What just happened? An Intel chip has passed the 8 GHz frequency for the first time in over eight years. An engineering sample of the Core i9-13900K reached 8.2 GHz using plenty of liquid nitrogen, showing the overclocking potential of the upcoming processor.
During the Intel Creator Challenge PC Modding Finale, overclocker Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch managed to reach the 8.2 GHz frequency on the Core i9-13900K, which features 24 cores comprising eight Performance cores and 16 Efficiency cores. For comparison, the record overclock for the Core i9-12900K is 7.6GHz.
When not using exotic cooling like liquid nitrogen (LN2), the Raptor Lake chip is able to reach a still very impressive 5.8 GHz---5.5 GHz with all eight P cores---through Intel's Thermal Velocity Boost.
We're still someway off seeing the world overclocking record challenged. The HWBot table shows that the 8.7 GHz (8,722.78 MHz) reached by AMD's FX-8370 has been unbeaten since 2014. Team red's old CPUs hold the three spots behind the leader. In fact, all but two of the top twenty OC records were achieved on AMD processors.
The HWBot chart shows the last Intel chip to pass the 8 GHz milestone. That was the Celeron D 365 over eight years ago. The fifth-placed CPU managed to reach an overclocked frequency of 8.54 GHz.
We're looking forward to seeing how Intel's upcoming chip fares against AMD's new flagship, the Ryzen 9 7950X, a 16-core, 32-thread CPU that clocks between 4.5 GHz and 5.7 GHz, depending on the load. We rated the processor very highly, awarding it a score of 95 in our review, but it seems the Ryzen isn't going to challenge the Core i9-13900K when it comes to LN2 overclocking; the Zen 4 chip's best HWBot entry is 7.4 GHz (7,471.96 MHz).
This isn't the first report of the Core i9-13900K's blistering performance. Last month saw the chip top PassMark's latest single-thread CPU benchmark with a score of 4,833. The Raptor Lake CPU arrives this October 20 priced at $589.
h/t: Tom's Hardware