Leaked Intel Core i7-13700K and Core i5-13600K gaming benchmarks put a damper on the Raptor Lake hype train

Extreme Player, a prolific Bilibili leaker, has made life difficult for Intel in the past few weeks by leaking the first batch of 13th-generation Raptor Lake processors in their entirety. Productivity benchmarks of the Intel Core i7-13700K and Core i5-13600K promised hefty gains in single and multi-threaded performance thanks to the new Raptor Cove P cores and the addition of four more Gracemont E cores. Gaming workloads, on the other hand, tone down the Raptor Lake hype a little.

The Intel Core i5-13600K and Core i7-13700K were tested across a load of AAA and e-sports titles with both DDR4 (3,600 MT/s) and DDR5 (5,200 MT/s) RAM. In CS: GO, the Core i5-13600K saw a performance increase of 20% at 1080p over the Core i5-12600K. The increase was far less impressive at 1440p and 4K, with a measly 4% and 8% increase in FPS. Interestingly enough, the Core i7-13700K performed worse than its younger sibling, posting gains of just 3%, 3% and 4% over the Core i7-12700K at 4K, 1440p and 1080p, respectively.

Although CS: GO is a CPU-bound title, it can run on just about any PC launched in the last five years. Far Cry 6, on the other hand, can push both the Intel Core i7-13700K and Core i5-13600K to their limits. GPU bottlenecks aren't a problem as the test rig runs an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. The pattern stays more or less the same, though with the Core i7-13700K outperforming its predecessor by 15% at 1080p, 4% at 1440p and delivering nearly the same FPS at 4K. The Core i5-13600K, on the other hand, fares better with a 26% and 10% performance increase at 1080p and 1440p with no gains in 4K.

Extreme Player tested a whole suite of games including Red Dead Redemption 2, Forza Horizon 5, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Apex Legends, all of which threw out a wide range of numbers at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. Twitter user @Harukaze5719 made an excellent chart summarizing the performance uplift offered by the Intel Core i7-13700K and Core i5-13600K at each resolution, accounting for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. The individual test scores for each game has can be found in the attached images below.

On average, the Intel Core i7-13700K with DDR5 memory is 6.65%, 5.3% and 4.06% faster than the Core i7-12700K in 1080p, 1440p and 4K gaming, respectively. The gains are more or less the same (7.4%, 5.1%, 2.68%) with DDR4 memory. Lastly, the Intel Core i5-13600K outdoes the Core i5-12600K 11.5%, 4.6% and 2.3% at 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions with DDR5 memory. Those gains drop to 7.4%, 5.1% and 2.6% with DDR4 memory.

While the above tests were conducted on a Qualifying Sample (QS), the performance of retail units should be more or less the same, at least without any tweaks. Earlier reports talked about some Intel Raptor Lake processors being able to hit the 6 GHz mark with Thermal Velocity Boost. It is unlikely for the Core i5-13600K to hit such speeds, but they could be achievable on the Core i7-13700K with proper cooling and a compatible Z790 motherboard.

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