DaVinci Resolve Studio: 13th Gen Intel Core vs AMD Ryzen 7000

Introduction

The last few months have been hectic in terms of new hardware. First, AMD launched their Ryzen 7000 Series of processors along with the new AM5 chipset in late September. Then, in early October, Intel launched their Arc A750 and A770 discrete GPUs, followed quickly by NVIDIA starting their rolling launch of the GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs on October 12th, starting with the GeForce RTX 4090 24GB.

And now, Intel is launching their new 13th Gen Intel Core processors – code-named "Raptor Lake". Unlike AMD's Ryzen 7000 Series, the Intel 13th Gen processors should be able to be dropped into any motherboard that supports the previous 12th Gen CPUs, and maintain support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. We did get a bump in terms of what RAM speed is officially supported, but from a platform view, the 13th Gen is pretty much a drop-in upgrade from 12th Gen.

In this article, we will be using our PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve 0.93.1 benchmark paired with DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.0.2 to examine the performance of the new Intel Core 13th Gen CPUs. As a comparison, we will be including the previous generation 12th Gen processors, as well as their primary competition – the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series. In addition, while we won't be calling out the results specifically in this article, the raw results table in the next section also includes the AMD Ryzen 5000 Series since Ryzen 7000 was only recently released.

If you want to read more about the new Intel Core 13th Gen, and what sets them apart from the previous generation, we recommend checking out our main Intel Core 13th Gen Processors Content Creation Review article. That post includes more detailed information on the CPU specifications, testing results for a range of other applications including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine; as well as all the test setup details for both the hardware and software used in our testing.

Raw Benchmark Data

While our benchmark presents various scores based on the performance of each test, we also like to provide individual results for you to examine. If there is a specific task that is a hindrance to your workflow, examining the raw results for that task is going to be much more applicable than the scores that our benchmark calculated.

Feel free to skip to the next sections for our analysis of these results to get a wider view of how each configuration performs.

Intel Core 13th Gen vs AMD Ryzen 7000 for DaVinci Resolve Studio

To start off our analysis, we wanted to look at how the new 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs compared to AMD's Ryzen 7000 series. The MSRP pricing for Intel and AMD don't exactly match, but in most cases, the comparisons we are making in the chart above are looking at CPUs that have an MSRP within $40 of each other. The exception to this is the Core i9 13900K vs Ryzen 7950X since Intel doesn't currently have a CPU that is on par with the Ryzen 7950X in terms of MSRP ($699). We didn't want to leave the 7950X out, so we decided to include the 13900K twice. First versus the 7900X (a price/performance comparison), and second versus the 7950X (a best-of-each-generation comparison)

If you are interested in the exact MSRP for each of these CPUs, we have a full breakdown in our main 13th Gen Intel Core Processors Content Creation Review article.

In most cases, the performance gap between the 13th Gen Intel Core processors and AMD's Ryzen 7000 series is minor. Only the Core i5 13600K is significantly faster than AMD, while the Core i7 13700K and i9 13900K are basically on par with their AMD equivalents. DaVinci Resolve is a very robust application, however, so we also like to dive into how performance may change depending on the type of codecs you work with, and whether you use Fusion.

Starting with H.264 and HEVC (which are both longGOP codecs) on chart #2, Intel has a slight lead, primarily due to the fact that these CPUs all use Quick Sync, which Resolve can use to accelerate decoding of H.264/HEVC media. It can use the GPU as well, but Quick Sync tends to be slightly faster. Something not shown in these results, however, is how much more capable Quick Sync is at working with HEVC compared to using a GPU for decoding. We have a full table showing what "flavors" of HEVC is supported on both the hardware and software side in our What H.264 and H.265 Hardware Decoding is Supported in DaVinci Resolve Studio? article, but the crux of it is that 12/13th Gen Quick Sync supports far more variations of HEVC than AMD and NVIDIA dGPUs.

We should note that the Ryzen 7000 CPUs do have an iGPU this time around, which should be able to be used for hardware decoding as well. Unfortunately, as we went into in more detail in our Ryzen 7000 launch article, the iGPU on those CPUs is currently broken and cannot be used for decoding in Resolve. We suspect that the capabilities won't be as robust as Quick Sync, but we can't be positive until it is fixed and we can find out for sure.

Moving on to chart #3, we are looking at performance when working with ProRes media – although this should also largely hold true for similar intraframe codecs like DNxHD/HR. Here, Intel has a pretty strong lead over AMD, with the Core i7 13700K and i9 13900K coming in at 12-13% faster than the Ryzen 7700X and 7900X respectively. The Core i5 13600K shows an even larger advantage of 18% higher performance compared to the Ryzen 7600X.

The final type of codec we currently test is RAW, including both RED and BRAW (chart #4). This is an area where AMD and Intel somewhat trade blows. At the lower end, Intel still has a clear advantage, with the Core i7 13700K coming in at 19% faster than the Ryzen 7700X, while the Core i5 13600K is 26% faster than the Ryzen 7600X. The Core i9 13900K and Ryzen 7900X, however, are evenly matched, and AMD is able to take one of their few leads with the Ryzen 7950X coming in at 14% faster than the i9 13900K. Keep in mind that the 7950X is a more expensive CPU, so this isn't a price/performance comparison, but rather the peak performance for both product families.

Lastly, we like to look at the performance in Fusion (chart #5). Even if you don't use the Fusion tab itself very often, most of the titles built into resolve use Fusion as a base. Fusion is extremely single-threaded, so most of the CPUs we tested score very similarly. Only the Core i5 13600K was measurably faster than AMD, and only by about 8%.

Intel Core 13th Gen vs Intel Core 12th Gen for DaVinci Resolve Studio

In the previous section, we saw that the new 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs are across the board faster than the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors in DaVinci Resolve. This is great as far as the typical "Intel vs AMD" comparison goes, but we also wanted to look at how much faster the 13th Gen processors are compared to the previous 12th Gen CPUs.

Just like the previous section, we want to mention that we are including the Core i9 13900K twice. Intel currently doesn't have a 13th Gen equivalent to the Core i9 12900KS, but we didn't want to leave it out. So, we decided to show the 13900K compared to both the 12900K and 12900KS.

In terms of equivalent models, we are looking at a modest 7-9% increase in performance from the new 13th Gen CPUs. There was actually only a minor increase in performance for longGOP (H.264/HEVC) codecs and Fusion, likely partially due to the fact that Intel didn't make many changes to Quick Sync. Conversely, ProRes and RAW saw much larger gains. RAW in particular (chart #4) benefits quite a bit from the additional E-cores and other architecture improvements, resulting in around a 25% performance gain over the 12th Gen processors.

How well do the Intel Core 13th Gen CPUs perform in DaVinci Resolve?

When AMD launched their Ryzen 7000 processors just last month, there were a number of areas in DaVinci Resolve where they held a lead over Intel – most notably when working with RAW footage like RED and BRAW. With the new 13th Gen CPUs, however, Intel has taken the lead almost across the board. The 13th Gen CPUs are only a small 7-9% faster than the previous 12th Gen CPUs in terms of overall performance in Resolve, but they give a larger gain in a few key areas (such as RED/BRAW) where AMD has recently had an advantage.

Currently, we like to break down performance in video editing applications like Resolve according to the three main types of codecs we test:

• LongGOP (H.264/HEVC) – Intel Core CPUs with Quick Sync are extremely strong here, making the 13th Gen CPUs the clear choice over AMD Ryzen 7000. In many cases, this is more about what HEVC flavors Quick Sync supports, rather than raw performance.
• Intraframe (ProRes, DNx, etc.) – The Intel 13th Gen CPUs have a strong 12-18% performance lead, with the larger leads occurring lower down the product stack.
• RAW (RED/BRAW, etc.) – AMD holds the top spot with the Ryzen 7950X (coming in at 14% faster than the i9 13900K), but on a dollar-per-dollar basis, Intel 13th Gen CPUs are anywhere from on par, to 16% faster than their Ryzen 7000 counterparts.

If your budget is in the Core i5/i7 range, Intel is the clear choice over AMD with their Core i5 13600K and i7 13700K. The Core i9 13900K also outperforms the Ryzen 7900X in most cases, but the more expensive Ryzen 7950X does allow AMD to take the lead for heavy codecs like RED RAW and BRAW. But, if you work with H.264 or HEVC media at all (which is going to be extremely common at this price point), Intel is pretty much always going to be the better choice due to how robust Quick Sync is for hardware decoding of HEVC media in particular.

Keep in mind that the benchmark results in this article are strictly for DaVinci Resolve Studio and that performance will vary widely in different applications. If your workflow includes other software packages, we highly recommend checking out our Intel Core 13th Gen Processors Content Creation Review article which includes results and links to in-depth testing for a range of other applications including After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and Unreal Engine.