Power Consumption and Efficiency Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K
Both chipmakers are dialing up power as they grapple for the lead, but AMD has the advantage of the denser 5nm TSMC node. Despite Ryzen 7000’s substantial gen-on-gen increase in power consumption, Intel’s Raptor Lake processors still consume more power. However, they also deliver more performance in some types of work.
The renders-per-day-per-watt charts show that the Core i9-13900K is more efficient than the previous-gen Core i9-12900K, while the Core i5-13600K's increased power consumption and tuning for the higher end of the V/F curve has led to a generational decline in efficiency.
Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.
These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart.
Remember that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are the best. Here we can see that the Core i9-13900K isn't as efficient as the Ryzen 9 7950X, but it does make a marked improvement over the previous-gen 12900K. In contrast, the 13600K is faster than the 12600K, but it takes much more power to get there.
- MORE: AMD vs Intel
- MORE: Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 All We Know
- MORE: Raptor Lake All We Know