A Comprehensive Analysis of Intel Core i7-13700K: Outpacing the Core i9-12900K in Performance

However, certain differences in the characteristics of the Core i9-13900K and Core i7-13700K still exist. And the main one is the different number of energy-efficient Gracemont cores. While the flagship processor has 16 of them, the more affordable counterpart is content with eight. However, it cannot be said that such a difference is of great importance for the bulk of users. Moreover, there is even a significant group of people who consider the Gracemont cores in Alder Lake and Raptor Lake to be a useless atavism that appeared in Intel processors at the strange whim of the manufacturer. And there is a certain amount of truth in this: having a large number of E-cores in systems aimed at games is really useless. Therefore, the $ 400 Core i7-13700K at first glance seems almost an ideal basis for gaming configurations. Of course, the Core i7-13700K is slightly behind the Core i9-13900K in terms of clock speeds, but given that we are talking about processors with unlocked multipliers, this difference does not play a significant role.

Thus, drawing a storyline for a review of the Core i7-13700K is as easy as shelling pears. First, we need to find out if this CPU can safely replace the flagship in gaming LGA1700 builds. And secondly, you should make sure that such a replacement will not be equivalent in production systems: where, where, and in content processing applications, extra cores have never bothered anyone.

In addition, there is another interesting question that you just want to check with the Core i7-13700K. According to its 8P+8E nuclear formula, this CPU corresponds to the flagship of the previous generation, the Core i9-12900K. This coincidence may allow us to find out how much the specific performance of Intel processors has increased during the transition from Alder Lake to Raptor Lake. And this moment in today’s review will also not be ignored.

⇡#Learn more about Core i7-13700K

Conceptually, 13th Gen Core processors (Raptor Lake) are identical to their predecessors: they combine performance and energy-efficient cores, Thread Director technology is responsible for the correct load distribution across them, and Windows 11 has better support for this hybrid architecture. However, compared to Alder Lake The number of energy efficient Gracemont cores in Raptor Lake has increased (doubling in most cases) and performance cores have moved from the Golden Cove microarchitecture to the Raptor Cove.

As a result, compared to the Core i7-12700K, the new Core i7-13700K seems to be a pretty big step forward. And it’s not just about the additional E-cores, which became eight instead of four. The new processor also has increased clock speeds: the maximum for P-cores is now 5.4 GHz, and for E-cores – 4.2 GHz. And this means that in terms of frequencies, the Core i7-13700K outperforms not only the Core i7-12700K, but also the Core i9-12900K. Therefore, the Core i7-13700K can be considered as an enhanced version of the flagship Alder Lake, not only in terms of frequencies, but also architecturally.

The increase in the number of cores compared to the previous Core i7 inevitably affected the thermal and energy characteristics of the novelty. The value of the maximum consumption of the Core i7-13700K, as well as that of the Core i9-13900K, is set at 253 W – a third higher than the maximum consumption of the Core i7-12700K. Moreover, even the flagship Core i9-12900K was not allowed to take so much energy from the power system: its limit is 241 watts. However, to justify the Core i7-13700K, it must be said that in reality its appetites of up to 250 W reach extremely rarely. In typical resource-intensive tasks like the same rendering, it fits well into 240 watts.

However, 240 W is also a lot, and there is no doubt that a highly efficient cooling system is needed for such a processor. The Core i7-13700K does not come with any cooler in the box, but Intel recommends using something like a liquid cooling system with a 280mm radiator. And this is no accident: as the test showed, there is not enough air cooler for the Core i7-13700K. The processor cannot be kept from throttling and artificially lowering the clock speed even in such a powerful two-section tower as the Noctua NH-D15. In multi-threaded rendering, the temperature of the CPU with such a CO reaches the limit of 100 degrees in just a few minutes.

However, in gaming systems, using the Core i7-13700K with productive air coolers is not forbidden. Games don’t put that much stress on the CPU, and some of today’s super coolers might well be the way to go. Moreover, the Core i7-13700K does not depend on the operating temperature. The Thermal Velocity Boost technology is not supported in this case, so the main thing that is required from the cooler is simply to keep the processor from overheating.

