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Intel’s supercharged version of its flagship Raptor Lake — a revamped CPU due to launch in early 2023 — is the subject of another leaked benchmark and showcases a seriously fast processor.
As Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab) spotted, the Core i9-13900KS – note the extra ‘S’ that distinguishes this from the 13900K, as a limited edition variant – will ramp up to 6GHz out of the box, and now we’ve glimpsed its purported performance in a real benchmark highlighted by HXL on Twitter.
Before we go any further, the CPU-Z benchmark in question is taken from the Chinese forum bilibili (opens in new tab) and there is certainly the possibility that the screenshot provided is faked. So we recommend acting with more caution than usual with this particular rumor.
The results shown for the pre-release copy of the Core i9-13900KS are a single-threaded score of 982 and 18,453 for multi-threaded. Presumably, these results were achieved using “turbo mode” for the Raptor Lake flagship refresh (which draws 350W of power, a rather terrifying amount).
As Tom’s highlights compare, that’s 893 and 16,877 respectively (in a previous leak) for the vanilla 13900K, and if we look at AMD’s new flagship, the Ryzen 9 7950X, which hits 787 and 15,663.
Analysis: Indeed a promising result, but wait with your horses
With a little napkin math, the 13900KS is about 10% faster for single-thread and 18% faster for multi-thread than the 13900K. That feels too much like a jump to us, and there are indeed some caveats here.
First off, this is a small leak, and all we can see is the bare results, we don’t know anything about the PC the processor is in, or what’s cooling it. Also remember that this is just a single benchmark and we should never read too much into one stat – CPU-Z is also far from our number one choice when it comes to comparing performance levels. Plus, we’ve seen faster leaked results elsewhere for the 13900K, so the difference probably won’t be as great as stated here.
That said, this new leak – if genuine – certainly points to a stormy performance when compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X (with the 13900KS being 25% and 18% faster for single and multi-threaded). And the two processors probably won’t be that far apart in price, with the 13900KS likely to be 5% to 10% more expensive. (Though it’s possible Intel could push harder with pricing if the company thinks it can get away with it in the case of a limited-edition CPU).
So at the top, Intel could potentially have a winner here – albeit at a different price to pay in terms of that very high power consumption at full run – but as we said, we have a lot more than a leaked CPU-Z result to get a full picture. And of course, when it comes to gaming, many people are waiting for AMD’s 3D V cache with Ryzen 7000 processors, with that innovative technology that has the potential to make a big difference.
Indeed, this is why Intel has the 13900KS slated to launch quite early in 2023, by all accounts, as that’s when it’s rumored to be 3D V cache (a CES reveal in January would be the plan for Team Red). And crucially, speculation points to there being a 7950X3D (in other words, a new flagship with 3D V cache), which would really make a splash at the top end.
We’d also do well to remember that the mid-range is where the real battle of the next-gen CPUs will take place, and that the 7950X and 13900K and KS are relatively niche propositions. Right in the middle of the pack, AMD’s 7700X is already on the shelves and looks seriously enticing. As we noted in our review, this is an excellent CPU – with caveats regarding upgrade costs.