By John LoefflerMichelle Rae Uy

Intel Core i9-13900K

The best processor overall

SPECIFICATIONS

• Cores: 16
• Threads: 32
• Base clock: 4.5GHz
• Boost clock: 5.7GHz
• L3 cache: 80MB
• TDP: 170W

REASONS TO BUY

• Dominates both single- and multi-core workload
• Same pricing as the Core i9-12900K
• Top-tier gaming performance
• Surprisingly low power consumption on average

REASONS TO AVOID

• Runs hot and hungry at maximum load
• Lacks AMD’s 3D V-cache for gaming
• Basically overkill for most users

The Intel Core i9-13900K already had a very high bar to clear given the outstanding performance of the Intel Core i9-12900K, but when AMD released its Zen 4 processors in September 2022 to wide acclaim, Intel’s big.LITTLE follow-up had to essentially do everything right.

Incredibly, Team Blue manages just that with this chip. Whether it’s multithreaded workloads or single-threaded ones like gaming, the Core i9-13900K simply blows away the competition here, which is all the more impressive given the phenomenal performance of the rival AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor.

What’s more, Intel was able to do so without raising the price of the chip over the previous generation, an incredible feat given the inflationary pressures on the semiconductor industry from still-wonky supply chains and the rising costs of raw materials and other production factors.

While still a pricey chip, the money spent is well worth the cost given the amount of performance you’re getting for that money. This is a chip that will serve you very well for the long-haul.

It must really hurt to be AMD, sometimes. Team Red has been the underdog since its inception in the late 1960s, formed by employees leaving the then-titanic Fairchild Semiconductor firm – just one year after Intel was established in the exact same way.

 

Intel had the drop on AMD, and for decades the company in the red corner was beholden to Intel’s will – as a second-source manufacturer, it spent less time making its own components and more time producing patented products for Team Blue. It wasn’t really until the turn of the century that AMD was able to properly kick out, finally managing to secure a chunk of the dedicated CPU market and expanding from there with the product lines we know and love today: Athlon, Bulldozer, and later Ryzen.

The recent launch of AMD’s new ‘Zen 4’ CPUs looked like it could be a turning point for the dark horse of the microprocessor market. We gave five-star reviews to both the Ryzen 9 7950X and the incredible mainstream Ryzen 7 7700X – generational performance was through the roof, blowing Intel’s current 12th-generation chips out of the water.Unfortunately, Intel is here to ruin the party. Only for AMD, though, to be clear; for us consumers, this party is going to rage all night long. The Intel Core i9-13900K is here, and it’s going to blow your socks off.

Yes, Intel’s 13th-gen ‘Raptor Lake’ CPUs have arrived, and now that we’ve tested them we can firmly say that the flagship chip is an absolute demon in almost every department. It’s not as big of a generational leap in performance when compared to the i9-12900K – unsurprising, given that it’s built on the same architecture while Ryzen 7000 used an entirely new 5nm process – but it’s enough to smack AMD’s best chips into next week.

Expect to see the i9-13900K shoot straight to the top of our most powerful processors list, is basically what we’re saying. This CPU dominates in everything from gaming to number-crunching, delivering best-in-class performance in single- and multi-core workloads.

We run an awful lot of tests when reviewing a new CPU: games, synthetic benchmarks, rendering tests, power, and thermal monitoring. We’re not going to show you our horrible, enormous spreadsheets filled with test results, but we will say this. Out of twenty-four averaged test results, the i9-13900K beat the Ryzen 9 7950X in all but six of them.

Oh, and like one final nail in AMD’s coffin, it’s more than a hundred bucks cheaper. We won’t mince words: this is the best consumer desktop CPU ever made, putting the championship belt squarely back on Intel’s muscular waist. Good job, Team Blue; better luck next time, Team Red.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is finally here, and it’s hard to argue that this isn’t the best consumer processor ever made.

This is a big claim, and with Intel Raptor Lake quickly approaching, we’ll know soon enough if Team Blue is going to be able to counter a very resurgent AMD, but we are not going to sugar coat it: AMD has set the bar very high with the Ryzen 9 7950X, and Intel is going to be hard pressed to even keep pace with what this processor brings to the game.

To start, AMD used TSMC’s 5nm node to produce the new Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series chips, and the Ryzen 9 7950X is a 16-core, 32-thread beast with 80MB cache memory and a boost clock within sight of 6.0GHz. What’s more, unlike Intel’s turn to big.LITTLE architecture, all 16 of the Ryzen 9 7950X’s cores are full performance cores, so while Intel might be using the Arm-pioneered performance core-efficiency core pairing, the Ryzen 9 7950X simply runs roughshod through tasks, beating out just about every other competing chip out there, across every category.

In particular, the Ryzen 9 7950X is easily the most significant gen-on-gen performance leap in as long as we can remember. Intel Alder Lake impressed us as much as it did because it was coming after the rather ‘Meh’ 11th-gen Rocket Lake chips, which were barely enough of an improvement to warrant the refresh in the first place.

The AMD Ryzen 5000-series processors were some of the best processors ever produced, top to bottom, and the Ryzen 9 7950X feels like as big a jump as Intel Alder Lake was, but it is instead making the leap from a mountain top rather than the boggy plateau of Rocket Lake and so it lands significantly farther out. It’s honestly like AMD skipped the release of an entire processor generation and we’re getting this chip after the one we didn’t even realize that we didn’t get was skipped.

It may be too soon to tell if AMD has finally caught up to Intel post-Alder Lake, but the Ryzen 9 7950X, along with the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, is one hell of an opening salvo to kick off the next generation of processors.

• How much does it cost? MSRP $699 (about £600 / AU$1,000)
• When is it available? September 27, 2022
• Where can you get it? Available in the US (UK and Australia dates forthcoming)

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is available from September 27, 2022, with a US MSRP of $699 (about £600 / AU$1,000). AMD has not listed UK or Australian retail pricing, and we’ve reached out to AMD for clarification on when the new Ryzen 7000 processors will go on sale in those regions.

The Ryzen 9 7950X’s price is $100 less than the Ryzen 9 5950X’s, which is fantastic, especially with recent concerns about inflation. This also mildly offset’s the cost of the upgrade to the new Ryzen 7000’s. This is also $110 more expensive than the Intel Core i9-12900K, which has a US MSRP of $589 (about £500, AU$850). Is the Ryzen 9 7950X worth the premium price over the Core i9-12900K? We definitely think it is, but there’s no getting around the fact that this is still an enthusiast chip, and it is priced accordingly.

In a lot of ways, other than your graphics card, you really are talking about a substantial investment to upgrade to the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. You might be better off buying one of the best gaming PCs preloaded with a Ryzen 9 7950X, depending on how much you end up needing to replace in your rig.

Still, this isn’t unexpected or unreasonable, considering the age of the AM4 socket and how Intel has similarly shifted to the LGA 1700 socket for its Intel Alder Lake chips. On the plus side, if you had an AM4 cooling solution, you can still use it with the Ryzen 9 7950X.

All that said, expect to spend a good deal more than $699 for this upgrade. Given the performance improvements with the Ryzen 9 7950X, we definitely think you are getting way more value for your money than you would with the Ryzen 9 5950X it replaces.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X might not be as good a “value” proposition as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it is without a doubt a much more compelling processor than its predecessor. It comes in slightly behind the Core i9-12900K on price, but with rumors swirling about the increased prices of the Intel Raptor Lake processors due out soon, it’s more likely than not that the Ryzen 9 7950X will only look like a better value as time goes on.

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