 It isn't that I get my kicks out of raining on Intel's parade. And honestly speaking, the 13th gen CPU announcement went pretty well overall. Turns out you can still use last gen DDR4 memory if you want to save a buck. Can I get a woo? Woo! And some of the gaming performance they showed off was impressive to say the least. I mean, if the 13600K gets anywhere close to the numbers that the 13900K can do, Intel could absolutely clean up for gamers on a budget. But during the presentation, Intel created some serious trust problems that are making it difficult for us to take everything at face value. First, there's this fine print right here. You see that? Why on earth are they using mid-tier memory on both of the competing platforms? And now that I think of it, they've got another big problem. Not only is the Ryzen 5950X not running at its full potential, but it's not even AMD's competitor to 13th gen. I mean, to be clear, I don't exactly blame Intel for the awkward timing, but AMD lifted the embargo yesterday on their lineup of much improved Ryzen 7000 series processors. And yeah, those are conspicuously absent from any of Intel's messaging. But what isn't absent is our sponsor, Team Group. Team Group's Delta RGB DDR5 RAM kits are compatible with various RGB software and offered at speeds up to 6,600 megatransfer per second. Buy your kit today using the links down below. Despite the issues we've pointed out already, Intel really does know how to do a lot more than charge the phone, eat hot chip, and lie. And today's announcement gave us a bunch of stuff to- That's pretty bad. And today's announcement gave us a bunch of stuff to talk about that isn't the 13900K. Their Extreme Tuning Utility or XTU tool has been improved. They showed off Intel Unison, which makes working across multiple devices more seamless. And they casually announced that their ARC A770 GPU is on its way to the masses for just 330 US dollars. But enough about that. Let's talk about the sweet, sweet gains that we're getting with this CPU generation. The flagship 13900K is getting eight more efficiency, or eCores, eight more total threads, and an extra 600 megahertz of turbo for a total of 24 cores at up to a whopping 5.8 gigahertz. Not only that, but CEO Pat Gelsinger mentioned that six plus gigahertz could be coming early next year. Maybe a 13900KS once AMD brings the heat with 3D vCache? Who knows? Moving down the stack, we've got the 13700K with four more cores and threads and 400 megahertz more turbo. Then finally, our beloved Core i5, the 13600K, is also getting four more cores and threads with a 200 megahertz clock speed boost while turboing. Though of course, like all K-series SKUs, it's gonna be overclockable, so who knows where we end up? Oh, and across the board, we're getting more cache per core cluster for both the eCores I mentioned before and the new higher performance P-Cores as well. And of course, like last gen, the best value parts may actually be the non-K ones that Intel isn't talking about today. They didn't share really many details about them, but they did confirm that the rest of the Core i5 lineup will also no longer be P-Cores only. On paper, 13th gen kind of sounds too good to be true. Up to 24 cores, almost six gigahertz? Like, is there a downside? Like maybe a burning hole in your motherboard where the socket used to be? Apparently, no. Thanks to their upgraded Intel 7 manufacturing process Intel claims that 13th gen is actually a step forward in performance per watt. Though of course, that won't be impressive until we know what that performance is. Let's talk about graphs. Right out of the gate, Intel is claiming that in some games they are seeing a 24% improvement over the 12900K. Good gravy! The 12900K is already blazing fast. Unfortunately, what they glossed over, just a little, is that you cannot expect this to be across the board. Horizon Zero Dawn actually performed slightly worse somehow and several other games performed either the same as last gen or only slightly better. Now, to be fair, most titles did demonstrate some kind of uplift and I guess they deserve credit for showing us the less impressive results. I mean, Horizon Zero Dawn isn't even a particularly current game. They could have just excluded it. But anywho, the point is that that 24% improvement is actually exclusive to League of Legends. And similar improvements were found in other lightish and e-sports titles. But when it comes to AAA games where you really actually do need another 20% FPS, ah, the data was underwhelming to say the least. Though it does kind of make me wonder if both AMD and Intel kind of jumped the gun on these launches and if they would have been better served by waiting for 4090 as well as Radeon 7000 to be generally available so that they could really let these new CPUs stretch their wings. I mean, half the problem here could be that GPU bottlenecks are hiding performance jumps we would otherwise see. On the subject of hiding things, Intel was happy to compare against their last gen top of the line and AMD's price competitive 5950X. But as we outlined in our Ryzen 7000 review yesterday, the real gaming champion of last generation was the Ryzen 5800X3D. To Intel's credit, they did test against it and they did include it in some of their performance graphs, but notably not in the 1% lows graph and in the weirdest possible way when they did. Clearly it would have been too cluttered to just add a fourth bar here, right? A long uncomfortable fourth bar. Of course, that's not even the issue we started with here. If you check the fine print, you'll notice that the test benches are mostly the same, but memory speeds are kind of all over the place. Now part of this is unavoidable. You can't ram DDR5 into an AM4 board, pun intended. But even considering the challenges, I do have some questions about Intel's configurations. The 13900K was tested with DDR5 at 5600 megatransfer per second C28. That is fast, premium memory. For the 12900K, they went with 4800 megatransfer per second C28. It's not trash tier by any stretch, but it is significantly slower when faster kits have existed for a year and are widely in use on 12th gen platforms. But wait, there's more. The AMD processors were tested on a hyper expensive ASUS Crosshair motherboard, and yet Intel claims that 3200 megatransfer per second was the fastest memory supported, and so that's what they used. Except it's pretty well known that AMD takes great advantage of