If the Core i7-13700K is cool enough to avoid throttling, its frequency formula is not under any pressure from consumption limiters. This means that the processor is able to develop the maximum allowable frequency with the active work of any number of threads and cores. It is easy to verify this using the graph below (it shows the frequency in Cinebench R23 depending on the intensity of the load), which displays the parameters of the processor when using a liquid cooling system.

In other words, apart from AVX2 workloads, the Core i7-13700K has only two frequency options. Most often it is 5.3 GHz, but if one core is busy, the frequency can rise to 5.4 GHz.

When comparing the characteristics of the Core i7-12700K and Core i7-13700K, not only the difference in the number of cores and executable threads catches the eye. The newer processor also has a twofold advantage in the total amount of L2 cache – 24 against 12 MB. This is due not so much to the different number of cores as to the difference in microarchitecture. For the same reason, the Core i7-13700K is 70% more L2 cache than the Core i9-12900K with the same 8P+8E core formula. But the L3 cache of these processors, however, is the same in terms of capacity.

In addition, the official Intel specification speaks of an increase in the frequencies of supported DDR5 memory up to DDR5-5600, although in reality this does not have much practical significance. The memory controller in Raptor Lake perfectly pulls faster memory, up to DDR5-8000, and the maximum here is determined not by the processor, but by the circuit design of the motherboard. In addition, the entire northbridge built into the processor has been improved in Raptor Lake. Compared to Alder Lake, it has been switched to an increased frequency, and this translates into an increase in performance not only of the memory controller and L3 cache, but also of the ring bus that connects the processor cores into a single whole. While in Alder Lake the frequency of the north bridge was limited from above by the frequency of E-cores and, for example, for the Core i7-12700K it was 3.6 GHz, in the Core i7-13700K it increased to 4.5 GHz.

⇡#Power consumption and temperatures

It has already been shown above that the 253-W consumption limit of the Core i7-13700K is not quite a formal value, and this processor is really capable of getting very hot. But with him the situation is still not the same as with the Core i9-13900K. The flagship Raptor Lake can reach up to 350W when given free rein, and its 253W power limit is really necessary to keep it from overheating. In the Core i7-13700K, a similar limit is triggered only in extreme cases, with a particularly heavy load with AVX2 instructions, and in all other situations, the consumption fits into the 240-W frame.

This can be clearly seen in the power consumption graph when rendering in Blender.

The consumption of the Core i7-13700K here is expectedly lower than that of the Core i9-13900K, but this is a more energy-intensive processor compared to the Core i7-12700K and even the Core i9-12900K, the maximum consumption of which in this task does not exceed 170 and 200 W, respectively .

However, such consumption values ​​are typical only for computationally heavy and well-parallelized algorithms, while the Core i7-13700K can be considered quite economical in a gaming load. For example, its average consumption in Cyberpunk 2077 is only about 130 watts.

But the excess consumption of the Core i7-13700K over the consumption of Alder Lake with the 8P + 8E formula remains in the game: the Core i9-12900K turns out to be a couple of tens of watts more economical. And this is natural, because the Core i7-13700K operates at significantly higher frequencies. Moreover, as in the case of the Core i9-13900K, these frequencies are turned up by the manufacturer almost to the maximum without regard to the energy efficiency and temperature of the resulting CPU.

You can confirm the last thesis with the Core i7-13700K temperature graph in Blender. Even though we used a custom cooling system with a 360mm radiator in this test, the Core i7-13700K reached 87 degrees. Of course, older Ryzen 7000s reach higher temperatures, but this is little consolation. We have to admit that the Core i7-13700K in terms of thermal conditions is much closer to the Core i9-13900K than to the Core i5-13600K. This processor is hot, and it is not easy to cool it.

However, gamers can relate to what has been said much easier. The temperature graph in Cyberpunk 2077 shows that the game load is not able to seriously warm up the Core i7-13700K.

With LSS, the temperature of the Core i7-13700K in the game does not go beyond 65 degrees. True, other processors (with the exception of the Core i9-13900K) in similar conditions have even lower temperatures. Thus, the Core i7-13700K is hotter than the flagship of the previous generation, but not so much that gamers would have some serious problems with heat dissipation when using it. In this sense, the Core i7-13700K is very similar to its older brother, the Core i9-13900K. We talked about the same thing about him: heating such CPUs is a problem only in serious computing loads, which modern games, obviously, do not belong to.