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Intel Core i9 13900K and Core i5 13600K review: an effective redoubt against AMD's Ryzen 7000 advances

Flight Simulator 2020 and Hitman 3.

Will Judd avatar
Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry
Published on

Our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to elsewhere on the web. On mobile, you'll get a basic overview, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat experience with embedded YT videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses; you can even choose exactly what GPUs at what resolutions you're interested in and it'll update in real time. Below the real-time stuff is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. As always, all the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

We'll start with two games that offer a stern test for gaming CPUs: Flight Simulator 2020 and Hitman 3.

Flight Simulator 2020

Flight Sim is our first contender, as we take an autopilot flight from London City to London Heathrow over some of the city's most well-known landmarks. This game is incredibly heavy on the CPU, even at 1440p and Ultra settings, and CPUs generally fit into different tiers based on their core count and speed.

Right from the off, we've got some interesting results. The 13900K equipped with 6000MT/s RAM records the fastest average frame-rate we've ever seen at 72fps, and just a few percentage points behind with slower 5200MT/s RAM. The higher score is good for a 12 percent advantage over the 13600K, 14 percent over the 12900K and nine percent faster than the previous champion, the Ryzen 9 7900X. We do see fractionally faster results at 1440p, an oddity that has been repeated for most of the CPUs on our list. Beyond the margin-of-error results, it's clear that we remain quite CPU-bound even at 1440p.

Flight Simulator 2020: DX11, Ultra, TAA

Hitman 3

Hitman 3's Dartmoor benchmark comes next. Of the two integrated benchmarks provided in the game's out-of-game option menu, Dartmoor offers the greater CPU load with a demonstration of the Glacier Engine's destruction physics.

Once again, the 13900K sets a new high score with a 220fps average, with the 13600K placing third at 207fps. The second place contestant? Surprisingly, it's not the Ryzen 7900X or Core i9 12900K, but the 5800X3D which sees strong results in this title despite being saddled with DDR4-3600 RAM. In terms of percentages, we're looking at a six percent gen-on-gen improvement for the 13900K over the 12900K and the 13600K over the 12600K. Compared to the AMD competition, the 13900K beats the 7900X by eight percent, while the 13600K beats the 7600X by a similar margin.

Hitman 3: DX12, Default, TAA

It's interesting stuff so far with some strong results for 13900K and 13600K, but we've got plenty more to see. Let's take a look at the next set of games, this time three FPS titles.

Intel Core i9 13900K and Core i5 13600K analysis