Intel officially launched the 6GHz Core i9-13900KS today and we’ve got the first batch of independent benchmarks to share.
This increase in performance comes at a $110 price premium over the existing Core i9-13900K, putting the MSRP of the 13900KS at $699. However, finding one of these 6GHz processors at MSRP may be challenging at first, as the CPU is currently listed at $70 over MSRP on Back in September, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced Raptor Lake, the company’s 13th generation of Core processors, and teased a chip coming to stores in early 2023 that would be able to hit 6GHz right out of the box. Well, it’s now 2023, and Intel launched the world’s first 6GHz CPU this morning. Bearing the name Core i9-13900KS, this speed demon takes the eight Performance cores (P-cores) of the i9-13900K and boosts their max frequency by 200MHz, to achieve that 6GHz frequency.This increase in performance comes at a $110 price premium over the existing Core i9-13900K, putting the MSRP of the 13900KS at $699. However, finding one of these 6GHz processors at MSRP may be challenging at first, as the CPU is currently listed at $70 over MSRP on Amazon . Fortunately, we were able to get our hands on one of these puppies thanks to our friends at Falcon Northwest , and we have some initial performance numbers to share.
Falcon Northwest sent over one of its compact FragBox PCs for review (full review coming soon). Our review unit features the hot new i9-13900KS paired with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. The fact that Falcon Northwest managed to fit these two beasts into a relatively small package with adequate cooling is impressive. Nonetheless, physics dictates that the thermal capacity of the compact, small form factor system will be limited in comparison to larger rigs, and in some circumstances may hold back the 6GHz processor somewhat when under heavy load.
When launching programs, we saw a few of the P-cores in the i9-13900KS jump up to that magic 6GHz number, but sustaining that number likely won’t be possible without top-shelf cooling.
