Core i5-13500 ES CPU Beats Core i5-12500 By Over 50 Percent In Early Multi-Threaded Benchmarks

The Core i5-13500 poses to be one of the best CPUs, according to early benchmarks. A BiliBili content creator recently posted a video showcasing an engineering sample of Intel's upcoming mid-range Core i5-13500 Raptor Lake processor and what it can do in Cinebench R23 and CPU-Z. The performance characteristics of the new CPU are impressive, with the chip boasting a whopping 56% multi-threaded performance advantage over its Core i5-12400 Alder Lake predecessor, thanks to the inclusion of eight additional efficiency cores on the Raptor Lake chip.

According to the Bilibili video, the Core i5-13500 engineering sample features a single-core turbo frequency of 4.8 GHz or 4.9 GHz - depending on the monitoring software shown, and an all-core frequency of 4.4 GHz. The efficiency cores peak at 3.4 GHz, with all cores going down to 3.3 GHz.

The most significant upgrade on the Core i5-13500 could be its core count, which reportedly features the same 6 P-core and 8 E-core combinations as the higher-up Core i5-13600K. It is a massive upgrade from Intel's Alder Lake predecessor, the Core i5-12500, which lacked efficiency cores. However, compared to the Core i5-12600K, the Core i5-13500 still has a core count advantage with two more E-cores.

We see this massive boost in core count clearly in Cinebench R23, where the chip in the Bilibili video hits a multi-threaded score of 19,891 points. It represents a whopping 56% performance improvement for the Core i5-13500 compared to the Core i5-12500, which scores 12,678 points in the same benchmark, according to Tech Notice.

In CPU-Z's benchmark, the results are even more impressive, with the Core i5-13500 pulling out a score of 8,222 points in the multi-threaded benchmark, and is 61% faster than the official Core i5-12500 multi-threaded CPU-Z score of 5,108 points.

The single-threaded results aren't very imposing, with the Core i5-13500 pulling out a 9% lead over the Core i5-12500 in Cinebench R23, with a score of 1,901 vs. Tech Notice's score of 1,736 for the Core i5-12500. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a CPU-Z single-threaded result since the video's image quality was too blurry to make out any detail.

Nonetheless, a 9% lead is not bad for an engineering sample since these chips are usually lower clocked than the production models. As a result, we might see noticeably higher single-threaded performance and clock speeds, on the full production models, compared to what we are seeing today.

But, the most impressive results from the Core i5-13500 undoubtedly come from the multi-core results. Intel's decision to add a full eight E-cores to its budget-end Core i5-13500 is providing Intel's mid-range offering a serious performance jump over its Alder Lake predecessor. However, whether the Core i5-13500 offers a tremendous leap in gaming performance remains to be seen.