AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D vs Intel Core i9-13900K Faceoff - POKIKA

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D vs Intel Core i9-13900K Faceoff

Ryzen 9 7950X3D vs Core i9-13900K

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D vs Intel Core i9-13900K rivalry is a battle of flagships for the highest-end of the gaming market, but the chips take drastically different approaches to serving up leading performance. The Core i9-13900K wields Intel’s 13th-Gen Raptor Lake x86 hybrid architecture to square off against AMD’s chiplet-based Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 chips, but AMD has a trick up its sleeve — the Second-Gen 3D V-Cache tech, which fuses on a 3D-stacked cache chiplet atop the processor to deliver market-leading gaming performance. These two fundamentally different approaches have shaken up our list of the best CPUs for gaming, but each approach has its respective strengths.

AMD’s $699 Ryzen 9 7950X3D is geared specifically for gamers looking to blast through CPU-limited games while still having the threaded heft of 16 cores that remain competitive in the heaviest of productivity workloads. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D does lag competitors in some productivity apps due to the tradeoffs associated with the 3D chip-stacking tech, and it doesn’t accelerate all games equally. However, one thing is certain — it is the fastest gaming chip on the market.

The $589 Intel Core i9-13900K is Intel’s fastest gaming processor, and while it isn’t quite as fast as AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X3D in gaming, it has a much friendlier price tag and serves up ultra-competitive performance in both gaming and productivity apps. Intel also continues to support DDR4 memory to offer a less-expensive path for builders, lowering the bar for entry to flagship performance even further. Meanwhile, AMD’s decision to support only DDR5 has proven to be a pricing pain point.

The different strengths of these two chips make for a difficult decision if you’re looking to pick one for your next high-end build. Below we’ve taken the Core i9-13900K vs Ryzen 9 7950X3D rivalry through a six-round faceoff to see which chips take the crown in our gaming and application benchmarks, along with other key criteria like power consumption and pricing. Let’s see how they stack up. 

Features and Specifications: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D vs Intel Core i9-13900K

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  Street/MSRP Cores / Threads (P+E) P-Core Base / Boost Clock (GHz) E-Core Base / Boost Clock (GHz) Cache (L2/L3) TDP / PBP / MTP Memory
Ryzen 9 7950X3D $699 16 / 32 4.2 / 5.7   144MB (16+128) 120W / 162W DDR5-5200
Core i9-13900KS $699 24 / 32 (8+16) 3.0 / 6.0 2.2 / 4.3 68MB (32+36) 150W / 253W / 320W DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600
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

AMD’s $699 Ryzen 9 7950X3D comes packing sixteen Zen 4 cores and the company’s second-gen 3D V-Cache tech that unlocks 128MB of L3 cache, a combo that delivers the fastest gaming performance available on the market. The 7950X3D has the same underlying design as the Ryzen 9 7950X with a central I/O die and two eight-core compute chiplets that provide a total of 16 cores and 32 threads.

Unlike the standard 7950X, one of the 7950X3D’s compute chiplets comes with an additional 3D-stacked L3 cache and boosts to 5.25 GHz. Meanwhile, the ‘standard’ compute chiplet without cache boosts to 5.7 GHz, the same as the standard 7950X (details here). Despite the lower frequency, the cache-equipped chiplet provides the best performance for games, while the faster chiplet is best for productivity applications. As such, AMD designed an innovative new driver that helps steer threads for different types of workloads to the correct chiplet.

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D brings all of the amenities we would expect from a modern processor, including support for DDR5, PCIe 5.0, and the latest USB connectivity standards. AMD has also added integrated graphics for a basic display out for the first time, which is a plus if you need to troubleshoot. You can see our iGPU testing here.

The 7950X3D sips power — it has a base TPD of 120W and a max 162W PPT, which is 68W lower than the 170W/230W rating for the standard 7950X. The lower power threshold will result in less performance in heavy applications, but you’ll still need to plan for a 240mm to 280mm AIO (or better) for the best performance.

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D requires an AM5 motherboard, so pricey DDR5 memory is the only option. Unfortunately, DDR5 continues to be much more expensive than DDR4 memory. Granted, that pricing pressure isn’t as much of a consideration at the high end, but you should factor it into your purchasing decision. The AM5 platform is new, so the Ryzen 7000 chips aren’t backward compatible with older AM4 motherboards. However, AMD will support the AM5 platform until 2025+.

AMD only allowed overclocking the memory and Infinity Fabric for the previous-gen 5800X3D, but the 7950X3D also adds support for both the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and the Curve Optimizer. Unfortunately, AMD still doesn’t allow direct frequency overclocking due to a voltage limitation for one of the chiplets.

Intel’s $589 sixteen-core Core i9-13900K comes with eight hyper-threaded P-cores and 16 single-threaded E-cores, for a total of 32 threads. That’s an increase of eight additional E-cores over the previous-gen Core i9-12900K, equating to more threaded horsepower. You can also save some cash with the $564 Core i9-13900KF, which has identical specs but lacks the integrated GPU.

Intel still uses the ‘Intel 7’ process node for Raptor Lake but leveraged a newer revision of the silicon to push clock speeds higher while improving power efficiency. The P-cores come with a 3.0 GHz base, but, more importantly, a 5.8 GHz boost that’s a whopping 600 MHz increase over the prior gen. Meanwhile, the E-cores now have a 3.0 GHz base (+600 MHz) and stretch up to 4.3 GHz (+400 MHz), meaning that not only do you get more E-cores, but you also get more out of each core.

The Core i9-13900K is also equipped with 32MB of L3 cache and 36MB of L2 and drops into existing 600-series motherboards or the new 700-series models. The chip comes with the integrated UHD Graphics 770 engine with 32 EUs that boost up to 1.65 GHz.

Intel’s chips now have a Processor Base Power (PBP) value instead of a TDP metric, and a secondary Maximum Turbo Power (MTP) value that denotes the highest power level during boost activity. The 13900K comes with 125W PBP (base) and 253W MTP (peak) power ratings, but be aware that the chip can always operate at the 253W MTP when it is under load, though the actual power use will vary with application intensity. Intel allows full overclockability, but only when you pair the chip with a Z-series motherboard.

Winner: Tie

The Core i9-13900K vs Ryzen 9 7950X3D battle yields a tie in this category. Both chips support DDR5 and the PCIe 5.0 interface, meaning neither has an inherent connectivity advantage.

Intel has the advantage of backward compatibility for DDR4 and the 600-series chipset, enabling lower-cost memory and motherboards for value seekers (caveats apply). Intel also has its Raptor Lake Refresh chips on the horizon, meaning there will be one more generation of upgrades for the LGA 1700 platform.

AMD’s new AM5 platform only supports pricey DDR5 and carries a premium over the Intel motherboard ecosystem, but it does afford extended forward compatibility — AMD plans on supporting the AM5 platform until 2025+.

Given its new hybrid architecture with two types of cores, Intel’s core counts aren’t directly comparable to AMDs due to their different capabilities. Our performance results will dictate the performance value of the overall designs.

Gaming Benchmarks and Performance: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D vs Intel Core i9-13900K

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