The 13th Gen Intel $409 Core i7-13700K slot sits right in the middle of Intel’s Raptor Lake product stack (or at least that product stack as of late October 2022), with most of the gaming performance of its market-leading counterpart provide. The $589 Core i9-13900K has plenty of power for most users’ productivity workloads, but it’s $180 cheaper. It also outperforms competing AMD Ryzen 7000 chips, making it one of the best CPUs for gaming and placing it at the top of the charts in the CPU benchmark tier.
The Core i7-13700K’s performance comes from a boost clock of 5.4 GHz, a record for the i7 family, and Intel adding four more e-cores, making the chip a total of 16 cores and 24 threads. . Intel is still using the “Intel 7” process node, but has taken advantage of new revisions of silicon to boost clock speeds while improving power efficiency. Intel also etched the cores onto a new larger die and added additional L3 and L2 caches.
| price | Cores/Threads (P+E) | P-Core Base/Boost (GHz) | E-Core Base/Boost (GHz) | Cache (L2/L3) | TDP/PBP/MTP | memory | |
| Core i9-13900K/KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 24/32 (8+16) | 3.0 / 5.8 | 2.2/4.3 | 68MB (32+36) | 125W/253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i7-13700K/KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 16/24 (8+8) | 3.4/5.4 | 2.5/4.2 | 54MB (24+30) | 125W/253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i5-13600K/KF | $319 (K) – $294 (KF) | 14/20 (6+8) | 3.5/5.1 | 2.6/3.9 | 44MB (20+24) | 125W/181W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
Intel’s continued aggressive chip pricing and lower platform and memory options make the Core i7-13700K a powerful yet more affordable option. The Core i7-13700K is the best CPU for gaming in its price range, performing application benchmarks at a price significantly lower than AMD’s competitor Ryzen 7 7700X, and even the $549 Ryzen 9 7900X for most work. challenge.
Intel Core i7-13700K specs and price
Like its predecessor chips, the 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors have high-performance cores (p-cores) for latency-sensitive work and smaller efficiency cores (e-cores) for threads and background applications. are mixed. The e-core will stick to the same Gracemont architecture as before, while the p-core will move from the Golden Cove design to Raptor Cove. For architectural details, check out our reviews of the Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K.
| price | Cores/Threads (P+E) | P-Core Base/Boost (GHz) | E-Core Base/Boost (GHz) | Cache (L2/L3) | TDP/PBP/MTP | memory | |
| Core i9-13900K/KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 24/32 (8+16) | 3.0 / 5.8 | 2.2/4.3 | 68MB (32+36) | 125W/253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $699 | 16/32 | 4.5/5.7 | – | 80MB (16+64) | 170W/230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i9-12900K/KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 16/24 (8+8) | 3.2/5.2 | 2.4/3.9 | 44MB (14+30) | 125W/241W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | $549 | 12/24 | 4.7/5.6 | – | 76MB (12+64) | 170W/230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i7-13700K/KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 16/24 (8+8) | 3.4/5.4 | 2.5/4.2 | 54MB (24+30) | 125W/253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i7-12700K/KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 12/20 (8+4) | 3.6/5.0 | 2.7/3.8 | 37MB (12+25) | 125W/190W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | $399 | 8/16 | 4.5/5.4 | – | 40MB (8+32) | 105W/142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | $299 | 6/12 | 4.7/5.3 | – | 38MB (6+32) | 105W/142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i5-13600K/KF | $319 (K) – $294 (KF) | 14/20 (6+8) | 3.5/5.1 | 2.6/3.9 | 44MB (20+24) | 125W/181W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i5-12600K/KF | $289 (K) – $264 (KF) | 10 / 16 (6+4) | 3.7/4.9 | 2.8/3.6 | 29.5MB (9.5+20) | 125W/150W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
The 16 core, 24 thread $409 Core i7-13700K will compete with the 8 core 16 thread $399 Ryzen 7 7700X. Intel has bumped the 13700K’s p-core boost frequency by 400 MHz over its predecessor, up to 5.4 GHz. Intel also throws in an additional 4 e-cores for a total of 8, increasing the e-core boost by 400 MHz to 4.2 GHz. The combination of higher clocks and more cores greatly improves multithreaded workloads.
The Core i7-13700K features the same 125W processor base power (PBP – how much power the chip draws when not in a fully boosted state) as the previous generation Core i7-12700K. However, Intel has increased the maximum turbo power (MTP). This is the maximum amount of power the chip can dissipate in its boost state. The new 253W limit is a whopping 63W increase over the previous generation Core i7-12700K (33% increase).
Intel’s new chips are the most power efficient ever. But like AMD, Intel has taken a power-tight approach by dialing up power limits on all its desktop PC chips in an attempt to regain leadership. Heat can be difficult to control, so you should plan for a powerful chip cooler. Intel doesn’t include a cooler with the Core i7-12700K, but recommends a 280mm AIO water cooler or equivalent air (or better). Existing LGA 1700 coolers are compatible with the new motherboards. Overprovisioning is a good idea, especially if you plan on overclocking, as the performance of your cooler can severely limit the performance of your chip.
Conversely, you can now easily overclock to the highest clock rates you’ve ever seen. For example, I used an AIO water cooler with a Core i7-13700K and adjusted an all-core overclock of 5.5 GHz.
Intel also increased the 13700K L2 cache from 1.25MB to 2MB per p-core and doubled the amount of L2 cache for each cluster of e-cores to 4MB. Intel also added an additional 5MB of his L3 cache.
Intel has increased DDR5 memory support up to 5600 MT/s when using one DIMM per channel (1DPC). This significantly surpasses his previous speed of 4800 MT/s at Alder Lake. Just as importantly, Intel boosted his 2DPC speeds up to 4400 MT/s, improving on his 3600 MT/s on the previous generation. Unlike AMD’s all-in approach with DDR5, Raptor Lake will also support his DDR4-3200 memory, ensuring a worthy option for the Intel platform.
Raptor Lake will drop onto a motherboard with an LGA 1700 socket, so it will work with either the existing 600-series or the new 700-series chipset. According to Intel, if you used previous generation 600-series motherboards for Raptor Lake, you shouldn’t see any difference in performance on comparable bases. As usual, Intel will be making its Z-series (in this case he’s Z790) motherboards available first, followed by the value-centric B-series and H-series when it launches the rest of its Raptor Lake lineup.
The 700-series motherboards offer a small improvement over the 600-series, but Intel has increased the number of PCIe 4.0 lanes hanging off the chipset to 20, adding eight more lanes, plus one USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 200Gps port. is supported. Make a total of 5. Like before, the Raptor Lake chip itself will support 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes for storage devices.
