AMD’s Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 chips might have handily undercut their Core i9 and Core i7 competitors in terms of power consumption, but Intel’s Core i5 processors put up a respectable fight against the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 CPUs.

In terms of core counts, the i5-13600K doubles the efficiency cores over the i5-12600K, for a total of 14 cores and 20 threads to the i5-12600K's 10 cores and 16 thread. This is also substantially more than the Ryzen 5 7600X, which is a straight six-core/12-thread chip with all its cores being full-power performance cores.Given this information, it seemed likely that these processors would trade places, depending on the test, but instead the Core i5-13600K performs better in every test. It doesn't win by a wide margin in some tests, but it does win. The Core i5-12600K, for its part, was left in the dust,and the Core i5-13600K even manages to perform slightly better than the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X in a few tests. (That said, the Core i5 lost to the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X badly in most tests, as you'd expect.)

In the end, the Core i5-13600K outperforms the Ryzen 5 7600X by about 40%, while improving on the Core i5-12600K's performance by about 25%. As far as bottom line results go, this would make this processor a slam dunk, but one thing keeps this chip from true greatness: its power consumption. All in all, the Core i5-14600K did exactly as we expected in testing, matching the Core i5-13600K in almost every way. However, the difference is so slim as to leave us questioning why we would recommend it over the previous generation. We can’t really see any advantage to owning the Core i5-14600K over the Core i5-13600K, and we actually can see some disadvantages to it. The way the 13600K vs 13700K breaks down is that the i5-13600K is a more mainstream processor meant for everyday use, basic to moderate productivity, light media editing (like working with family photos and video), and moderate gaming. Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics only: to use the Intel® Iris® Xe brand, the system must be populated with 128-bit (dual channel) memory. Otherwise, use the Intel® UHD brand.Intel's relative price increase with the Core i5-13600K is unwelcome. But we’ve run our tests and cannot deny that the Core i5-13600K still offers exceptional performance for what you pay. Sure, it isn't as fast as the Core i9-13900K or the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X in CPU tests (those flagships have a big core-count advantage), but in games with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080—or anything weaker. really—it is more than a match for these two higher-end CPUs.

This chip also draws 65% more power than the Core i5-12600K for a roughly 25% better performance. These are hardly signs of efficiency, and it continues the exact wrong trend we saw with Intel Alder Lake. For comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X has a max power draw of 211.483W, and its 3D V-Cache variant has an incredibly tight 136.414W power draw in my AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D review. Intel processor numbers are not a measure of performance. Processor numbers differentiate features within each processor family, not across different processor families. See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers.html for details. The Intel Core i7-13700K, meanwhile, is meant for more professional users who have more taxing workloads like professional designers, video editors, 3D modelers, and program developers. Gamers are also major targets for the 13700K, since many games require a lot of computational power at a fairly constant rate for long stretches of time, something very few other apps demand.

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Intel classifications are for general, educational and planning purposes only and consist of Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCN) and Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) numbers. Any use made of Intel classifications are without recourse to Intel and shall not be construed as a representation or warranty regarding the proper ECCN or HTS. Your company as an importer and/or exporter is responsible for determining the correct classification of your transaction. And while the rated 125W TDP for the i5-13600K remains the same as with the 12600K, it pulls substantially more power under load than its predecessor in my tests, so plan your build accordingly. Is this a dealbreaker? Not yet, but if Intel thinks it can keep the top spot by just keeping its foot on the gas while AMD is making real investments in power efficiency within a single generation of processors, this won't be good for Intel in the long run. See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html?wapkw=hyper+threading for more information including details on which processors support Intel® HT Technology. These are the systems I used to test desktop CPU performance for both AMD and Intel systems in this review: