Intel reveals the Core i9-13900KS that hits 6Ghz out of the box

Clock speed is a tricky metric. It is not comparable between CPUs, because each CPU does a different amount of work on each cycle. You can make a processor's clock go twice as fast, but have it do half the work every cycle just to artificially inflate the numbers.

I'm being a bit reductionist here. It is obviously *somewhat* comparable. Because most modern CPUs do similar kinds of work each cycle (perform an arithmetic operation, load a register, and whatnot). But I suspect there's quite a bit of marketing in these figures.

The only valid metric to compare CPUs is benchmarks. We'll see how well it fares on those :)


Last edited by setzer22 on 12 January 2023 at 6:56 pm UTC

I decided to jump out of this game of having a top PC, to play AAA games at max settings a while ago. Now what I want is a efficient machine that runs cool on stock coolers.

Things started to became too repetitive (again) a decade ago, with most big-name games recycling the same ideas with more beautiful graphics. For example, I didn't finished the last 2 Tomb Riders. Felt like I was playing a DLC of the first game. Call of Duty fell off my radar after the first Black Ops. I'm not a competitive player (hate cheaters and annoying looser kids), so their emphasis on multiplayer did nothing for me.

Indie games at last try something new, since in a ocean of them, is do something different or die. And when they commit the same sin of recycling old gameplay like big studios do, I didn't need a powerful PC to play them nor do I need to pay full price plus a kidney in cash-grab schemes.

If I feel the itch to play AAA games, I still had a couple dozen from few years ago, that play very nice in my current "poor gamer" PC.

Hardware Unboxed was - well - not really enthusiastic about the product:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNDxKQP1_FQ

I decided to jump out of this game of having a top PC, to play AAA games at max settings a while ago. Now what I want is a efficient machine that runs cool on stock coolers.

Things started to became too repetitive (again) a decade ago, with most big-name games recycling the same ideas with more beautiful graphics. For example, I didn't finished the last 2 Tomb Riders. Felt like I was playing a DLC of the first game. Call of Duty fell off my radar after the first Black Ops. I'm not a competitive player (hate cheaters and annoying looser kids), so their emphasis on multiplayer did nothing for me.

Indie games at last try something new, since in a ocean of them, is do something different or die. And when they commit the same sin of recycling old gameplay like big studios do, I didn't need a powerful PC to play them nor do I need to pay full price plus a kidney in cash-grab schemes.

If I feel the itch to play AAA games, I still had a couple dozen from few years ago, that play very nice in my current "poor gamer" PC.

Pretty much the same here.
I have my PC spec'd good enough to play older AAA titles like Batman Arkham city, LOTR @ full settings 1440p (60hz is fine for me for these titles). The only issue is that even my Ryzen CPU (65w TDP + max undervolt) + Nvidia GPU is not efficient enough (add in some fans and primitive RGB). PC's for everything outside of gaming just aren't efficient enough, were talking 80w + just to stream video content, browse the web, basic image editing etc.. when a sub 10w mini pc can do this just fine. I have seen 95w when watching video content on my dual monitor setup and that's all im doing at the time.

One good thing about the last gen Ryzen though, is that they are quiet efficient at the lower end if you just want indie gaming. Something like a 5600g running integrated vega graphics is good enough. You can build a good all rounder for not much money. I hope there are equally efficient RDNA2 / 3 APU's in future.

I was testing my other machine with the 5600g recently and playing Stardew valley the entire PC was using less than 30W (21w at one point) and completely silent. If i had used my main rig with a dedicated GPU + faster CPU it would of probably been quite a bit more for doing the exact same thing.


Last edited by Lofty on 13 January 2023 at 5:32 pm UTC

I decided to jump out of this game of having a top PC, to play AAA games at max settings a while ago. Now what I want is a efficient machine that runs cool on stock coolers.

Things started to became too repetitive (again) a decade ago, with most big-name games recycling the same ideas with more beautiful graphics. For example, I didn't finished the last 2 Tomb Riders. Felt like I was playing a DLC of the first game. Call of Duty fell off my radar after the first Black Ops. I'm not a competitive player (hate cheaters and annoying looser kids), so their emphasis on multiplayer did nothing for me.

Indie games at last try something new, since in a ocean of them, is do something different or die. And when they commit the same sin of recycling old gameplay like big studios do, I didn't need a powerful PC to play them nor do I need to pay full price plus a kidney in cash-grab schemes.

If I feel the itch to play AAA games, I still had a couple dozen from few years ago, that play very nice in my current "poor gamer" PC.

