Intel Core i9-13900KF

Intel’s top 13th Gen processor beats out the best that AMD has to offer with its new Zen 4 architecture. With rumors that AMD could reveal its X3D lineup for Zen 4 in January at CES, 2022’s CPU battle looks like it’s about to spill over into 2023.

This is big.LITTLE architecture’s next evolution. Intel’s new flagship Core i9-13900K is a beast in just about every area, roundly whipping AMD’s competing high-end chips in everything from gaming to synthetic benchmarks. It’s also much better value for money, and requires less power on average to run.

The Core i9-13900K highlights that focusing solely on thermals isn't a great idea, provided you're not seeing thermal throttling and instead it's power consumption that really matters. In the case of the 13900K and 7950X, the AMD CPU might only run about 5c cooler, but that doesn't reflect that power usage is almost halved with the Ryzen.