fast DDR4 with the point of diminishing returns being more like the 3600 range. They also mentioned the lower power limit of 105 watts TDP. So is AMD's precision boost overdrive enabled? We reached out to Intel and we'll include a response in a pinned comment once we get it, but either way, it's something that should have been disclosed. To be clear, this chicanery persists across the entire industry, and it's a big part of why LTT and other tech review channels get to exist. So yay, no? All right. I mean, I get it. Whenever a company is gonna show off their latest and greatest, whether it's AMD, Nvidia, or anyone else, they are going to want to cherry pick. Looking at you, Apple. So to know how these products really stack up, you're gonna have to wait a little longer for our full review. But that doesn't make these announcements pointless because they often inform how we can best evaluate a product. And it looks like we might actually have to rethink how we go about multitasking benchmarking thanks to a little bit of magic called Intel Hybrid Technology. They're calling users who want to do it all at the same time, mega taskers, gaming, streaming, recording, maybe even running a render in the background. And they're saying that 13th gen can do it all at once without a hitch. It kinda sounds like nonsense, but this demo they ran is pretty cool. They utilized P cores, so the performance cores, to render an animation in one program, then minimize that program and brought Unreal Engine 5 to the foreground and started building lighting. At this point, the P cores change gears and swap to handle UE5, while the E cores pick up the rendering slack and chug along in the background. That is pretty wild stuff if you've ever hit the build button and then had to walk away because your PC basically became unusable for 20 minutes. Well, now you can hit build and then check out exclusive LTT content on floatplane.com while you wait, like this extra hour of footage from the build with my sister. Back to the CPU though. What's really impressive is the efficiency gains. The numbers Intel's showing are with the 13900K running at about 12 more Watts than the 12900K. So yes, power consumption really did go up, but according to this graph, that's only because they're pushing it to the red line. And if you don't do that, efficiency is also way up. So you underwaters out there could have an absolute field day with this platform. They claim, validation absolutely needed, that at just 65 Watts, the 13900K can match a 12900K at 240 Watts. That's a quarter of the power. That could mean that our lower TDP chips like Core i5s and Core i3s might absolutely rip and without turning your system into a space heater. And it gets better. Remember how they wouldn't confirm early on whether DDR4 would be supported on 13th gen Raptor Lake? Well, it looks like it is gonna be a thing, at least until the end of this socket cycle. So if you, like me, are disappointed by the lack of both Lakes and Raptors, at least we can both be excited about what this means for budget oriented gamers. Let's say you haven't upgraded in years, you're still running a 6700K or a 1700X, maybe even older. How do you modernize? Well, grab a new chip, grab a board, maybe a cooler adapter bracket, throw in your old RAM, even if it might cost you a little bit of performance and you're off to the races for under 500 bucks for a platform upgrade. Wanna save another buck? Well, the Z790 platform improvements aren't really all that huge for most people. Like we're talking a few more PCIe Gen 4 lanes, maybe for some more storage, and some more USB 20 gigabit ports. So you could grab a last gen Z690 or even a budget B660 board and call it a day. That is on all brand new, all readily available hardware once 13th gen releases on October 20th. And if you're just a baller who wants Z790 and 3900K with the latest and greatest DDR5, well, the Core i9 this generation is only $590. That's still a lot of money, but it's over a hundred dollars cheaper than the 7950X, giving you plenty left over to pick up a WAN hoodie from lttstore.com. Obviously, and I can't state this enough, we need to do our own testing for our full review, which is on its way. And we will be sure to give the competition a fair shake by the way. But so far the improvements to 13th gen do look extremely promising. We've been impressed by the performance of 12th gen for the last year, despite the absolutely bonkers temperatures that Intel just seems to ignore, particularly the 12700K when it comes to gaming. That thing is, mwah. And if Intel has also managed to put out the inferno while improving performance, could be a no brainer. Or is it? I mean, on the AMD side, you might pay extra, but you'll be in on the ground floor of hopefully another long-lived socket. Or maybe that doesn't matter to you because you only upgrade every five years anyway. Either way, it is nice to have so much choice, isn't it? Just like we chose today's sponsor. Micro Center. Micro Center is one of the best places to shop for desktop computer components and gaming laptops like the MSI Katana GF76. The Katana GF76 sports a 12th gen i7 processor, an RTX 3050 Ti, huh? And a screen with 144 Hertz refresh rate, making it a great portable entry point for higher end gaming. Micro Center makes it easy to build a new PC. Pick out your parts without worrying about compatibility and a technician will have it assembled as quickly as the same dang day. New customers can save $25 on an Intel or AMD processor right away. They have 25 locations across the US and with over 30,000 items in stock, you should almost always be able to find what it is you're looking for. Micro Center still has their build showcase, so send your build to the community page and receive an additional coupon after approval. The links for everything mentioned are in the description below. If there's one of these places near you, go to it. Consider yourself lucky, Micro Center rules. Hey, we don't normally do stingers, but this one's a doozy. If you missed it in the demo, the photon to electron communication bit that Intel did looks absolutely wild for the future of high-speed interfaces. Like, wow. Anywho, if you enjoyed this, make sure to check out our Ryzen 7000 review that went up recently so you can stay informed during these just unbelievable times and choose the platform that is right for you. Isn't that great? Having actual multiple legitimate choices? Who'd have thunk it?