Intel has been hard at work, trying to corner the market with the advent and subsequent success of its 13th generation Alder-lake offerings, significantly outselling AMD’s 7000 series CPU lineup with relative ease as it continues to offer better value, gaming performance and a lower cost of entry for people upgrading from the 12th generation. The latter is due to overwhelming majority of 12th Gen motherboards did receive bios updates that allowed them to support 13th Gen processors versus AMD’s first level socket move in years from AM4 to AM5 that finally saw its processors go pin-less (LGA) in design. With the advent of the 7000X3D lineup from AMD threatening to be a disruptive force at the higher end, Intel is already providing options it did last generation with the Intel Core i5-12490F in the shape of the Intel Core i5-13490F. This time however, Intel has stepped up its game by not pushing an entry level i5 “black edition” CPU alone but doubling down by releasing an i7-13790F side by side to corner the higher end CPU market as it contends with potential market disruption from AMD towards the end of the month.
While AMD has had its hands full with the 7000X3D lineup that is due to launch at the end of February 2023, Intel has quietly been building its lead in the processor market and the i7-13790F appears to be the means of least resistance to offer a more competitive alternative to the i7-13700F by stepping up its L3 Cache to 33MB versus the latter’s 30 megabytes. Unlike the 13490F, this is the only major gain as the similarities do not extend to the 200Mhz clock boost it saw versus the 13400F. This might be a conscious decision by Intel to differentiate it from the 13700K/13700KF processors that could be cannibalized by a stock cooler-touting non-OC version of the same, especially since the only differential part between this and the 13700K/KF is essentially the 200Mhz higher clock speed; the 13790F already wins in the L3 Cache department thanks to its 10% larger cache size.
The Intel Core i7-13700K (and the non-discrete IGP-based 13700KF) seems to still hold a minor lead over the tricked out 13790F which is simply a 13700F with a 10% higher L3 Cache in tow.
The clock speed difference does allow the overclocked Intel variants to edge out the 13790F slightly, with the 13700K beating it by an average CPU-Z score of 28 in single core (836 vs 864) and 263 in multicore (12139.8 vs 12403). That translates to an approximately 3.3% faster single core and 2.2% multicore gain. The CPU is current listed for $441 or 2,999 RMB which makes the 13700KF a no-brainer for now in non-Chinese markets with an MSRP of $384 while being slightly faster. For now, it seems that much like the 13490F, the 13790F is destined to stay a limited ‘black edition’ processor that can only appeal to the market in mainland China where it competes with the 13700F which clocks in at 100 RMB cheaper. This is a very marginal upgrade and can only appeal to Chinese consumers currently on the fence about the Intel i7-13700/13700F processor offerings.
