Intel Core i9 13900KS Review

Intel Core i9-13900KS Review

Introduction

One thing that Intel has a habit of doing is releasing a new flagship processor, waiting until everyone has caught their breath, and then releasing an even faster one. It’s a bit like Nvidia’s approach with their Ti cards.

We’ve already seen how tightly matched the Ryzen 9 7950X and Intel Core i9-13900K are, trading punch and counter punch. Intel, however, have been keeping a close eye on their yields and squirrelling away the really good processors for the Intel Core i9-13900KS project, one that really puts a marker down in terms or raw clock speed.

For those of you who missed out on the Core i9-13900K then let us quickly bring you up to speed. It has 24 cores split between 8 Performance Cores – the ones that boost to the eye-popping, headline grabbing speeds – and 16 Efficient Cores – the ones that run all the things that don’t demand bleeding edge speeds but can still sap performance from the important stuff. The Performance Cores also have hyperthreading, which means that overall you have 32 threads available, 16 of which will boost to insane levels.

Otherwise the Core i9-13900KS is very similar to the Core i9-13900K we’ve already reviewed, so it’ll be fun to see how much extra real world performance you can get from this new addition to the Raptor Lake LGA1700 range.

Technical Specifications

The primary new element to the Core i9-13900KS when compared to the regular K is the ability to boost to 6GHz without any user tweaking. The primary way it achieves this is with the addition of a new Extreme Power Delivery Profile, which pushes the TDW from 250W up to a bewildering 320W. Those of you with small CPU cooling solutions need not apply.

Intel Core i9-13900KS Review  
Intel Core i9-13900KS ReviewÂ