It’s a great time to be a PC gamer. After a quiet start to 2022, we are ready for a flood of PC hardware releases. One of my top picks is the Intel 13th Gen Core i5 13400. We love the i5 12400, but we like the new 13400.
Our review of the i5-12400 is available. Dave James gave it an incredible 95/100. It could have only scored higher if it came with a motherboard and cost 50 dollars. It is excellent and efficient, consumes little power, and has enough horsepower to support high-end graphics cards. It lacked efficiency cores, which it had in common with the 12th Gen CPUs. Its multi-threading and multitasking abilities were far behind those of the 12600K.
The 13400 will now include four Gracemont E cores, giving the 13400 a significant multi-threaded performance increase. Although it cannot compete with higher core count CPUs, 16-threads are more than enough to meet current gaming needs. Including E cores mean the chip should deliver low idle and minimal load power consumption.
According to WCCFTech’s specs (via sweclockers), the E cores of 13400 will run at 3.3GHz, according to a list. This is a low clock speed compared to higher-tier models, but it won’t be necessary if the cores are used in background tasks or idle applications.
The P cores of the 13400 get a maximum turbo boost up to 200MHz, which is 4.6GHz more than the 4.4GHz of 12400. The L3 cache is also increased to 20MB, compared to the 18MB for the 12400. This is expected because of the E cores. DDR4 and DDR5 support remain the same at 3200MHz, respectively, but you would expect good quality XMP kit to run faster than that without any issues.
Many enthusiasts are wondering if it can overclock via BCLK. MSI’s B660M Mortar Max WiFi allowed BCLK OC to use locked 12th-Gen CPUs. Motherboard manufacturers may release B760 motherboards at a lower price to support this feature. The 13400 could be a great CPU and a legend. However, Intel might not allow it. We will have to wait to see.
We have a base TDP processor of 65W with 16 threads and low cooling requirements. The processor consumes very little idle power and can boost to 4.6GHz. Already, the 13400 looks very impressive indeed. If the 12400 is any indication, it will be priced very attractively. Newegg currently sells the 12400 for $194, while the 12400F with integrated graphics costs $175. Intel will be a substantial budget gaming competitor if the 13400F and 13400F are sold at the same price.
It will be a lot cheaper than the Ryzen 5 7600X. You can put a 13400 on a 600-series Intel motherboard with DDR4 or DDR5, but you will need to replace the RAM and motherboard if you go with AMD.
I cannot wait to see how the battle for budget gaming supremacy unfolds.
