Just Finished new i9-13900KF Build; Here's Some Benchmarks Against My Older i9-7940X

[PaulieDC]

After a year of collecting parts and waiting for Gen 13, the new DAW tower is finally done. I've been asked several times what components I used and why, and I will answer that in a different post with all of the specs (update - that's actually done now, here), not to brag, but to answer questions, and share how much has changed since my last build 5 years ago.

So before dismantling my prior tower, I ran that Dom Sigales benchmark test for Cubase, which is pretty simple: It allows you to add tracks until you get any audio breakup, and the number of tracks is your score. It may not be a perfect test project but it gives us a number to compare. Then after finishing the new tower this week, I ran it again on that. Here's the specs and the result:

Old PC: 2018 i9-7940X, 14-core/28 thread, 128GB DDR4, X299 Mobo, Samsung 970 Pro NVMe C Drive (PCIe Gen 3), GTX 1080 GPU
New PC: 2022 i9-13900KF, 24-core/32-thread, 128GB DDR5, Z790 Mobo, Samsung 980 Pro NVMe C drive (PCIe Gen 4), RTX 3080 GPU

Cubase 12 Pro, RME Babyface Pro FS. Extra drives not listed because the benchmark test only uses Cubase's Halion Sonic.

The test said to run at 32 samples and then 512 samples. I ran 48 and 1024, because 48 is the lowest my RME offers, and I mix at 1024.

Results (Number of tracks before audio breakup w/red warning, even if once in the demo):

Test Category	i9-7940X - Win 10 Pro	i9-13900KF - Win 11 Pro
48 Samples	86 Tracks	135 Tracks
1024 Samples	86 Tracks (the same! Tested twice!)	149 Tracks
Latency at 128 Samples (where I compose)	5.5 In | 6.0 Out	3.265 In | 3.810 Out
Architecture	PCIe 3.0 | DDR4 RAM | X299 Mobo	PCIe 4.0 | DDR5 RAM | Z790 Mobo

I hoped for at least 100-110 but the new 13th Gen really screams in MIDI due to the increased single core speed, so that was a nice surprise. BTW, I have 5600 RAM but it's NOT running the XMP profile so right now it's running at 4000. MSI will eventually get a new BIOS update out to fix that. Typical pains of a new platform, lol.

For AMD fans, that Ryzen 9 7950X is the same price and the direct match to the Intel in performance, so I would expect equally awesome results.

Personally, if anyone has been waiting, I believe the i9-13900 or the Ryzen 9 7950X CPUs with the latest PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and DDR5 RAM which is now finally getting realistic in price, makes it a great time to pull the trigger. if anyone looks on the UserBenchmark site or uses it to rate their system, here's the first results I got the night it was built. It's really a great time to build, it's entirely possible that RAM prices could swing back up by the end of this year.

And please, this isn't the thread to start firing off how much better you feel AMD is and yadda yadda yadda, this is simply Intel results, answering some who asked. I say that because we KNOW that argument will start, lol!

Click to read more...

 

[Virtuoso]

I'm just finishing the cabling on a very similar spec system - 13900KF with Samsung 980 Pros and an RTX 4090. I went with an MSI Z790 Tomahawk board though because I already had 128GB of DDR4 3600 memory laying around and wanted to re-use it. It will be interesting to see how much difference your DDR5 makes.

 

[marius_dm]

I just put together a 13900k system with DDR5 also. I had to limit the power draw to 230w and under volt for it not to stay at a Solid 100C while running Cinebench. Now it hovers around 95C or so. Getting almost 38k points this ways though. Nice. With that said, for music I’m using a MBP M1 with 16GB of ram, I have no need for more than that for the music I do (at the moment), go figure.

 

[PaulieDC]

I just put together a 13900k system with DDR5 also. I had to limit the power draw to 230w and under volt for it not to stay at a Solid 100C while running Cinebench. Now it hovers around 95C or so. Getting almost 38k points this ways though. Nice. With that said, for music I’m using a MBP M1 with 16GB of ram, I have no need for more than that for the music I do (at the moment), go figure.

Ha ha, nice. I haven't done the stress testing yet, but I did use the Thermalright aluminum frame around the CPU instead of the cheesy lockdown arm on the ILM, and running on air with the huge Noctua NH-D15 (black of course), I do idle at 35C, so the low end is running well at least. We'll see when I stress it.

 

[PaulieDC]

I'm just finishing the cabling on a very similar spec system - 13900KF with Samsung 980 Pros and an RTX 4090. I went with an MSI Z790 Tomahawk board though because I already had 128GB of DDR4 3600 memory laying around and wanted to re-use it. It will be interesting to see how much difference your DDR5 makes.

