Intel Core i9 13900K and i5 13600K Review

Core i9-13900K Final Score: 91%

Core i5-13600K Final Score: 94%

Less than a year ago Intel took a rather large risk and went all in on the big.LITTLE philosophy for their 12th generation Core-I series. That moonshot of a series changed the way many looked at Intel and it quickly became a clear, obvious, and decisive win for Intel. One where vast swath of buyers finally had a choice that went beyond which flavor of Team Red they wanted to buy. The glaring exception was those interested in heavy-duty workloads on a budget. These “HEDT-lite” buyers still could not justify opting for anything besides a Team Red CPU. The math was just too far in AMD’s favor to do otherwise – twelve to sixteen AMD ‘P-cores’ trump eight Intel P-Cores plus eight Atom… err… ‘e-cores’. The new Intel Core-I 13th generation changes that equation with an across-the-board improvement large enough to satisfy the needs of everyone from those who mainly care about low-thread count performance to those who need (or at least think they do) massive amounts of multi-threaded performance.

Make no mistake, this new generation is evolutionary in nature not revolutionary. It is the logical continuation of the foundation that Intel laid in the 12th Generation. It is Intel already collecting dividends on their investment in a radical hybrid approach… and helping pay off (Intel CEO) Pat Gelsinger’s promise to put AMD (Ryzen) in Intel’s rearview mirror – and keep them there. Furthermore, it is a return to Intel’s juggernaut ‘tick/tock’ release cycle. One where new tech is introduced in one generation and then refined to a razor-sharp edge in the next. All of which is great news just not for Intel fans but all consumers who want to see a return to true competition in the CPU marketplace.

To do all this, Intel wisely laid the groundwork with their last generation by introducing the idea of having multiple types of cores in a single package – with cores that were dialed in for heavy lifting, and cores that were dialed in for extreme power efficiency. This dual focus approach allowed Intel the luxury of not having to make nearly as many compromises in their mainstream CPU design. For performance scenarios, when you combine over 250+ watts of TDP headroom with ‘only’ 8 p-cores, frequencies can be scaled to levels previously only available to experienced overclocking enthusiasts. In the last generation that meant 5.1 to 5.5Ghz depending on the number active. Conversely, for daily activities the (up to) eight ultra-low power ‘e-cores’ allowed for dead silent computing.
With the 13th generation of Core-I processors Intel has taken this flexibility and turned the dial up. Way up.

This generation buyers can count on 5.4Ghz (with the 13900K and more than 2 p-cores active) or even 5.8Ghz in low thread count scenarios. Right out of the box. Conversely, with (up to) sixteen e-cores on tap the 13th generation can also be an incredibly low power, low noise processor when handling a majority of mundane tasks – something the last generation sometimes had problems consistently doing. In this vein of noticeable quality of life improvements, when a 13th generation processor is fully engaged the result of having 24 active cores of processing power plows through extreme scenarios as good to even better than AMD’s latest Ryzen processors. In 99 percent of typical scenarios only by going to ThreadRipper will you gain tangibly better performance… but said (noticeable) improvements will come at the expense of low thread (e.g. ‘gaming’) performance.

Yes, for the first time in a long time Intel ‘desktop’ buyers can gain access to a processor that can be considered the best at “single-threaded” tasks, and multi-threaded tasks, and be a low noise/heat/power solution when insane performance is not needed… and do all that while also being the better overall value. That is the power of big.LITTLE. That is what buyers of Intel’s 13th Generation are purchasing.

With all that said, the Intel Core-I 13th generation is not perfect. The downside to tick/tock cycles is we will have to wait for the 14th generation before seeing the fabled Intel 7nm fab process and/or Intel’s “tile” based design make their premier. The former of which should alleviate concerns over full-load power consumption (and / or offer a stock over 6GHz processor) while the later would bring a much-needed agility to Intel via model customization that their existing design process lacks.

It is also unfortunate that both the 13th gen i7 and i5 will offer the same eight e-core offerings… and it is just the P-Core count that is different. This oversight to not boost the i7 to 12 e-cores (as e-cores only come in blocks of 4) is once again putting the i7 in a poor(er) position than it need be in. One which allows the i5’s to shine the brightest for overall value seeking buyers. Twenty threads for only $319 will put massive pressure on AMD’s Ryzen 7000’s mid and low range offerings. With everything from 8 core Ryzen 7 to the eventual Ryzen 3’s firmly in the Core-i5’s crosshairs. That is a win for Intel no matter how you slice it. We just wish the i7 got the same care and attention to detail that the i5 and i9 models received.

In the end, the 13th Generation may not be perfect… but with such excellent offerings the best summation of the new 13 Core-I 13th generation is to say congratulations Intel. You have conclusively, and beyond any shadow of a doubt, proven that the 12th gen success was not due to lowered expectations. It was just the beginning of the future of how CPUs for home users should be built. We look forward to seeing what Meteor Lake and Intel’s take on “tiles” (and a 7nm fab process) brings to the table when the 14th Generation drops sometime in late 2023 to 2024(ish). Hopefully it too can exceed (even) our (wildest) expectations.

Core i9-13900K:

Core i5-13600K: