testing the fences — Intel i9-13900K and i5-13600K review: Beating AMD at its own game AMD’s tech is ahead of the curve, but Raptor Lake swamps Ryzen with E-cores.
Andrew Cunningham – Oct 20, 2022 1:00 pm UTC Enlarge / Intel’s new flagship desktop CPU, the Core i9-13900K.Andrew Cunningham reader comments 46 with 26 posters participating, including story author Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit
When AMD brought the first Ryzen processors to desktops in 2017, the chips’ secret weapon was cores. AMD couldnt match Intels number of instructions-per-clock or hit the same clock speeds, but what it could do was sell you six or eight reasonably performant processor cores at the same price Intel charged for four. Further ReadingIntels 13th-gen Raptor Lake CPUs are official, launch October 20
The 12-core and 16-core options came a couple years later, bringing high-end workstation performance to much less expensive PCsand forcing Intel to follow suit. That brought down costs. In 2014, an 8-core CPU cost $999 on top of a pricey workstation motherboard; today, you can get 8-core chips for less than $300 and pop them into an $80 board if you want.
Five years after Ryzen debuted, the shoe is on the other foot. AMD now has the technological lead, in terms of instructions-per-clock, CPU manufacturing, and power efficiency. But by throwing more cores at the problem and pricing its chips aggressively, Intel has put together a desktop lineup thats easier to recommend than AMDs, even though AMD just fielded its fastest desktop processor lineup ever.
More cores isnt all there is to Intels 13th-generation “Raptor Lake” CPUs, but its pretty dang close. Given the similarities to the previous chip generation and the increase in Intel’s topline power consumption figures, I didn’t come to these newCPUs expecting to be impressed. Color me wrongZen 4 and Ryzen 7000 are more interesting, but Intel’s13th-gen chips are a lot easier to recommend. Table of Contents P- and E-cores (re-)explained New to Raptor Lake Our testbed Many, many cores make light work Power use: High by default Turning the tables on AMD The good The bad The ugly Page: 1 2 3 4 5 Next → reader comments 46 with 26 posters participating, including story author Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Andrew Cunningham Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica with over a decade of experience in consumer tech, covering everything from PCs to Macs to smartphones to game consoles. His work has appeared in the New York Times’ Wirecutter and AnandTech. He also records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Email andrew.cunningham@arstechnica.com // Twitter @AndrewWrites Advertisement
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