From all of the benchmarks I've seen, the DDR5 increase speed-wise is not a big one. Staying with DDR4 I'm sure is fine. The main reason I went with DDR5 is because the architecture allows 5 NVMe slots on the motherboard all running at PCIe 4.0, and with the plans I drew/pondered/changed over many months, I ended up wanting at least 4 drives at 4.0. So the Z790 was my only choice, and that's a DDR5 board. But for you to have the 128GB DDR4 available and thus avoiding cost, yeah, great move. And RTX 4090, nice! You could launch a Saturn V rocket with that thing!

It is crazy how far this has all come since I built my first video editing right in 2009. I had a 150GB 10K RPM spinning drive for C: (that cost $279) and a 12-bay case where I would add a 250GB drive when I needed more room (or 500GB if I could get them on sale), and then eventually two 750GB drives! Wow! (ha ha)... By the end I had a huge case full of these drives, barely 2TB of total space, and it weighed in at 63 pounds. Well, OK, the case itself was 35 lbs.

Today, I have a motherboard that holds tiny sticks that total 7.5TB onboard (pic below), running about 5000% faster speed than the drives of yesteryear. I moved a 2GB video file from one drive to another, and the progress bar didn't even pop up, it copied in a blink. This was stuff we couldn't even imagine back in the day, when I had my Commodore 128 connected to my 12" CRT TV as a monitor. Looney.


The 970 runs at 3.0 of course, I had it in my previous PC and just moved it over. Funny, each drive has a thick heavy heatsink that MSI provides with the Carbon WiFi mobo. I never had a motherboard that weighed 7 or 8 pounds before!

 

[Thundercat]

Ha ha, nice. I haven't done the stress testing yet, but I did use the Thermalright aluminum frame around the CPU instead of the cheesy lockdown arm on the ILM, and running on air with the huge Noctua NH-D15 (black of course), I do idle at 35C, so the low end is running well at least. We'll see when I stress it.

I love the Noctua fans and have used several in past builds! So quiet too...

 

[zvenx]

Thanks for sharing.
I always thought the latency depended on the audio card and its drivers.
Surprised it changed from one computer to the other using the same audio card.

rsp

 

[PaulieDC]

Thanks for sharing.
I always thought the latency depended on the audio card and its drivers.
Surprised it changed from one computer to the other using the same audio card.

rsp

Yeah, me too actually, didn't expect that. OH, there was an updated driver on the RME site which included a firmware update, that's probably a more likely reason. No complaints though!

 

[twarch]

After a year of collecting parts and waiting for Gen 13, the new DAW tower is finally done. I've been asked several times what components I used and why, and I will answer that in a different post with all of the specs, not to brag, but to answer questions and share how much has changed since my last build 5 years ago.

So before dismantling my prior tower, I ran that Dom Sigales benchmark test for Cubase, which is pretty simple: It allows you to add tracks until you get any audio breakup, and the number of tracks is your score. It may not be a perfect test project but it gives us a number to compare. Then after finishing the new tower this week, I ran it again on that. Here's the specs and the result:

Old PC: 2018 i9-7940X, 14-core/28 thread, 128GB DDR4, X299 Mobo, Samsung 970 Pro NVMe C Drive (PCIe Gen 3), GTX 1080 GPU
New PC: 2022 i9-13900KF, 24-core/32-thread, 128GB DDR5, Z790 Mobo, Samsung 980 Pro NVMe C drive (PCIe Gen 4), RTX 3080 GPU

Cubase 12 Pro, RME Babyface Pro FS. Extra drives not listed because the benchmark test only uses Cubase's Halion Sonic.

The test said to run at 32 samples and then 512 samples. I ran 48 and 1024, because 48 is the lowest my RME offers, and I mix at 1024.

Results (Number of tracks before audio breakup w/red warning, even if once in the demo):

Test Category	i9-7940X - Win 10 Pro	i9-13900KF - Win 11 Pro
48 Samples	86 Tracks	135 Tracks
1024 Samples	86 Tracks (the same! Tested twice!)	149 Tracks
Latency at 128 Samples (where I compose)	5.5 In | 6.0 Out	3.265 In | 3.810 Out
Architecture	PCIe 3.0 | DDR4 RAM | X299 Mobo	PCIe 4.0 | DDR5 RAM | Z790 Mobo

I hoped for at least 100-110 but the new 13th Gen really screams in MIDI due to the increased single core speed, so that was a nice surprise. BTW, I have 5600 RAM but it's NOT running the XMP profile so right now it's running at 4000. MSI will eventually get a new BIOS update out to fix that. Typical pains of a new platform, lol.

