overall it's not worth it in the long run, specially if you have to disable features lol. Same reason the 7950x3d and 7900x3d.....makes no sense since you need to disable a CCX core for gaming only.
 
NightReaver said:
Because Intel gets people obsessed with arbitrary ghz points, as if you somehow enter a whole different plane of pc power just by hitting those mystical figures. Used to be 5ghz, right up until the point Ryzens were hitting that...
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Well it is one hell of a milestone to hit 6GHz. If the performance is there it is a welcome breakthrough. Lagging in gaming sucks and clock speed is still the most important feature, so I'll take it.
 
Brackle said:
Still doesn't make sense. Get a 7800x3d....cheaper, faster, lower power....dont have to disable anything.

I mean it makes sense to you. But overall it's not worth it in the long run, specially if you have to disable features lol. Same reason the 7950x3d and 7900x3d.....makes no sense since you need to disable a CCX core for gaming only.
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I'm a long time Intel/Nvidia user. It's what I'm comfortable with. Not gonna change systems for minor differences. What about when the Raptor lake refresh drops and it faster and/or just as/more efficient as the AMD chip? Should I go jumping ships back and forth? Lmao how silly is that argument 😅
 
xDiVolatilX said:
I'm a long time Intel/Nvidia user. It's what I'm comfortable with. Not gonna change systems for minor differences. What about when the Raptor lake refresh drops and it faster and/or just as/more efficient as the AMD chip? Should I go jumping ships back and forth? Lmao how silly is that argument 😅
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If you care about money you do.....if your rich and dont care, you buy the same companys products. Same thing Apple customers say, product could be inferior.....yet they just keep on buying.
 
Furious_Styles said:
Well you have effectively turned your CPU into an 8C/8T one. Why not save $300 and just get the 13700k?
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For me personally 8 really fast Cores and ram (ddr5 6000 @ 52ns) are enough with my gaming 4090 usecase at 4k/120Hz.

And i even have a gaming usecase for 2x24Gb if they weren´t so slow.

"RougeTech" is a battletech mod that can saturate even 48Gb easily.
Sadly it runs mostly on one core, like many round based strategy games.

Btw:
Currenty i have to help 3 different people out that are unhappy with their 12/13700k´s hot headedness. Threeee !
In general a 1x700k does need more vcore for the same task as a 1x900ks would do. So it gets hotter.

And its cores usually do not have the same Vid for all 8 p ones, like the ks does as far as i understand.

In my config that´s 220 watt of the 253 watt allowance only for 8x p-cores.

So any little vcore reduction counts.

My ks Vid for 6.0 Ghz is 1.454 . I believe a 13700k would need more.
 
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Carlyle2020 said:
Yeah, sure.
Currenty i have to help 3 different people out that are unhappy with their 12/13700k´s hot headedness. Threeee !

In general a 1x700k does need more vcore for the same task as a 1x900ks would do. So it gets hotter.

And its cores usually do not have the same Vid for all 8 p ones, like the ks does as far as i understand.

In my config that´s 220 watt of the 253 watt allowance only for 8x p-cores.

So any little vcore reduction counts.

My ks Vid for 6.0 Ghz is 1.454 . I believe a 13700k would need more.
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Oh dear, they might have to settle for 5.9!
 
NightReaver said:
A few hundred mhz has never made the difference between lagging and lag free for a long time. Especially not with the amount of software slapped on to smooth things out.
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It does make a difference maybe not a big difference, but we can refer to the benchmarks to see. Also, It's nice to have a binned cpu for a change. It can achieve higher clock speeds while maintaining lower voltages which is a plus.
 
Brackle said:
If you care about money you do.....if your rich and dont care, you buy the same companys products. Same thing Apple customers say, product could be inferior.....yet they just keep on buying.
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I care about money of course. But not enough to go AMD. I'm okay with spending an extra hundred to go Intel for the extra cores in case I do any editing. All while having top notch gaming performance. Also I'm going to keep this platform for the next 5 years minimum might even squeeze 7 years out of it if I can. So I stretch my money spent loooooooooooooong no matter what the brand of CPU is. You need to stop insisting the that the 7800x3d is on par with the 13900KS because that's only in gaming, for productivity the 13900KS is much more powerful for those that need that type of processing. I suppose you need to compare the 7800x3d to the 13700K for a better price to performance comparison?
 
