Intel 13th Gen CPU's

For gaming use my i9-13900K is running great with my Noctua NH-D15S which is having ZERO issues keeping my CPU cool. It's typically running 2 cores pretty hard, and that's about it. I've turned off the e-cores for now.

The OC'ing options that were available on my MB for the 12900K are no longer available for the 13900K, but Intel pretty well took care of that.


Given that for titles like DCS, two cores are kept pegged at 100% consistently and I can still get my 4090 into the 70-90% range depending on the title, I don't feel like CPU throttling is impacting me too badly.
 
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For gaming use my i9-13900K is running great with my Noctua NH-D15S which is having ZERO issues keeping my CPU cool. It's typically running 2 cores pretty hard, and that's about it. I've turned off the e-cores for now.

The OC'ing options that were available on my MB for the 12900K are no longer available for the 13900K, but Intel pretty well took care of that.


Given that for titles like DCS, two cores are kept pegged at 100% consistently and I can still get my 4090 into the 70-90% range depending on the title, I don't feel like CPU throttling is impacting me too badly.
Your CPU is throttling? It shouldn't throttle until it's temp is in the 90s or 100s...
 
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...I don't feel like CPU throttling is impacting me too badly.
Ya, I was responding to that part. I guess I did misunderstand you. What did you mean?

Word of advice. Be careful with the auto-overclock settings like the 6 GHz one you mentioned. I'm assuming it's only for single-core loads (which you'll probably never see other than in benchmarks and idle or almost-idle times on your desktop) but, ya, they can pump a ****-ton of voltage, often even dangerous amounts so keep an eye out for that if you use it. It may also apply multi-core overclocks so check the voltage on those too. It's like VCCIO and especially VCCSA voltage, the auto settings on most motherboards, especially when XMP is enabled (DDR4) gets often pumped to ridiculous, dangerous levels.
 
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My point was that throttling was not a problem. The CPU is staying nice and cool even when running a couple cores pegged at 100% for extended periods. The single fan Noctua heatsink has plenty of cooling capacity for this CPU while running games.

This is what I expected. The high power demands of the 13900K seen in testing only kick in when you are running things like video rendering that can keep all cores busy, but for gaming, it is simply not an issue.

The fact that Intel has pretty well tweaked the 13900K out of the box is good thing as far as I'm concerned. I never used the previous 5.8GHz setting for the 12900K and I don't intend to use the 6.0GHz setting for the 13900K. What I'm seeing in most sims and most games for that matter is that there are normally two cores running pretty hard.

In addition to the main game, there is also:

TrueDrive - SC2 Pro
MotionCore - D-Box
SimHub - tactile
Crew Chief
StreamDeck
 
  • Deleted member 197115

True Drive does nothing when running. You can just shut it down after loading desired profile.
 
This is in iRacing.
e-cores disabled, all cores running 5.47 GHz
1669553664540.png
 
This is in iRacing.
e-cores disabled, all cores running 5.47 GHz
View attachment 619867
How did you check if all cores are running at 5.47 GHz?
Taskmanager doesn't show this..

The 2 cores pegged comes from Windows and the cpu deciding based on priority, load and boost clock how to use the cpu in the best way.
If you lock all cores to the same speed in the bios, the load will spread a lot more evenly.
If you push one core to 6 GHz and all the others to 4 GHz, that one core will always show 100% load while the rest is only used for non-foreground tasks.

Maybe you know all this, just thought I'd repeat it for people reading this who don't :)

I agree that the latest gens from both Intel and AMD are pretty well optimized!
Very high single core boosts while maintaining the overall cpu management to be efficient.

If you can be bothered it would be interesting to see some hwinfo64 Screenshots with the "clock symbol" resetting min/max/avg when you start a sessions and then do the screenshot right after the session.

CPU Power, core clocks and core loads would be interesting!
 
I was just told that iRacing now uses 5 or 6 cores with 2 cores dedicated for rendering.