For AMD fans, that Ryzen 9 7950X is the same price and the direct match to the Intel in performance, so I would expect equally awesome results.

Personally, if anyone has been waiting, I believe the i9-13900 or the Ryzen 9 7950X CPUs with the latest PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and DDR5 RAM which is now finally getting realistic in price, makes it a great time to pull the trigger. if anyone looks on the UserBenchmark site or uses it to rate their system, here's the first results I got the night it was built. It's really a great time to build, it's entirely possible that RAM prices could swing back up by the end of this year.

And please, this isn't the thread to start firing off how much better you feel AMD is and yadda yadda yadda, this is simply Intel results, answering some who asked. I say that because we KNOW that argument will start, lol!

86 instruments tracks with a i9 7940X ???

I plane to upgrade my PC from 7700k to 13700k because with for example Arturia synths in Ableton, it's impossible to rune more like 10/15 tracks @128 sample latency with a Fireface 802 :(

 

[PaulieDC]

86 instruments tracks with a i9 7940X ???

I plane to upgrade my PC from 7700k to 13700k because with for example Arturia synths in Ableton, it's impossible to rune more like 10/15 tracks @128 sample latency with a Fireface 802 :(

Oh wow, the 13700 will be such a huge improvement, you'll be over the moon.

The 7700 is just getting overpowered... here's the architecture vs the 7940X, which is still an i9 and a much higher core count:

i7-7700K 4-core/8-thread
CPUBenchmark.net score 9,661

i9-7940X 14-core/28-thread
CPUBenchmark.net 26,307

HOWEVER, look at the spec for the 13700 you want:
i7-13700K 16-core/24-thread
CPUBenchmark.net score 47,106

And your single core performance will double with the 13700, and your floating point MOps/sec will be about 6x faster, which all come into play with audio. So go for it! And definitely use an NVMe M.2 for your C: drive, they are about the same as a standard SSD now. Have fun with the build!

 

[PaulieDC]

86 instruments tracks with a i9 7940X ???

I plane to upgrade my PC from 7700k to 13700k because with for example Arturia synths in Ableton, it's impossible to rune more like 10/15 tracks @128 sample latency with a Fireface 802 :(

Welcome to the forum BTW!

 

[twarch]

Oh wow, the 13700 will be such a huge improvement, you'll be over the moon.

The 7700 is just getting overpowered... here's the architecture vs the 7940X, which is still an i9 and a much higher core count:

i7-7700K 4-core/8-thread
CPUBenchmark.net score 9,661

i9-7940X 14-core/28-thread
CPUBenchmark.net 26,307

HOWEVER, look at the spec for the 13700 you want:
i7-13700K 16-core/24-thread
CPUBenchmark.net score 47,106

And your single core performance will double with the 13700, and your floating point MOps/sec will be about 6x faster, which all come into play with audio. So go for it! And definitely use an NVMe M.2 for your C: drive, they are about the same as a standard SSD now. Have fun with the build!

Oh this is day and night between the 7700k and the 7940X !!!

And of course for the C drive, i've already an NVME, a Crucial P2 (from memory, not shure) but i plane to put a Crucial P5 in my future PC.
I can't wait to buy the parts

Welcome to the forum BTW!

thank you

 

[klauth]

is it that all composers are also dedicated gamers or video editors? :D

first guy says he got rtx 3080 in, second guy 4090. both of these absolute high end. just wondering lol

 

[PaulieDC]

is it that all composers are also dedicated gamers or video editors? :D

first guy says he got rtx 3080 in, second guy 4090. both of these absolute high end. just wondering lol

No, I don't need a 3080 for composing, no one does, you're right! Confession time: Besides music, the one other thing I'll be running on here is Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I may have an occasional video editing job to do. Being older, this'll probably be the last mega-tower I'll want to build for myself, so I went all-out, planned it for a while, spent five grand and got 'er done. Annnnnd, a great BF deal got me a 38" wide curved Dell monitor, so that's IT, I'm done, and it can handle whatever I throw at it. Now the pressure is on because all that's left is to work hard to become a WAY better composer. Yikes, no pressure. If I fail, I'll fly planes around all day.

