Sunday, July 17th 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%.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.
76 Comments on Intel i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" ES Improves Gaming Minimum Framerates by 11-27% Over i9-12900KF
I'm starting to think my 1000w psu is going to be midrange capable here pretty soon.
To be fair AMD also increases power with Zen 4.
Being in the same room with a 1000W computer is no joke for those lived in a warmer climate area.
It can surely kill me and my electricity bill with one stone.
Not looking forward to 700w+ systems being the norm.
That will last for exactly one motherboard socket while socket AM5 will be supported for years with CPUs that may even double the IPC of the first generation release. I would call that leadership.
People run GPU's that are twice the power use of the CPU and don't mind. I don't give a crap about power use as long as i can cool it, and it is fast. If you don't want high power use, don't build a high end gaming rig, simple.