xDiVolatilX said:
I care about money of course. But not enough to go AMD. I'm okay with spending an extra hundred to go Intel for the extra cores in case I do any editing. All while having top notch gaming performance. Also I'm going to keep this platform for the next 5 years minimum might even squeeze 7 years out of it if I can. So I stretch my money spent loooooooooooooong no matter what the brand of CPU is. You need to stop insisting the that the 7800x3d is on par with the 13900KS because that's only in gaming, for productivity the 13900KS is much more powerful for those that need that type of processing. I suppose you need to compare the 7800x3d to the 13700K for a better price to performance comparison?
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If you disable the ecores and HT your productivity goes out the window. We are just discussing gaming. If you want to discuss productivity and gaming then either get a 7950x3d or 13900ks. Because you can disable cores for gaming when needed with either cpu. And turn them back on when you need more cores.

For gaming the 7800x3d is the better choice.

Edit: And for Longevity you would rather be on AM5 since it will be supported until 2025+. While Z690/790 is EOL.
 
Brackle said:
If you disable the ecores and HT your productivity goes out the window. We are just discussing gaming. If you want to discuss productivity and gaming then either get a 7950x3d or 13900ks. Because you can disable cores for gaming when needed with either cpu. And turn them back on when you need more cores.

For gaming the 7800x3d is the better choice.

Edit: And for Longevity you would rather be on AM5 since it will be supported until 2025+. While Z690/790 is EOL.
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We’ll see if AMD follows through on that, with the cost of everything else I don’t know how well that pans out. It was great for the Ryzen 1’s because they weren’t really good, like they were better than AMD had done but they weren’t good compared to Intel. But this time how much of a tangible benefit will come from the upgrades. Like 20% better than sweet Jesus is still sweet Jesus, the rest of the system becomes the problem then.
 
Brackle said:
If you disable the ecores and HT your productivity goes out the window. We are just discussing gaming. If you want to discuss productivity and gaming then either get a 7950x3d or 13900ks. Because you can disable cores for gaming when needed with either cpu. And turn them back on when you need more cores.

For gaming the 7800x3d is the better choice.

Edit: And for Longevity you would rather be on AM5 since it will be supported until 2025+. While Z690/790 is EOL.
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Do you realize how silly it sounds for you to tell someone that already has a full platform running to go get an entirely new AMD system? I mean do you really think about what you are saying? lol

Of course, I can tweak the bios to my settings based on what I'm doing.

Also no, the 7800x3d is not a better choice. They are similar in gaming which is good because competition is healthy in the pc space. Give it a rest? lol I play at 4k where the FPS difference between the 13900KS and 7800X3D is negligible like margin of error identical close relax bro lol.
 
Brackle said:
I think at that point I would just get a 7800x3d lol. Why pay all that money for a 13900K to disable the E cores and HT....to say you can reach 6ghz? I mean if a CPU can do the same performance at a lower frequency and power usage while being cheaper.....well you get the point
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Also the 7800X3D will run just fine with potato RAM (plug and go) while to get the best out of a 13900 best be stretching that wallet or working those speeds/timings for top flight results. There are a lot of factors that add cost and heat in exchange for cutting edge performance with the 13900 but for many it is worth it. We are at [H]ocp after all.
 
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funkydmunky said:
Also the 7800X3D will run just fine with potato RAM (plug and go) while to get the best out of a 13900 best be stretching that wallet or working those speeds/timings for top flight results. There are a lot of factors that add cost and heat in exchange for cutting edge performance with the 13900 but for many it is worth it. We are at [H]ocp after all.
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Can you please back that up? I'd love to see numbers
 
Carlyle2020 said:
"RougeTech" is a battletech mod that can saturate even 48Gb easily.
Sadly it runs mostly on one core, like many round based strategy games.
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I know about Roguetech (though rougetech sounds cooler).

The "slow" part of it specifically is json parsing, with a bit of fiddling you can actually get it to speed up a lot by swapping out the json parser to something that is multithreaded/avx compatible. BUT the other problem is it relies on accessing a lot of small files which is not something that works well generally, disk wise. The disks with fast random access of small files are optanes... The way to fix this is to get a 32gig or above optane nvme (eg an optane memory), copy the jsons across, then symlink the directory.
 