 

[Virtuoso]

is it that all composers are also dedicated gamers or video editors? :D

first guy says he got rtx 3080 in, second guy 4090. both of these absolute high end. just wondering lol

I’ve been working in video for 30 years. My main music system is actually a Mac Pro, but almost all the video work gets done on PCs where I really need the horsepower.

 

[lokotus]

Regarding Raptor Lake and Cubase/Nuendo this new Platform doesn´t seem to be supported fully, since Steinberg also recommends turning off e-cores as stated here:

https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/8412891538066-Performance-issues-on-Intel-Core-12th-gen-or-newer-hybrid-architecture-CPUs

Does this still happen with the newest win11 and cubase or nuendo 12 updates ?
If yes, I would find it to be too much of a risk investing in this new platform when software (windows 11/thread director) isn't even porperly adjusted for good all the cores & Audio/Asio Work...

If anyone has experience working in a real environment (using Vienna Ensemble Pro and heavy VI/Insert FX mixing) I would appreciate any experience beside the benchmark testing results.

Thanks, lokotus

 

[twarch]

Oh wow, the 13700 will be such a huge improvement, you'll be over the moon.

The 7700 is just getting overpowered... here's the architecture vs the 7940X, which is still an i9 and a much higher core count:

i7-7700K 4-core/8-thread
CPUBenchmark.net score 9,661

i9-7940X 14-core/28-thread
CPUBenchmark.net 26,307

HOWEVER, look at the spec for the 13700 you want:
i7-13700K 16-core/24-thread
CPUBenchmark.net score 47,106

And your single core performance will double with the 13700, and your floating point MOps/sec will be about 6x faster, which all come into play with audio. So go for it! And definitely use an NVMe M.2 for your C: drive, they are about the same as a standard SSD now. Have fun with the build!

Just to share my experience, I just finished my new machine (i7 13700KF) and you were right, I'm over the moon!
I loaded a mix session under Reaper which killed my i7 7700K at 2048 samples of latency (a lot of oversampling for the test). the same session loads without any dropouts at 64 samples latency on the i7 13700KF! I even added tracks and oversampling on the master for the test and no problem, I was able to export in real time and go through my analog compressor.
A new world awaits me
Same experience under Ableton Live, I was able to do a session with about fifteen Arturia synths with barely 15% CPU load... With the 7700k, 10 synths were too many... Really very happy with this new machine!

If people are interested in the config:
Intel I7 13700KF
Gigabyte Z790 UD AX (not the best MB but do the job)
Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32Go (2x16Go) 6000MHz C36
SSD Crucial P3 plus (PCI 4 gen 4)
for the rest, these are my old pieces: GTX 1660 Super for graphic card, old Be Quiet! 650W PSU (with just 1 CPU(P8) connector but works well with the 13700KF.

 

[lokotus]

Just to share my experience, I just finished my new machine (i7 13700KF) and you were right, I'm over the moon!
I loaded a mix session under Reaper which killed my i7 7700K at 2048 samples of latency (a lot of oversampling for the test). the same session loads without any dropouts at 64 samples latency on the i7 13700KF! I even added tracks and oversampling on the master for the test and no problem, I was able to export in real time and go through my analog compressor.
A new world awaits me
Same experience under Ableton Live, I was able to do a session with about fifteen Arturia synths with barely 15% CPU load... With the 7700k, 10 synths were too many... Really very happy with this new machine!

If people are interested in the config:
Intel I7 13700KF
Gigabyte Z790 UD AX (not the best MB but do the job)
Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32Go (2x16Go) 6000MHz C36
SSD Crucial P3 plus (PCI 4 gen 4)
for the rest, these are my old pieces: GTX 1660 Super for graphic card, old Be Quiet! 650W PSU (with just 1 CPU(P8) connector but works well with the 13700KF.

nice , have you tried latncymon https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon to see if all latency values and "green" . Cheers, lokotus

 

[DANIELE]

Thank you, I was wondering if going from my i9 10940X to the i9 13900KF could be a good choice and this give me a good advice about it.

My actual CPU is overclocked and I'd like to build a new PC without being forced to do some OC on the CPU.
I would like to wait for a new enthusiast chipset but it seems that there's nothing near for now.

The thing that is holding me back to build a mainstream workstation is the dual channel memory thing vs the quad channel of the enthusiast one and the PCI-E lanes available plus some other things that I like so much.

I'm still on the fence but this shows how good could be using this chipset.

Maybe I could wait for the rumored W790...

 

[twarch]

nice , have you tried latncymon https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon to see if all latency values and "green" . Cheers, lokotus

Yes I tried very quickly and everything was green. I'll do a test again and share a screenshot if you want