it isn't that I get my kicks out of reigning on Intel's parade
and honestly speaking the 13th gen CPU announcement went pretty well overall
turns out you can still use last gen ddr4 memory if you want to save a buck
can I get a whoo and some of the gaming performance they
showed off was impressive to say the least I mean if the 13 600k 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 team group team groups Delta RGB
ddr5 RAM kits are compatible with various RGB software and offered at
speeds up to 6600 Mega transfers per second buy your kit today using the
links down below 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
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-course eight more total threads and an
extra 600 megahertz of turbo for a total
of 24 cores and up to a whopping 5.8
gigahertz not only that but CEO Pat gelsinger mentioned that six plus
gigahertz could be coming early next year maybe a 13 900 KS once AMD brings
the heat with 3D V cash who knows moving down the stack we've got the 13700k with
four more cores and threads and 400 megahertz more turbo then finally our
beloved Core i5 the 13600k is also
getting four more cores and threads with a 200 megahertz clock speed boost while
turboing though of course like all k-series skus it's going to be
overclockable so uh who knows where we end up oh and across the board we're
getting more cash per core cluster for both the e-cores I mentioned before and
the new higher performance P course 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 PE course
only on paper 13th gen kinda sounds too good
to be true up to 24 cores almost 6
gigahertz like is there a downside like maybe a burning hole in your motherboard
where the socket used to be apparently no thanks to their upgraded Intel 7
manufacturing process Intel claims that 13th gen is actually a step forward in
performance per watt so 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 cranked 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 kind of jumped the
gun on these launches and if they would have been better served by waiting for
40 90 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 5800 X 3D
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 one percent lows graph and in the
weirdest possible way when they did like clearly it would have 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 5600 Mega transfers per second c28 that is fast
premium memory for the 12 900k they went
with 4 800 Mega transfer per second c28
it's not trashed here 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 3200 Mega transfer per
second was the fastest memory supported and so that's what they used except
um it's pretty well known that AMD takes great advantage of fast ddr4 with the
point of diminishing returns being more like the 3600 range they also mentioned
the lower power limit of 105 Watts TDP
so is AMD's precision boost overdrive
enabled we reached out to Intel and we'll include a response and 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
um yay no all right I mean I I get it whenever
a company is going to show off their latest and greatest whether it's AMD NVIDIA or anyone else they are going to
want to cherry pick ing 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 Mega
taskers 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-course the performance course
to render an animation in one program then minimize that program and brought
Unreal Engine 5 to the foreground and started building lighting at this point
the P cores change gears and swap to handle ue5 while the e-cores pick up the
rendering slack and chug along in the back 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
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 under volters out
there could have an absolute field day with this platform they claim validation
absolutely needed that at just 65 Watts
the 13 900k can match a 12 900k 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 going to 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 want to 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 Lanes you know 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 3900k
with the latest and greatest ddr5 well the core I9 this generation is only 590
dollars that's still a lot of money but it's over a hundred dollars 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 12 700k when it
comes to gaming that thing is not and if Intel has also managed to put out the
Inferno while improving performance 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 micro center micro
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everything mentioned are in the description below if there's one of these places near you go to it consider
yourself lucky Micro Center 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
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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