Core i9-13900K: test sample boosts up to 5.8 GHz

Michael Soldner

Intel wants to give its upcoming CPU flagship Core i9-13900K higher clock speeds than its direct predecessor. In addition, the number of energy-saving cores should be doubled, which should significantly increase the multi-threading performance. However, since Intel is sticking to the manufacturing process, significantly more power is required for this additional performance. And even the current Alder Lake CPUs were difficult to cool under load.

300MHz more

The hardware tester ExtremePlayer has now published new benchmarks that are said to be based on a test pattern of the Core i9-13900K. This preview copy already has the final clock rates. Accordingly, the CPU achieves a clock rate of 5.5 GHz with all performance cores at the same time. However, if only a maximum of two cores are used, the boost clock can also increase to 5.8 GHz – 300 MHz more than the current top model Core i9-12900KS.

Difficult cooling

However, this comes at a price: According to the first test run, the Core i9-13900K draws up to 400 watts from the power supply. This performance is difficult to dissipate with conventional CPU coolers without the processor throttling its performance. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves 10 percent more performance. If all cores are clamped, even 35 percent more performance can be accessed. This is primarily due to the eight additional E cores, which clock at 4.3 GHz, a whopping 400 MHz higher than the Core i9-12900K.

Available from October

With 32 GB DDR5-6400 RAM and an RTX 3090 Ti, this team in Full HD achieves 28 percent higher gaming performance at the minimum frame rates. The average number of frames per second, on the other hand, only increases by four percent. The Core i9-13900K is expected to be officially launched on September 27th and go on sale in October.

Intel Core i9-13900K: record value in Geekbench