- It isn't that I get my kicks
out of raining on Intel's parade,
and honestly speaking, (plastic thumps)
the 13th Gen CPU announcement went pretty well overall,
turns out you can still use last Gen DDDR4 memory
if you wanna save a buck.
Can I get a woo?
- [Friends] Woo!
- And some of the gaming performance
they showed off was impressive, to say the least.
I mean, if the 13600K gets anywhere close
to the numbers that the 13900K can do,
Intel could absolutely clean up for gamers on a budget,
but during the presentation,
Intel created some serious trust problems
that are making it difficult for us
to take everything at face value.
First, there's this fine print right here.
You see that?
Why on earth are they using mid-tier memory
on both of the competing platforms?
And now that I think of it, they've got another big problem.
Not only is the Ryzen 5950X not running
at its full potential,
but it's not even AMD's competitor to 13th gen.
I mean, to be clear, I don't exactly blame Intel
for the awkward timing, but AMD lifted the embargo yesterday
on their lineup
of much-improved Ryzen 7000 series processors,
and yeah, those are conspicuously absent
from any of Intel's messaging,
but what isn't absent is our sponsor, TeamGroup!
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Despite the issues we've pointed out already,
Intel really does know
how to do a lot more than charge they phone,
eat hot chip, and lie, and today's announcement gave us
a bunch of stuff to, pfft.
(friend laughing) (Linus breaths deeply)
(television beeps)
And today's announcement gave us a bunch of stuff
to talk about that isn't the 13900K.
Their Extreme Tuning Utility or XTU tool has been improved,
they showed off Intel Unison,
which makes working across multiple devices more seamless,
and they casually announced that their Arc A770 GPU
is on its way to the masses for just 330 US dollars,
but enough about that, let's talk about the sweet
sweet gains that we're getting with this CPU generation.
The flagship 13900K is getting eight more efficiency,
or E-cores, eight more total threads,
and an extra 600 Mhz of turbo
for a total of 24 cores at up to a whopping 5.8 GHz,
not only that, but CEO Pat Gelsinger mentioned
that 6+ GHz could be coming early next year,
maybe a 13900KS, once AMD brings the heat
with 3D V-cache, who knows?
Moving down the stack, we've got the 13700K
with four more cores and threads,
and 400 MHz more turbo, then finally,
our beloved Core i5, the 13600K
is also getting four more cores and threads,
with a 200 MHz clock speed boost while turboing, though,
of course, like all K-Series queues,
it's gonna be overclockable,
so who knows where we end up.
Oh, and across the board
we're getting more cache per core cluster
for both the E-cores I mentioned before,
and the new higher performance P-cores as well,
and of course, like last gen,
the best value parts may actually be the non-K ones
that Intel isn't talking about today.
They didn't share really many details about them,
but they did confirm that the rest of the Core i5 lineup
will also no longer be P-cores only, wow.
On paper, 13th gen kinda sounds too good to be true,
up to 24 cores, almost 6 GHz?
Like, is there a downside, like maybe a burning hole
Apparently no.
Thanks to their Upgraded Intel 7 manufacturing process
Intel claims that 13th gen is actually a step forward
in performance per watt, though, of course,
that won't be impressive
until we know what that performance is.
Let's talk about graphs.
Right out of the gate, Intel is claiming
that in some games
they are seeing a 24% improvement over the 12900K.
Good gravy, the 12900K is already blazing fast.
Unfortunately, what they glossed over, just a little,
is that you cannot expect this to be across the board.
Horizon: Zero Dawn actually performed slightly worse somehow
and several other games performed either the same
as last gen or only slightly better.
Now, to be fair, most titles did demonstrate
some kind of uplift,
and I guess they deserve credit for showing us
the less impressive results.
I mean, Horizon: Zero Dawn isn't even
a particularly current game,
they could have just excluded it.
But anywho, the point is that that 24% improvement
is actually exclusive to League of Legends,
and similar improvements were found
in other lightish and eSports titles,
but when it comes to AAA games
where you really actually do need another 20% FPS, ah,
the data was underwhelming, to say the least.
Though it does kind of make me wonder if both AMD and Intel
kinda jumped the gun on these launches,
and if they would've been better served
by waiting for 4090, as well as Radeon 7000
to be generally available
so that they could really let these new CPUs
stretch their wings.
I mean, half the problem here could be
that GPU bottlenecks are hiding performance jumps
we would otherwise see.
On the subject of hiding things,
Intel was happy to compare
against their last-gen top-of-the line,
and AMD's price-competitive 5950X, but,
as we outlined in our Ryzen 7000 review yesterday,
the real gaming champion of last generation
was the Ryzen 5800X3D.
To Intel's credit, they did test against it,
and they did include it in some of their performance graphs
but notably not in the 1% lows graph,
and in the weirdest possible way when they did,
clearly it would've been too cluttered
to just add a fourth bar here, right?
A long, uncomfortable fourth bar.
Of course, that's not even the issue we started with here,
if you check the fine print,
you'll notice that the test benches are mostly the same,
but memory speeds are kind of all over the place.
Now, part of this is unavoidable,
you can't ram DDR5 into an AM4 board, pun intended,
but even considering the challenges,
I do have some questions about Intel's configurations.
The 13900K was tested with DDR5
at 5,600 MT/s C28, that is fast premium memory.
For the 12900K?