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Keljian said:
Can you please back that up? I'd love to see numbers
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Keljian said:
I mean, it’s nice, but you don’t buy a 4090 to play 1080p (and you're talking 10% at the top end.. )
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With same speed and timings 6000c30, 7950x3d is indeed has 10% performance advantage compared 13900k.
at 1080p it will indicate the performance for next years / future games releases on higher resolutions.

You can search HW Unboxed other videos comparing old ryzen 1600x vs intel 8700k (same core count) or any other video that compare similar core count processor to see the performance difference at 1080p, and when they do compare again in recent years, 8700k came ahead over 1600x.

The purpose of testing the games on lower resolution is to see the "now" performance that will translate in the future.
I think a lot of people in here already understood about this.
 
riev90 said:
The purpose of testing the games on lower resolution is to see the "now" performance that will translate in the future.
I think a lot of people in here already understood about this.
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But that's a farce...

I'd argue the majority of people who are gaming will be upgrading their computer's processors and graphics cards at least every 5-6 years or so. In that time period you're not going notice a huge difference from where things are now.

I had a 9900k (2018), I now have a 13600k, there was about a 5 year span between the two
I had a 1080ti (2017), I now have a 3080Ti, there was about a 4 year span between the two, and I didn't upgrade until this year (Jan) so nearly 6 years.

If you look at the 1080ti vs the 4080 - the 4080 is going to be many times faster, but the reality is that if you're moving from a 1080ti to a 4080 you're either gaming at 1440p or 4k - the processor driving it isn't going to matter as much at a certain point, unless you need >120/144hz

If you look at those 1080p numbers above, the difference between 170-190fps is kind of irrelevant imo. if you're gaming at 144hz ANY of those memory choices will be fine.
 
Keljian said:
But that's a farce...
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Even if you're calling it a farce and you prove it with your timeline upgrade, it's still worth mentioning that there is performance difference.
(your original post (question) you asked the data regarding performance delta if x3d parts just need potato ddr5 to surpass RPL gaming's performance yet I provided the data you asked)
 
riev90 said:
Even if you're calling it a farce and you prove it with your timeline upgrade, it's still worth mentioning that there is performance difference.
(your original post (question) you asked the data regarding performance delta if x3d parts just need potato ddr5 to surpass RPL gaming's performance yet I provided the data you asked)
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That's fair - me asking is also fair (and thanks for answering with that).

Realistically you're not going to get a 13900k(f/s) if you're primarily gaming, you're going to get an x3d if you want peak performance or you're going to get something lower (7600x/7700x 13600k/13700k)
 
Carlyle2020 said:
For me personally 8 really fast Cores and ram (ddr5 6000 @ 52ns) are enough with my gaming 4090 usecase at 4k/120Hz.

And i even have a gaming usecase for 2x24Gb if they weren´t so slow.

"RougeTech" is a battletech mod that can saturate even 48Gb easily.
Sadly it runs mostly on one core, like many round based strategy games.

Btw:
Currenty i have to help 3 different people out that are unhappy with their 12/13700k´s hot headedness. Threeee !
In general a 1x700k does need more vcore for the same task as a 1x900ks would do. So it gets hotter.

And its cores usually do not have the same Vid for all 8 p ones, like the ks does as far as i understand.

In my config that´s 220 watt of the 253 watt allowance only for 8x p-cores.

So any little vcore reduction counts.

My ks Vid for 6.0 Ghz is 1.454 . I believe a 13700k would need more.
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Dude, I can run Battletech on my 13900K overclocked or at stock with Gear 1 RAM around 4300 and it runs flawlessly. I run Roguetech and Battletech Advanced which allows you to field an entire company of combined arms units and even call in airstrikes and drop additional mechs and tanks and it runs fluid. I didn't need to drop my E cores and crank my P Cores. The Problem with Hair Brained Schemes / Paradox's Battletech is it's built on a piece of shit engine with memory holes in it and numerous flaws that were never corrected and it was never designed to handle the scope that modders have added to it. That being said most of the community optimizations have come from RT and other modders and do generally make the limitations less of a problem. No matter what you run it on, the game engine starts glitching out after your RAM hits a certain utilization level. Though the game tends to crash long before you hit full RAM utilization (especially with mods).

