Intel is increasing the amount of 13th gen processor variants available to its consumers yet again with the potential successor to the Chinese market exclusive i5-12490F making rounds on Twitter as well as Chinese social media. The soon-to-be released Intel Core i5 13490F seems to pack quite a punch while building on the success of its predecessor by matching the clock speeds of the higher-end Intel Core i5-13500. It is important to note that it is not a 1:1 competitor to the 13500 processor which outnumbers it in core count by 4 efficiency cores; rather, it is similarly configured as the i5-13400/13400F chips with some notable changes that seems to be in line with the 12490F at launch. While this is not akin to the selectively-binned Intel Core i9-13900KS, it does seem to be part of Intel’s push to be more accessible to customers in China.
Major Changes from the i5-13400/13400F
The 13490F comes with a larger L3 Cache (24 MB vs 20 MB) much like Intel’s previous iteration of the 12th gen ‘special edition’ chip for China. It also stands to gain from performance gains due to its 200Mhz clock boost which has seen its power draw spike above the 13400. Based on the leaked screenshots available on Twitter by user @wnxod, we can expect to see an approximate 6% gain in raw single core performance gains with multi-core just a shade under 5% (4.5%ish) when compared against established 13400F benchmarks.
This is however happening at 4.7Ghz clock speeds as cited by the tester. Unlike the 13400F, there is not a matching iGPU variant like the Intel core i5-13400 so users will have to pair it with a discrete solution to use on any system. That being said, it will potentially only be scoreable for most users from either 3rd party sites such as Aliexpress.com or resellers via eBay.
But will it be worth it?
The question one should ask however is if its worth it. And the answer unsurprisingly is probably not given the price point the Core i5-13400F (RRP: $196) and the Core i5-13500 (RRP: $232) trade at. Assuming the 13490F is available at a mean price point of sub $220 per chip, the cost of shipping it to territories outside of China, dealing with limited bios support by mainstream motherboard makers and the obvious lack of an iGPU make it a not-so feasible choice for most end users that are not living in the Chinese mainland. For the rest of us, Intel’s mainstream non-Chinese processor variants will suffice.
Source: Twitter
