Intel Core i9-13900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 7950X: Who Wins the Performance Crown?

Today, Intel is lifting the performance embargo on its new 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors, and here’s a look at the Core i9-13900K – its new flagship – in a test of the company’s most powerful, highest-core-count desktop processor ever has produced . It currently costs $659 compared to $699 for AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X.

It has a total of 24 cores, consisting of 16 “Performance” cores and eight “Efficient” cores, while its predecessor – the Core i9-12900K – only had 16 cores, with the new flagship getting eight additional Efficient cores. This will likely help it with multi-threaded workloads – a boost it needs if it’s to counter the massive multi-threaded performance of the new AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.

An enormous increase in frequencies also contributes to the increase in performance. Its peak boost frequency sits at 5.8GHz, with an expected Core i9-13900KS likely to hit 6GHz. 5.8GHz was also observed during testing, as was an all-core boost frequency when running multi-threaded workloads on its performance cores of 5.5GHz – both massive increases over the Core i9-12900K – the peak being huge 600MHz faster.

Cache amounts have also been increased – more than doubling the L2 cache from 14MB to 32MB and 6MB in addition to the original 30MB L3 cache. AMD has also increased cache amounts and, like Intel, optimized its architecture over the previous generation, but didn’t increase the number of cores, relying solely on higher frequencies and its Zen 4 architecture.

Test system and benchmarks

The test system uses the latest drivers and Windows 11 updates, up to date as of October 15th, 2022, and I also re-tested each CPU on the charts – I’d check every review out there to make sure they say the same thing specify as these things make a big difference to the results. Default BIOS settings were used, but correct memory settings were applied using XMP or AMD EXPO profiles.

The hardware includes an Nvidia RTX 3070, a custom water cooling system with Corsair Hydro X components and a Barrow Ropilema test bench. I also have G.Skill Trident Z Neo EXPO 6000MHz DDR5 memory for the AMD Ryzen 7000 system, Corsair 3466MHz Vengeance Pro RGB memory for the Socket AM4 system, and Kingston 6000MHz Fury DDR5 memory for the Intel LGA1700 -System used together with a Corsair RM850x power supply. I used an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard to test the 12th Gen Intel CPUs and a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard to test the AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs and an ASRock X670E Taichi to test the new Ryzen 7000 CPUs .

benchmarks

Below we see Procyon’s combined Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom script benchmark, and this is where AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 CPUs had a consistent lead, with even the Ryzen 5 7600X beating out the Core i9-13900K, albeit not by much. Adobe was actually releasing updates to all of their software just as I was done testing, so it’s possible they could see improvements that would tip things in Intel’s favor. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to test.

In Adobe Premiere Pro, the Core i9-12900K remained the fastest overall, which is a bit of an odd result and again may be due to the software, but the Core i9-13900K wins against the Ryzen 9 7950X, and by a significant margin.

Below the single-threaded test in Cinebench, the Core i9-13900K sits at the top of the chart, clearly beating out the Ryzen 9 7950X, thanks in part to its peak boost frequency of 5.8 GHz, which also gives it a considerable advantage over it the Core i5-13600K and Core i9-12900K.

This is a pretty big scalp for Intel – it beats the Ryzen 9 7950X in Cinebench’s multithreaded test. The massive increase compared to the Core i9-12900K is also impressive – from 27,579 to 40,444 points in the single generation is a huge leap forward.

Below is HandBrake and here it was a very close battle between the Ryzen 9 7950X and the Core i9-13900K, with the latter gaining huge ground over the Core i9-12900K and ultimately only putting AMD on top.

Gaming is also very important as the Core i9-13900K is also touted as the fastest gaming CPU. That certainly seemed to be the case in Forza Horizon 5 as it gained a few frames over the Ryzen 9 7950X and was also much faster than the Core i9-12900K

Watch Dogs: Legion saw very small gaps between the CPUs at the top and it’s practically within the margin of error between the top eight CPUs on the chart, despite decent scaling from the lowest point on the chart to the highest. Still, the Core i9-13900K narrowly edged out the Ryzen 9 7950X, but didn’t offer any more than the Core i9-12900K.

Far Cry 6 was another win for Intel, with a noticeable lead over the Ryzen 9 7950X, but only marginally faster than the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which is of course a lot cheaper and on a cheaper platform too.

The rather significant fly in the ointment – power consumption. This is something Intel really needs to address, although it has to be said that temperatures never exceeded 90C. Still, a stock power draw of 546W for the system as a whole compared to 376W for the Ryzen 9 7950X is a huge gap, and while not many tasks will force this type of workload, AMD is significantly more efficient and will add significantly less to yours electricity bill.

overclocking and temperatures

I had limited time to overclock the Core i9-13900K, but managed an all-core overclock of 5.7GHz with a vcore of 1.4V. That may be improved and lower voltage, but that seemed like it to be the limit of my CPU with a simple manual overclock, while the Core i5-13600K performs significantly better here. Overclocking increased the Cinebench score from 40,444 to 41,015, but didn’t affect gaming much. However, peak power was dropped by 20 W and temperatures dropped from just under 90 C to around 85 C.

Conclusions

It’s not a clean win for Intel, as AMD’s Ryzen 7950X comes out on top in some tests and also offers far superior power efficiency. However, there’s no denying that the Core i9-13900K just takes the performance crown. It’s faster in Premiere Pro, Cinebench in single- and multi-threaded, and all three gaming tests. That’s pretty conclusive.

However, the question of whether you should buy the Core i9-13900K is not that simple as other factors come into play. It’s slightly cheaper than AMD’s CPU and has the benefit of supporting cheaper DDR4 memory with a compatible motherboard, while new AMD systems now force you to invest in DDR5 memory. These Intel motherboards can also be found at lower prices.

AMD’s advantage also lies in its better longevity – Intel’s current CPU socket should no longer have CPU upgrades, while AMD’s socket AM5 should be supported for the next few years and at least one additional CPU generation. However, if you buy the Core i9-13900K, it’s doubtful you’ll need another upgrade for a couple of years anyway.