Intel Core i9-13900KS Review: First To 6GHz, Fastest CPU Yet
Intel Core i9-13900KS: CPU, System, And Browser Benchmarks
When configuring our test systems for this article, we first made sure all firmwares were up to date, then we entered each system's respective BIOS / UEFI and set the board to its "Optimized" or "High performance" defaults. We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to the maximum officially supported speed for the given platform (without overclocking). The SSDs were then formatted, and Windows 11 Pro was installed and fully updated.
We don't want to spoil things for you so early, but you're going to notice a common theme throughout all of our benchmarks here. In Geekbench, the Core i9-13900KS put up the best single and multi-threaded scores we have seen to date. Its higher clocks allow it to edge out the existing 13900K by a couple of percentage points, putting it in the pole position in this benchmark.
PCMark 10's mixed workloads also ran well on the Core i9-13900KS. Here, Intel's newest limited edition flagship edged out all of the other processors we tested once again, resulting in the highest score we've seen from a desktop system to date.
Bapco's Crossmark tells essentially the same story as PCMark 10. The Core i9-13900KS takes the lead over every other processor we tested yet again.
When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers necessary for our components, disabled Auto-Updating and Windows Defender, and installed all of our benchmarking software. When that process was done, we performed a disk clean-up, cleared any temp and prefetch data, processed idle tasks, and optimized all of the SSDs using Windows' built-in utility. Finally, we enabled Windows Focus Assist to minimize any potential interruptions and let the systems reach an idle state before invoking any tests.
HotHardware's Test Systems:
AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency & Cache Latency
AIDA64's CPU Cache and Memory benchmarks measure memory bandwidth during read, write and copy operations, in addition to memory latency, and cache bandwidth and latency.
Due to its higher operating frequencies, the Core i9-13900KS squeaks past the existing Core i9-13900K, and offers slightly higher peak memory bandwidth. Due to its support for higher-clocked DDR5 memory, the 13th Gen chips also land at the top of the chart, besting both AMD and Intel's previous-gen platform.
While DDR5's higher clocks results in more memory bandwidth versus previous-gen offerings, the higher CAS latency of current DDR5 memory kits also results in increased memory latency versus the DDR4-equipped Ryzen 5000 series and 11th Gen Core processors. Their support for higher memory frequency does, however, allow the 13th Gen Core processors to put up better memory latency results than AMD's Ryzen 7000 series or 12th Gen processors.
The Core i9-13900KS' cache latency characteristics are identical to the 13900K with its L1 and L2. The L3 cache latency was slightly lower, again due to the KS' higher clocks. Stepping back a bit, the 13th Gen Core processors offered similar L1 cache latency to 12th Gen parts as well, but with higher L2 latency. Keep in mind, however, that the L2 is twice as large on Raptor Lake-S, which will result in a higher hit-rate and fewer cache misses. The L3 cache, however, offers much better latency than 12th Gen processors, likely due to the more intelligent dynamic inclusive/non-inclusive (INI) algo and faster on-chip fabric.
While DDR5's higher clocks results in more memory bandwidth versus previous-gen offerings, the higher CAS latency of current DDR5 memory kits also results in increased memory latency versus the DDR4-equipped Ryzen 5000 series and 11th Gen Core processors. Their support for higher memory frequency does, however, allow the 13th Gen Core processors to put up better memory latency results than AMD's Ryzen 7000 series or 12th Gen processors.
Geekbench v5.4.1 CPU Benchmark With Raptor Lake
The GeekBench CPU tests stress only the processor cores in a system (not the graphics card/GPU), with both single and multi-threaded workloads. The tests are comprised of encryption processing, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations and other general purpose compute processing workloads.
We don't want to spoil things for you so early, but you're going to notice a common theme throughout all of our benchmarks here. In Geekbench, the Core i9-13900KS put up the best single and multi-threaded scores we have seen to date. Its higher clocks allow it to edge out the existing 13900K by a couple of percentage points, putting it in the pole position in this benchmark.
UL PCMark 10 Benchmarks
Next, up we have some full-system testing with PCMark. We're reporting all test results from the PCMark 10 benchmark suite, including the Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation and and total PCMark score. The Essentials test covers workloads like web browsing, video conferencing and app start-up times, while Productivity tests everyday office apps from spreadsheets to word processing. Finally, the Digital Content Creation test evaluates performance of a machine with respect to photo and video editing, as well as rendering and visualization.
PCMark 10's mixed workloads also ran well on the Core i9-13900KS. Here, Intel's newest limited edition flagship edged out all of the other processors we tested once again, resulting in the highest score we've seen from a desktop system to date.
Bapco Crossmark Testing
Crossmark is a new cross-platform benchmark from Bapco that's available for Windows, Android, iOS and MacOS. Like PCMark, Crossmark measures overall system performance and using real-world applications. It characterizes system responsiveness as well, based on the results of its Creativity and Productivity benchmarks.
Bapco's Crossmark tells essentially the same story as PCMark 10. The Core i9-13900KS takes the lead over every other processor we tested yet again.
Browser & Web App Benchmarks: Jetstream 2 And Speedometer 2
Next up, we have some numbers from the Speedometer 2.0 and Jetstream 2 tests available at browserbench.org. The Speedometer Benchmark Suite uses a wide array of latency and throughput benchmarks to evaluate web application performance and Jetstream evaluates Javascript and WebAssembly performance; both tests take all of their individual results and tabulate them into a final score.
These benchmarks measure performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
The browser-based Jetstream and Speedometer tests showed the Core i9-13900KS outrunning the Core i9-13900K by a couple of percentage points in both tests, which was enough to put it in the lead overall.
These benchmarks measure performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
7-Zip Data Decompression Tests
The 7-Zip benchmark measures compression and decompression performance using the LZMA method, which leverages the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm to perform lossless data compression. The benchmark produces a final rating in GIPS (giga instructions per second).
Although the Core i9-13900KS was able to overtake the Core i9-13900K yet again, in both the single and multi-threaded tests, the Zen 4-based AMD Ryzen 9 7950X takes the lead in 7-Zip's decompression tests.
Although the Core i9-13900KS was able to overtake the Core i9-13900K yet again, in both the single and multi-threaded tests, the Zen 4-based AMD Ryzen 9 7950X takes the lead in 7-Zip's decompression tests.
