With its Core i9-13900KS, Intel is breaking a speed record: this brand new processor operates at 6 GHz as standard, without overclocking. A high-end – and expensive – CPU that promises very high performance.
We thought the race for frequency was over long ago, but it continues, simply further from the spotlight, for a more targeted audience. In fact, in the very particular world of computer processors, the main players – Intel and AMD – have often fought over the operating speed of their chips: the simple way to improve performance without changing hardware architecture. Thus, after the prehistoric chips of the 1980s which turned at a few megahertz (MHz) – the marvelous Motorola 6800 which powered the first Macintosh and the Atari ST pedaled at… 8 MHz! –, we gradually moved on to chips at a few tens of megahertz – the first Intel Pentiums – to cross the threshold of gigahertz (GHz) which still serves as the master standard today on all CPUs.
CPU frequency: a futile race
The rise in frequency could have continued for years to come. But it was quickly slowed down by a very simple physical phenomenon: heating. In fact, the more an electronic circuit works at high frequency, the more it rises in temperature. And, in general, electronic components do not like heat at all, which affects their functioning. This is why processors working at “high speed” must be properly cooled with increasingly sophisticated – and sometimes very large – heat dissipation devices!
This is also the reason why AMD and Intel have slowed down the mad race for frequency over the past fifteen years, relying instead on architecture and engraving technology optimizations to gain performance, limit heating and reduce power consumption. Thus, most current processors operate between 1 GHz and 3 GHz, the slowest – therefore the least energy-consuming – being mainly intended for laptops, in order to preserve their autonomy – another very important criterion in a nomadic world.
This technological and ecological “wisdom” does not, however, prevent some excesses, and we regularly see the two manufacturers offering high-frequency CPUs, just to show what their architecture has in store when it is pushed to its limits. A comparison game – as old as the world… – which hackers have also been playing for a long time, and in particular some players, who have fun running their processor beyond their nominal frequency to gain performance – and grab some valuable additional FPS in their beloved games. We have thus witnessed some historic records, such as that of AMD which reached 8.429 GHz in 2011 on a competition chip, just for the demo. However, the most powerful processors of the moment – of the AMD Epyc or Intel Core i9 type – are content with much more reasonable values, between 2 and 3 GHz, proof, if more was needed, that frequency is not everything.
Intel Core i9-13900KS: 6 GHz on the clock… in turbo mode
However, it seems that Intel has had fun relaunching the race for speed with its all-Core i9-13900KS, a 13e generation for desktop PC which has the luxury of operating at the nominal frequency of 6 GHz. An impressive value, which should make gamers in search of thrills drool with envy. Be careful though: this is not the base frequency of the CPU – which is fixed at 3.2 GHz –, but the frequency in Turbo mode, when all the cores are used to the maximum to deliver the best performance. And this processor is none other than the optimized version of the Core i9-13900K, whose architecture it takes up, with in particular 24 physical cores (8 high-performance P-Cores + 16 low-power E-Cores) managing 32 threads in parallel to a thermal envelope of 150 W. However, even if it displays very good performance, this new racing car breaks no record: it is credited witha score of 62,150 PassMark pointsa benchmark for comparison.
As it should be given its power consumption, the Core i9-13900KS requires a suitable cooling device. And this model stamped SE – Special Edition – is not aimed at ordinary mortals: with a price around 900 euros, it will especially interest extreme enthusiasts. But, even if it is only a fine demonstration, we can only admire the know-how of Intel, which has achieved this performance with 10 nm engraving technology, far from the finesse that offers TSMC for Apple and others, which goes down to 5 and even 4 nm today…