Core i9 13900K, the flagship model of Intel’s 13th generation Core processors, seems to provide the performance it promises to users, but it seems to upset them in terms of power consumption. Information from multiple sources shows that the Core i9 13900K is a very power-hungry processor.General performance values
Many Core i9 13900K reviews have two things in common: performance and power consumption details. When we look at the data obtained in the tests, we see that the Core i9 13900K surpasses AMD’s top model Ryzen 9 7950X by 5-10 percent in terms of game performance. It is also an important detail that the processor performances converge when the resolution increases and both processor generations are sensitive to high-speed memory. In application-based rendering and encode performance, we can assume that the processors are equivalent.
Energy consumption
On the other hand, although the Core i9 13900K gaming performance looks good, it is just as bad in power consumption and energy efficiency. First of all, it is useful to tell the TDP values set by Intel for the Core i9 13900K: PL1 125W and PL2 253W.
However, looking at the data collected from multiple sources, the amount of power drawn by the Core i9 13900K to achieve maximum performance exceeds these values by 20 to 40 percent. In heavy synthetic tests, it is noteworthy that the Core i9 13900K alone draws around 300W and sometimes exceeds this threshold. Under similar scenario conditions, Ryzen 9 7950X does not exceed 250W.
Therefore, it can be concluded that Intel’s PL2 values do not mean much. However, it should be noted that the culprit here is not Intel. Because most of the responsibility for power transfer to the CPU and compliance with its limitations lies with the motherboard manufacturer.In daily usage scenarios, the gap between processors is narrowing. Again, the Core i9 13900K is the party that consumes more power, but the differences vary between 10-30W depending on the process. In office conditions, the difference between processors is quite low.
Energy efficiency
In gaming conditions, the difference is usually between 20 and 30W. To better explain the situation, we just need to look at the number of frames per watt. In this way, we can predict the efficiency of processors on a game basis. In this context, Core i9 13900K can achieve 2.09 FPS per watt, while Ryzen 7950X can achieve 2.52 FPS. On the other hand, Core i9 12600 reaches 3.78 FPS, Ryzen 7 5800X3D 4.10 FPS and Ryzen 5 7600X 4.47 FPS in the same test. Similarly, according to Cinebench’s power consumption scale, it is seen that the Core i9 13900K consumes almost 100W more power to achieve the same score as the Ryzen 9 7950X.Cooling performance
In fact, both the Ryzen 9 7950X and Core i9 13900K are not the best in terms of cooling and temperature performance. In daily usage scenarios, the temperature values of the processors will not be a problem, but in heavy and heavily loaded usage scenarios, a good cooler is essential for both processors, especially the Core i9 13900K. Because in scenarios that exhaust the processor such as gaming, Core i9 13900K seems to run hotter than Ryzen 7950X in most cases. In some cases it seems that the Core i9 13900K lowers its performance (GHz) to protect the processor itself due to temperatures getting too high, called Throttling. In stress tests, which will not be encountered in daily use, this situation becomes much more noticeable.
As a result, Core i9 13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X, and therefore Intel 13th Gen Core Raptor Lake and Ryzen 7000 will not upset their users in terms of performance. Both platforms bring pretty good performance gains over the previous generation. In some scenarios, the 7950X is leading, while in some scenarios 13900K is leading. In terms of power consumption, it seems that Intel has an obvious disadvantage, but the Core i9 13900K is generally ahead in performance, albeit drawing an extra 100W.
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