Intel Core i9-13900KS 6GHz CPU Allegedly Caught In Another Benchmark Leak
Intel is on the cusp of making history by releasing the first-ever consumer desktop CPU clocked at 6GHz out of the box. The special edition Raptor Lake Core i9-13900KS chip is promised to launch early next year, and we expect an announcement will be made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month. As we wait, some pre-release benchmarks have cropped up and they bode well for the upcoming flagship CPU.
While Intel has yet to formally introduce the Core i9-13900KS, it will essentially be a faster-clocked version of the Core i9-13900K, with the binned KS models sporting the same 24-core/32-thread configuration, comprised of 8 Performance cores (P-cores) and 16 Efficient cores (E-cores), along with 36MB of L3 cache.
The main difference is the KS model will have a max turbo frequency of 6GHz, which is 200MHz higher than the Core i9-13900K. Other clocks are expected to be a little bit faster too, with there being different levels of turbo boost and of course E-core clocks. This is the same approach Intel took with its 12th Gen Core i9-12900KS processor.
What do the clock bumps mean in terms of actual performance? We'll have to wait and see what the full picture looks like, but in the early going, Twitter user @g0ld3nm4ng0, or chi11eddog, has posted another spreadsheet outlining Cinebench R23 scores. Here's a look...
Looking at the single-core results, the Core i9-13900KS scored 2,366, according this spreadsheet, which is around a 5.5 percent gain over the Core i9-13900K (2,243) and 21.5 percent higher than the unreleased Core i9-13900 (1,948), one of Intel's upcoming non-K Raptor Lake additions. And compared to AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 7950X (2,057), the Core i9-13900KS scored 15 percent higher.
The Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X results are pretty close to what we recorded in our reviews of each chip, with those CPUs scoring 2,277 and 1,964, respectively. So if we compare the leaked Core i9-13900KS single-core Cinebench R23 score to our own results, it's 3.9 percent faster than the Core i9-13900K and 20.5 percent higher than the Ryzen 9 7590X.
Turning our attention to the multi-core result, the Core i9-13900KS allegedly achieved a score of 40,998 in Cinebench R23, according to the spreadsheet. This puts it 3.3 percent ahead of the Core i9-13900K (39,689), 6.5 percent ahead of the Core i9-13900, and 8.2 percent ahead of the Ryzen 9 7950X.
Likewise, we have multi-core scores of our own for the Core i9-13900K (38,070) and Ryzen 9 7950X (36,193), and compared to those, the leaked Core i9-13900KS result is 7.7 percent and 13.3 percent higher, respectively.
Some caveats are in order. For one, we can't vouch for the leaked benchmark scores, though at least the scores for the already-released chips are fairly close to what we obtained in our own testing. Also, Cinebench R23 is not the end-all-be-all of benchmarks. It does scale well with more cores and threads and higher clocks, but even if these scores stand up to more widespread testing, we'll need to look at how the Core i9-13900KS performs across the board to form a meaningful conclusion.
That said, these early benchmark results are promising. As for pricing and the bang-for-buck proposition, well, that will be a discussion for early next year.
