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Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900 ES shown to be 20% faster than Core i9-12900K in Cinebench multi-core but single-core and gaming take a hit

Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900 pictured alongside Alder Lake Core i9-12900K. (Image Source: Expreview)
Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900 pictured alongside Alder Lake Core i9-12900K. (Image Source: Expreview)
An early look at an Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900 Engineering Sample was published by Chinese publication Expreview. The Core i9-13900 was compared to an Alder Lake Core i9-12900K, which had all cores locked at 3.8 GHz to make for a reasonable comparison. The tests showed Core i9-13900 to be about 20% faster than the Core i9-12900K in Cinebench multi-core but performance lagged behind the latter in single-core and gaming benchmarks.

Intel is expected to introduce the Raptor Lake generation of processors in the next few months, but Engineering Samples (ES) seem to have already landed in the hands of a few testers. We recently reported on early SiSoft performance numbers from the Raptor Lake Core i9-13900. We now get to see the Core i9-13900 perform in Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, and other benchmarks.

The Core i9-13900 ES1 sample sports eight Performance cores (P-cores) and 16 Efficiency cores (E-cores). The P-cores now graduate to the newer Raptor Cove architecture while the E-cores continue to be based on Gracemont. The Core i9-13900 also features 36 MB cache, which is 6 MB higher than the Alder Lake Core i9-12900K.

This particular Core i9-13900 sample is a non-K part, which means no overclocking support. CPU-Z leaks indicate that the processor will be rated at a 65 W TDP. Intel recently confirmed that Raptor Lake will support new XTU features such as Efficient Thermal Velocity Boost and per-core/package TVB, which should result in 6 GHz boosts. However, it is not clear whether the non-K parts get to use these features.

By virtue of being an ES, the Core i9-13900 sample in question is limited to boosts of up to just 3.8 GHz for the P-cores. The E-cores seem to be somewhat inconsistent with respect to their boost frequencies with one cluster running at 1 GHz and the other clocked at 2.8 GHz.

Expreview, the Chinese site that got hold of the Core i9-13900 ES, compared Raptor Lake's performance with the Core i9-12900K that had all cores locked at 3.8 GHz for a fair comparison. The platform used was an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme with 32 GB DDR5 memory and an early BIOS version.

According to Expreview's numbers, the Core i9-13900 ES scores 1334 points in Cinebench R23 single-core and 26,748 points in the multi-core test. The Core i9-12900K seems to lead the single-core test by 12% but the Raptor Lake ES gains advantage in multi-core with a 20% lead. Similar results were also obtained by the publication in Cinebench R20.

That being said, the Core i9-13900 showed tangible gains over the Core i9-12900K in most other CPU tests including x264, Corona 1.3, 7-zip, and more. Gaming benchmarks at 1080p seemed to show a regression with the Core i9-13900, but they seem to be mostly within the margin of error. Expreview managed to perform a battery of tests on this processor, which can be viewed at the source link below.

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Core i9-13900 and Core i9-12900K CPU-Z info. (Image Source: Expreview)
Core i9-13900 and Core i9-12900K CPU-Z info. (Image Source: Expreview)
Core i9-13900 Cinebench R20 and R23 performance. (Image Source: Expreview)
Core i9-13900 Cinebench R20 and R23 performance. (Image Source: Expreview)

Source(s)

Expreview (Chinese) via Videocardz

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2022 06 > Intel Raptor Lake Core i9-13900 ES shown to be 20% faster than Core i9-12900K in Cinebench multi-core but single-core and gaming take a hit
Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 2022-06-28 (Update: 2022-06-28)