They went with 4,800 MT/s C28,
it's not trash tier by any stretch,
but it is significantly slower when faster kits have existed
for a year and are widely in use on 12th gen platforms.
But wait, there's more, the AMD processors were tested
on a hyper-expensive ASUS Crosshair motherboard,
and yet Intel claims that 3,200 MT/s
was the fastest memory supported,
and so that's what they used,
except it's pretty well known that AMD takes great advantage
of fast DDR4 with the point of diminishing returns being
more like the 3,600 range.
They also mentioned the lower power limit of 105W TDP.
So, is AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive enabled?
We reached out to Intel and we'll include a response
in a pinned comment once we get it, but either way,
it's something that should have been disclosed.
To be clear, this chicanery persists
across the entire industry, and it's a big part
of why LTT and other tech review channels get to exist.
So yay!
(laughs) No?
All right.
I mean, I get it, whenever a company is gonna show off
their latest and greatest,
whether it's AMD, Nvidia, or anyone else,
they are going to want to cherry pick,
looking at you, Apple.
So, to know how these products really stack up,
you're gonna have to wait a little longer
for our full review,
but that doesn't make these announcements pointless
because they often inform how we can best
evaluate a product,
and it looks like we might actually have
to rethink how we go about multitasking benchmarking,
thanks to a little bit of magic
called Intel Hybrid Technology.
They're calling users who want to do it all
at the same time, megataskers, you know, gaming, streaming,
recording, maybe even running a render in the background,
and they're saying that 13th gen can do it all at once
without a hitch.
It kinda sounds like nonsense,
but this demo they ran is pretty cool.
They utilized P-cores, the performance cores
to render an animation in one program,
then minimized that program and brought Unreal Engine 5
to the foreground and started building lighting,
at this point, the P-core change gears,
and swap to handle UE5
while the E-cores pick up the rendering slack
and chug along in the background.
That is pretty wild stuff.
If you've ever hit the Build button
and then had to walk away
because your PC basically became unusable for 20 minutes,
well, now you can hit Build
and then check out exclusive LTT content on floatplane.com
while you wait,
like this extra hour of footage
from the Build With My Sister, back to the CPU though.
What's really impressive is the efficiency gains.
The numbers Intel is showing are with the 13900K
running at about 12 more watts than the 12900K,
so yes, power consumption really did go up,
but according to this graph,
that's only because they're pushing it to the red line,
and if you don't do that, efficiency is also way up,
so you undervolters out there could have
an absolute field day with this platform.
They claim, validation absolutely needed,
that at just 65W the 13900K can match a 12900K
at 240 watts, that's a quarter of the power.
That could mean that our lower TDP chips
like Core i5s and Core i3s might absolutely rip,
and without turning your system into a space heater.
And it gets better,
remember how they wouldn't confirm early on
whether DDR4 would be supported on 13th-Gen Raptor Lake?
Well, it looks like it is gonna be a thing,
at least until the end of this socket cycle.
So if you, like me, are disappointed by the lack
of both Lakes and Raptors, at least we can both be excited
about what this means for budget-oriented gamers.
Let's say you haven't upgraded in years,
you're still running a 6700K or a 1700X, maybe even older,
how do you modernize?
Well, grab a new chip, grab a board,
maybe a cooler adapter bracket, throw in your old RAM,
even if it might cost you a little bit of performance,
and you're off to the races for under 500 bucks
for a platform upgrade.
Wanna save another buck?
Well, the Z790 platform improvements
aren't really all that huge for most people, like,
we're talking a few more PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes.
Yeah, maybe for some more storage,
and some more USB 20-gigabit ports.
So you could grab a last gen Z690
or even a budget B660 board, and call it a day,
that is on all brand new, all readily-available hardware
once 13th Gen releases on October 20th,
and if you're just a baller who wants Z790
and 13900K with the latest and greatest DDR5?
Well, the Core i9 this generation is only $590,
that's still a lot of money,
but it's over $100 cheaper than the 7950X,
giving you plenty left over to pick up a WAN hoodie
from lttstore.com.
Obviously, and I can't state this enough,
we need to do our own testing for our full review,
which is on its way, and we will be sure
to give the competition a fair shake, by the way.
But so far, the improvements to 13th gen
do look extremely promising.
We've been impressed by the performance of 12th gen
for the last year,
despite the absolutely bonkers temperatures
that Intel just seems to ignore,
particularly the 12700K when it comes to gaming,
that thing is mwah, and if Intel has also managed
to put out the inferno while improving performance, hmm,
could be a no-brainer, or is it?
I mean, on the AMD side, you might pay extra
but you'll be in on the ground floor
of hopefully another long-lived socket,
or maybe that doesn't matter to you,
because you only upgrade every five years anyway,
either way, it is nice to have so much choice, isn't it?
Just like we chose today's sponsor.
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The Katana GF76 sports a 12th gen i7 processor,
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Microcenter still has their build showcase
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The links for everything mentioned are
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consider yourself lucky, Microcenter rules.
- Hey, we don't normally do stingers,
but this one's a doozy, if you missed it in the demo,
the photon-to-electron communication bit that Intel did
looks absolutely wild for the future
of high-speed interfaces.
Like, wow.
Anywho, if you enjoyed this,
make sure to check out our Ryzen 7000 review
that went up recently so you can stay informed
during these just unbelievable times,
and choose the platform that is right for you.
Isn't that great?
Having actual multiple legitimate choices?
Who would've thunk it?