THIS 24-CORE Intel Core i9-13900KS Special Edition processor carries an eye-watering $699 price tag, but it’s also the first PC chip to run at 6GHz without overclocking, extending Intel’s lead over AMD’s fastest Ryzen 7000 processors. However, with a whopping 250W base power specification, this 13th gen Raptor Lake chip is also now officially the most power-hungry desktop CPU in history— its voracious appetite even peaks at 320W in a new Extreme Power Delivery Profile.
We’ll have to wait a little longer to see what AMD does with the latest generation of its 3D V-Cache processors that have traditionally delivered explosive gains in gaming performance, but the Core i9- 13900KS is meant to keep Intel’s silicon entrenched at the top of the benchmark charts when AMD’s new chips do arrive. That might be a tall order, as the 13900KS is built on the same architecture as the 13900K, with a higher speed binning to accommodate 200MHz faster clock rates.