Ever since Intel revealed its 13th generation processors at its Innovation event this September, PC gamers and technology enthusiasts have been anxious to get their hands on the latest CPUs coming from the Santa Clara company.
And as Intel previously revealed, Raptor Lake (the codename for its 13th gen processor line-up) will be coming on October 20, meaning there’s not much more to wait before they become available at retailers worldwide.
Amongst the processors hitting the market this week is the Intel Core i5-13600K, a powerful mid-range processor that could end up being a popular option for those who game on PC given its attractive price to performance ratio.
Actually, this processor has a manufacturer suggested retail price or MSRP of $319 US dollars, but leaked benchmarks show it seemingly punching above its weight, and beating AMD’s upper mid-range Ryzen 7 7700X.
Leaked benchmark scores posted by Twitter user HXL (via TechRadar) show that the i5-13600K scores 358.18 in the Blender benchmark.
Blender is a 3D productivity tool that can stress even the latest cutting-edge hardware, so the fact that the i5-13600K outperforms the more expensive Ryzen 7 7700X surely is impressive.
AMD’s processor scores 305.51 in the Blender benchmark.
The thing is, that the Ryzen 7 7700X has an MSRP of $399 US dollars, making it quite a bit more expensive than Intel’s i5-13600K.
Another thing making AMD’s current line-up of processors look bad vs Raptor Lake is the fact that the Ryzen 7 7600X is also soundly beaten by the i5-13600K in this Blender benchmark. The Ryzen 7600X scores 234.65 in this test, while its price is pretty close to that of Intel’s processor ($299 US dollars is its MSRP, vs $319 US dollars for Intel’s i5-13600K).
It seems the fact that the Intel Core i5-13600K boasts a hybrid architecture is giving it an edge here against the mid-range AMD processors.
Intel’s CPU has 6 performance cores and 8 efficient cores (a total of 14), while AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X is an 8-core processor which can handle 16 simultaneous computing threads. Apparently, an application like Blender can make good use of the Intel CPU’s 8 efficient cores, giving Team Blue an edge here (Intel’s processor can handle a total of 20 threads).
The i5-13600K is obviously bested by the high-end Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X as seen below, but these are much more expensive processors too.
Blender Benchmark Opendata
13900K 557.66 V3.3.0
13700K 429.7 v3.2.1
13600K 358.18 V3.3.07950X 607.53 V3.3.0
7900X 462.39 V3.3.0
7700X 305.51 V3.3.0
7600X 234.65 V3.3.0https://t.co/fFEP2Pfcgd— HXL (@9550pro) October 10, 2022
Also, the i5-13600K’s showing on benchmark site cpu.userbenchmark.com is very encouraging for Team Blue fans too – the CPU currently ranks third on the site at the time of writing, but this is based on only a few (leaked) benchmarks though.
So it remains to be seen whether the i5-13600K will be a better processor overall than the Ryzen 7 7700X. Until the Intel CPU has been thoroughly tested in both gaming scenarios and productivity there’s no telling whether it can be considered superior (taking into account the price difference between both, of course).
It’s still a matter of wait and see whether Intel can score another victory over AMD this fall or not, then. What’s clear, though, is that the i5-13600K could end up being the best mid-range processor to date if it’s just as good at gaming and other applications, no doubt.