Table of Contents
TL;DR: 13th Gen Intel Core performance in V-Ray
Intel’s new 13th Gen CPUs show significant improvement over the previous generation, ranging from 27-37% faster. This is enough to bring the Intel 13900K within 9% of the current top CPU, the Ryzen 7950X, however that CPU costs $100 more. When compared to the Ryzen 7900X, which is much closer in price, the 13900K is 18% faster.
On the lower end, Intel pulls even further ahead. The 13700K and 13600K are 57% faster than the 7700X and 7600X respectively. Neither of these are CPUs you would specifically buy for CPU rendering, but it's good to know where they stand if you want a lower-cost 3d modeling/animation system to use with GPU rendering.
Introduction
The last few months has seen a flurry of product launches. Only a few weeks ago, AMD launched their new Ryzen 7000 series CPUs and new motherboards. Then Intel delivered the new video cards, the Ark A750 and A770, followed less than a week later by Nvidia’s new flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 4090.
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.
CPU rendering in V-Ray is dominated by large CPUs such as AMD’s Threadripper. However, users are more and more turning to GPU, or hybrid GPU/CPU rendering due to the speed modern GPUs can provide. Many of these users may want to choose a CPU with few cores but a higher clock speed for modeling and animation tasks, but still want to know how much assistance their CPU can give the GPU in rendering.
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In this article, we will be using V-Ray 5.02 from Chaos Group to examine the performance of the new AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs and compare them to Intel’s 12th generation CPUs, as well as the previous generation Ryzen 5000 series.
If you want to read more about the new Intel Core 13th Gen CPUs and what sets them apart from the previous generation, we recommend checking out our main 13th Gen Intel Core Processors Content Creation Review article. That post includes more detailed information on the CPU specifications, testing results for a range of other applications including Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Unreal Engine; as well as all the test setup details for both the hardware and software used in our testing. Also in this testing we are not using Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) on AMD or MultiCore Enhancement (MCE) on Intel so we can see the baseline performance. Each will give their respective CPU a few extra percent while consuming more power and making more heat. To read more about those features and why we aren’t using them, you can refer to the articles on the Impact of PBO and the Impact of MCE.
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Intel Core 13th Gen vs AMD Ryzen 7000 for V-Ray
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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 AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article.
The top tier Ryzen 7950X manages to hold on to its lead, with a 9% higher score over the Intel 13900K, while also having a $100 price premium. Do note that while they have different core counts, they have the same number of threads. This is because AMD allows for multithreading on all of its CPU cores, While Intel only has hyperthreading on 8 of its 24 cores. The result is both will appear as having 32 logical cores in Windows. This technique does show a slight lead from AMD as all of it cores are operating at a higher performance level, while some of Intel’s CPU cores are more focused on efficiency.
The Intel 13900K is much closer in price to the AMD Ryzen 7900X, though, in this comparison, Intel’s hybrid architecture allows for more CPU threads than AMD. The result is an 18% lead for Intel.
Moving on to the lower-end parts, Intel takes a commanding lead. This says a lot about the performance of Intel’s parts and the amazing value they provide. The new Intel 13700K and 13600K are 57% faster than the Ryzen 7700X and 7600X respectively. Intel really gives a great value proposition on the lower end. Not many people would be buying this class of CPU for rendering, but it is still good to see what value you are getting in your CPU even if you are using the GPU to render.
Intel Core 13th Gen vs Intel Core 12th Gen for V-Ray
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In the previous section, we examined how the new 13th Gen Intel processors stack up against AMD’s newest Ryzen 7000, but we should also examine how they compare to the previous 12th Gen Intel CPUs.
As we can see from the chart, there is a 27-37% improvement across the board. The combination of additional efficiency cores, higher boost clocks, and IPC improvements add up to a great generational improvement.
How well do the Intel 13th Gen CPUs perform in V-Ray?
Intel’s new 13th Gen CPUs show significant improvement over the previous generation, ranging from 27-37% faster. This is enough to bring the Intel 13900K within 9% of the current top CPU, the Ryzen 7950X, however that CPU costs $100 more. When compared to the Ryzen 7900X, which is much closer in price, the 13900K is 18% faster.
On the lower end, Intel pulls even further ahead. The 13700K and 13600K are 57% faster than the 7700X and 7600X respectively. Neither of these are CPUs you would specifically buy for CPU rendering, but it's good to know where they stand if you want a lower-cost 3d modeling/animation system to use with GPU rendering.
Keep in mind that the benchmark results in this article are strictly for V-Ray and that performance will vary widely in different applications. If your workflow includes other software packages, we highly recommend checking out our 13th Gen Intel Core Processors Content Creation Review article which includes results and links to in-depth testing for a range of other applications including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom Classic, DaVinci Resolve, and Unreal Engine.
Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.
Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.