Intel Core i9 13900K Linux Benchmarks - Performing Very Well On Ubuntu
Last week Intel began shipping their 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors. As noted in that launch-day article last week, unfortunately I wasn't able to deliver my usual Linux performance review in time due to hitting some DDR5 issues with my test platform, but those have now been resolved with a new Z790 motherboard. So as the first of my Raptor Lake Linux benchmarks, here is a look at how the top-end Core i9 13900K performs against the AMD Ryzen 7000 series on Ubuntu Linux along with the older Intel/AMD processors.
The Core i9 13900K as a reminder is a 24 core processor consisting of eight P cores and 16 E cores, which with Hyper Threading on the P cores means 32 total processor threads. Over the i9-12900K is a doubling of the E core count. The Core i9 13900K has a P-core maximum turbo frequency of up to 5.8GHz while the P-core base frequency is 3.0GHz. The i9-13900K has a 36MB L3 cache, 32MB L2 cache, and has a 125 Watt base power rating and 253 Watt maximum turbo power rating.
The Core i9 13900K has a recommended customer price of $589 USD, but one week post-launch that isn't yet the case. The cheapest price I've seen the i9-13900K for from reputable Internet retailers like B*H or NewEgg is $659 USD while even higher at Amazon and other Internet retailers. The Core i9 13900K is competing with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X that currently retails for $699 USD.
As noted in my launch-day article, my original testing was thwarted in using the ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-E GAMING WIFI motherboard for my Alder Lake and planned Raptor Lake testing. With none of the DDR5-6000 modules in my possession was I able to get them running at DDR5-6000 with either the i5-13600K or i9-13900K on that Z690 motherboard. Trying three different BIOSes, multiple sets of DIMMs, and other combinations all failed to POST. Even with the Alder Lake CPUs tested happily running at DDR5-6000 in the same motherboard and other components. So with having already tested Alder Lake and the Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors at DDR5-6000, I waited until sorting out that situation before running with these Linux benchmarks.
On launch day I bought an ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI motherboard, which has worked out fine with the Raptor Lake CPUs including with DDR5-6000 memory speeds. So the ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI motherboard is being used for all of my initial Linux benchmarking. This motherboard has been working out fine under Linux and haven't had any issues in the nearly week long benchmarking binge. Today's article is looking at the Intel Core i9 13900K Linux performance while my Core i5 13600K review/benchmarks will be up next week.
All of this Core i9 13900K testing and the other (re)tested processors were on Ubuntu 22.10 with the Linux 6.0 kernel and running with the performance CPUFreq/P-State governor throughout. All of the benchmarks were at stock CPU speeds, 2 x 16GB DDR5-6000 for all ADL/RPL/Zen4 tests and 2 x 16GB DDR4-3600 in all other tested older configurations, Samsung 980 PRO 2TB NVMe SSD storage, and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics. Thanks to Intel for supplying the Raptor Lake review samples.