So we at least have ONE sim racing title that isn't CPU bottlenecked, leaving the rest of the cores for the Operating system, SC2 Pro, D-Box and G-Belt.
 
I was just told that iRacing now uses 5 or 6 cores with 2 cores dedicated for rendering.

So we at least have ONE sim racing title that isn't CPU bottlenecked, leaving the rest of the cores for the Operating system, SC2 Pro, D-Box and G-Belt.
If you can, download process explorer, right-click into the iracing exe - > properties - > threads tab.
It will show the cpu load for each internal threads of that exe.
Each internal thread has its maximum cpu load at 100% divided by your cpu thread count. In your case 16 threads if the e cores are disabled.
So 6.25% = Single thread limit

Iracing should show 2 threads close to 6.25% and a few at more than 3%.

Assetto corsa for example shows also 2 threads close to the maximum but then the next smaller one only shows 1% or less...
 
Would a change from a 12700 to a 13900 have a significant impact on any sim titles if the system is using a 4090 on triple 1440p?


According to this link for single core speed the 13900 should give you up to a 16% improvement.

Based on what I've seen going from a 12900-13900 (they show a 10% improvement) I think that it probably about right.

Is "up to" a 16% improvement significant to you?

I don't think that is taking any changes in RAM into account.
 
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According to this link for single core speed the 13900 should give you up to a 16% improvement.

Based on what I've seen going from a 12900-13900 (they show a 10% improvement) I think that it probably about right.

Is "up to" a 16% improvement significant to you?

I don't think that is taking any changes in RAM into account.
Thanks. Are all sims single core?

16% is not insignificant however going from 100fps to 116fps is not detectable to my eye.

I would not be changing RAM. Simply a CPU swap.
 
Thanks. Are all sims single core?

16% is not insignificant however going from 100fps to 116fps is not detectable to my eye.

I would not be changing RAM. Simply a CPU swap.
Not completely, but it's the best indicator we've got that correlates well.

The i9-13900K will render video and compress files MUCH faster than your 12700, but since sims don't utilize multiple cores very well, the best metric to compare them is still the single core processing power. Sad but true.

For multiple screens I agree it likely doesn't make much sense. In VR where there are fixed fps that you are shooting for, 10% can be the difference between getting a stable 90 or 120 fps and having frame drops so it becomes a bit more important.
 
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Thanks. Are all sims single core?

16% is not insignificant however going from 100fps to 116fps is not detectable to my eye.

I would not be changing RAM. Simply a CPU swap.
I wouldn't say it's worth it. I highly doubt going from a 12700K to a 13900K will give 16% more fps especially with triple 1440p screens which is even more GPU demanding than 4K.

And the single core speeds don't matter, The CPU will not use single core speeds even with very old games. Completely ignore single core speeds, it's just marketing crap and useless unless you're into benchmarking.

I'd only get the 13900K if you find a used one and sell your 12700K. I would never sell the 12700K and then pay brand-new pricing for a 13900K. What I'd recommend even more, is waiting for the Intel 13th gen refresh that's coming out in Q3 2023 (July-Sept 2023) and get the one that replaces the 13700K or 13900K. I'm guessing they'll be called 13750K & 13950K or maybe 13770K & 13990K but, anyways, you get the idea. Plop that sucker into your current system and enjoy a nice upgrade without having to change anything else in your system.


13900KS review. Just like I predicted, 0-3% faster (about 1.7% on average) in games, and that's with a 4090 @ 1080p, let alone with lower-end GPUs or higher resolutions.

No wonder Intel has to launch a 13th gen refresh; with AMD 7000x3D chips easily beating 13900Ks in leaked benchmarks, the 13900KS will be just about as useless in fighting back.
 
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Would a change from a 12700 to a 13900 have a significant impact on any sim titles if the system is using a 4090 on triple 1440p?

Don't worry about the title.
It's just the 13900k benchmark and the link goes straight to ACC.

It's not significant at all and really not worth the money.
Maybe if you can get a good price for your 12700k and only pay 100-150€ on top.
 
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