Pretty much the same here.
I have my PC spec'd good enough to play older AAA titles like Batman Arkham city, LOTR @ full settings 1440p (60hz is fine for me for these titles). The only issue is that even my Ryzen CPU (65w TDP + max undervolt) + Nvidia GPU is not efficient enough (add in some fans and primitive RGB). PC's for everything outside of gaming just aren't efficient enough, were talking 80w + just to stream video content, browse the web, basic image editing etc.. when a sub 10w mini pc can do this just fine. I have seen 95w when watching video content on my dual monitor setup and that's all im doing at the time.

One good thing about the last gen Ryzen though, is that they are quiet efficient at the lower end if you just want indie gaming. Something like a 5600g running integrated vega graphics is good enough. You can build a good all rounder for not much money. I hope there are equally efficient RDNA2 / 3 APU's in future.

I was testing my other machine with the 5600g recently and playing Stardew valley the entire PC was using less than 30W (21w at one point) and completely silent. If i had used my main rig with a dedicated GPU + faster CPU it would of probably been quite a bit more for doing the exact same thing.

I almost got into the APU road on my last upgrade, a couple months ago. Had AMD released one with a RDNA2 iGPU last year, I probably would had got one.

But only in a traditional setup, no Mini-PC. I wanted the flexibility of adding a discrete GPU down the road.

I was certain to get the best motherboard powered (sub 75W) AMD card (because Linux opensource drivers), but that would meant I would be stuck at the same performance level since 2014, when I got a very power hungry, factory overclocked R9 290. Since I wanted a bit more performance to play American/Euro Truck Simulator at a locked 60fps, I caved and got a RX6600. It normally consumes up to 100W (~15W decoding videos) in games and was a nice jump from what I had before, and even had AV1 decoding support, which is nice for me since I watch a lot of long YT videos.

I decided to jump out of this game of having a top PC, to play AAA games at max settings a while ago. Now what I want is a efficient machine that runs cool on stock coolers.

Things started to became too repetitive (again) a decade ago, with most big-name games recycling the same ideas with more beautiful graphics. For example, I didn't finished the last 2 Tomb Riders. Felt like I was playing a DLC of the first game. Call of Duty fell off my radar after the first Black Ops. I'm not a competitive player (hate cheaters and annoying looser kids), so their emphasis on multiplayer did nothing for me.

Indie games at last try something new, since in a ocean of them, is do something different or die. And when they commit the same sin of recycling old gameplay like big studios do, I didn't need a powerful PC to play them nor do I need to pay full price plus a kidney in cash-grab schemes.

If I feel the itch to play AAA games, I still had a couple dozen from few years ago, that play very nice in my current "poor gamer" PC.

Pretty much the same here.
I have my PC spec'd good enough to play older AAA titles like Batman Arkham city, LOTR @ full settings 1440p (60hz is fine for me for these titles). The only issue is that even my Ryzen CPU (65w TDP + max undervolt) + Nvidia GPU is not efficient enough (add in some fans and primitive RGB). PC's for everything outside of gaming just aren't efficient enough, were talking 80w + just to stream video content, browse the web, basic image editing etc.. when a sub 10w mini pc can do this just fine. I have seen 95w when watching video content on my dual monitor setup and that's all im doing at the time.

One good thing about the last gen Ryzen though, is that they are quiet efficient at the lower end if you just want indie gaming. Something like a 5600g running integrated vega graphics is good enough. You can build a good all rounder for not much money. I hope there are equally efficient RDNA2 / 3 APU's in future.

I was testing my other machine with the 5600g recently and playing Stardew valley the entire PC was using less than 30W (21w at one point) and completely silent. If i had used my main rig with a dedicated GPU + faster CPU it would of probably been quite a bit more for doing the exact same thing.

I almost got into the APU road on my last upgrade, a couple months ago. Had AMD released one with a RDNA2 iGPU last year, I probably would had got one.

But only in a traditional setup, no Mini-PC. I wanted the flexibility of adding a discrete GPU down the road.

I was certain to get the best motherboard powered (sub 75W) AMD card (because Linux opensource drivers), but that would meant I would be stuck at the same performance level since 2014, when I got a very power hungry, factory overclocked R9 290. Since I wanted a bit more performance to play American/Euro Truck Simulator at a locked 60fps, I caved and got a RX6600. It normally consumes up to 100W (~15W decoding videos) in games and was a nice jump from what I had before, and even had AV1 decoding support, which is nice for me since I watch a lot of long YT videos.

it should be possible to undervolt that RX6600 down to around 75w i believe. You could almost run it off the pci-e only.

https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl

i think that is the tool to do it. there are video tutorials on how best to do it. Obviously your mileage will vary and do it at your own risk.