I suppose, to each their own.
 
Brackle said:
If you disable the ecores and HT your productivity goes out the window. We are just discussing gaming. If you want to discuss productivity and gaming then either get a 7950x3d or 13900ks. Because you can disable cores for gaming when needed with either cpu. And turn them back on when you need more cores.

For gaming the 7800x3d is the better choice.

Edit: And for Longevity you would rather be on AM5 since it will be supported until 2025+. While Z690/790 is EOL.
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I like my productivity so I don't disable anything on mine. I also didn't go for a KS... that's just bragging rights more than performance.
 
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Legendary Gamer said:
I like my productivity so I don't disable anything on mine. I also didn't go for a KS... that's just bragging rights more than performance.
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I think of it more as a luxury. It runs lower voltage while maintaining higher clocks so there is less heat being thrown out of the rads.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
I think of it more as a luxury. It runs lower voltage while maintaining higher clocks so there is less heat being thrown out of the rads.
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i wanted the fastest shit I could afford when I upgraded. I have always picked the mid grade value option for my initial foray into a new platform.

I adopted the Intel 13900K at the time because I had a terrible experience attempting to adopt the new AMD Platform. Couple motherboards, couple RAM kits and possibly one bad processor later... The intel build was painless.

I might have had a KS had it been out and I know I would have have fought harder to make my AMD adoption work had the X3D chips been available when I tried to jump on the platform.

There's little point for me to get a KS, if the Raptor Lake Refresh is still compatible with my socket, I may do that.
 
Legendary Gamer said:
i wanted the fastest shit I could afford when I upgraded. I have always picked the mid grade value option for my initial foray into a new platform.

I adopted the Intel 13900K at the time because I had a terrible experience attempting to adopt the new AMD Platform. Couple motherboards, couple RAM kits and possibly one bad processor later... The intel build was painless.

I might have had a KS had it been out and I know I would have have fought harder to make my AMD adoption work had the X3D chips been available when I tried to jump on the platform.

There's little point for me to get a KS, if the Raptor Lake Refresh is still compatible with my socket, I may do that.
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I agree 💯.

Any news on the raptor lake refresh? Moore's law is dead keeps teasing it but not sure about any spec leaks. According to him it is for sure in the works.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
I agree 💯.

Any news on the raptor lake refresh? Moore's law is dead keeps teasing it but not sure about any spec leaks. According to him it is for sure in the works.
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7nm, higher clocks, is what they're talking.. If that is to be believed, lower temps/higher clocks will be the outcome. I predict 6ghz all P core (promotional tool) and 6.2ghz boost while running at 85C as a general load peak on an AIO - and that will be the time to jump on the 13900k
 
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Carlyle2020 said:
For me personally 8 really fast Cores and ram (ddr5 6000 @ 52ns) are enough with my gaming 4090 usecase at 4k/120Hz.

And i even have a gaming usecase for 2x24Gb if they weren´t so slow.

"RougeTech" is a battletech mod that can saturate even 48Gb easily.
Sadly it runs mostly on one core, like many round based strategy games.

Btw:
Currenty i have to help 3 different people out that are unhappy with their 12/13700k´s hot headedness. Threeee !
In general a 1x700k does need more vcore for the same task as a 1x900ks would do. So it gets hotter.

And its cores usually do not have the same Vid for all 8 p ones, like the ks does as far as i understand.

In my config that´s 220 watt of the 253 watt allowance only for 8x p-cores.

So any little vcore reduction counts.

My ks Vid for 6.0 Ghz is 1.454 . I believe a 13700k would need more.
Click to expand...

How’d you get DDR5 6000 down to 52ns? Best I can get is 59. I have tuned Hynix M die using Actually Hardcore Overclockings presets.

EDIT: I’m on AM5 7800X3D so maybe that’s why.
 
next-Jin said:
How’d you get DDR5 6000 down to 52ns? Best I can get is 59. I have tuned Hynix M die using Actually Hardcore Overclockings presets.

EDIT: I’m on AM5 7800X3D so maybe that’s why.
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AMD does not have great memory controllers, if they got that fixed their CPU’s would be far better than they are and they use large cache to offset that deficiency, Intels memory controllers paired with AMD’s cores… tag team of my dreams… that I can admit too the other ones I’ll take to my grave.
 
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