Enlarge / Intel's high-end Core i9-13900K and 14900K are reportedly having crashing problems in some games. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

If you own a recent high-end Intel desktop CPU and you've been running into weird game crashes lately, you're not alone.

Scattered reports from Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K users over the last couple of months have pointed to processor power usage as a possible source of crashes even in relatively undemanding games like Fortnite . Games like Hogwarts Legacy , Remnant 2 , Alan Wake 2 , Horizon: Zero Dawn , The Last of Us Part 1 , and Outpost: Infinity Siege have also reportedly been affected ; the problem primarily seems to affect titles made with Epic's Unreal Engine. Intel said in a statement to ZDNet Korea (via The Verge ) that it's looking into the problems, escalating it from an "isolated issue" to something that may be more widespread and could require a more systemic fix.

Related CPUs like the i9-13900KF, i9-14900KF, i9-13900KS, and i9-14900KS may be affected, too, since they're all the same basic silicon. Some user reports have also indicated that the i7-13700K and i7-14700K series may also be affected.

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel's new desktop processor generations haven't always come with significant generational improvements in recent years, as the company has struggled with new manufacturing tech that enables big leaps in performance and power efficiency. For every major jump—the 12th-generation CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake , come to mind—you usually get several faster but less-than-thrilling iterations.

Intel is officially launching its 14th-generation desktop processors today, and they're firmly in that iterative, non-thrilling group, even compared to last year's 13th-generation chips. The good news for price-conscious PC builders is that they'll continue to work in all current 600- and 700-series motherboards after a BIOS update, and Intel isn't launching a series of new motherboards to accompany them—there aren't many compelling reasons to upgrade from a 12th-gen setup to a 14th-gen one, but it's an available option.

Even the branding Intel is using here signifies that the processors are a throwback— next-gen Meteor Lake chips for laptops and all of Intel's other chips are losing the generational and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding in favor of "Core" and "Core Ultra." By Intel's admission, the last gasp of the 14th-generation branding here is a nod to how similar they are to the 13th-generation chips that preceded them (and, for that matter, the 12th-gen ones before that).

Enlarge / Intel's Core i5-13400. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Fancy expensive processors are fun, but for most people who just want to build a decent middle-of-the-road PC for gaming (and anything else), the best advice is usually to buy a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 for somewhere in the $200–$250 range and pair it with the fastest graphics card you can afford.

Intel's Core i5-13400 (and the graphics-less 13400F) caught our eye when Intel announced it because it was adding a cluster of four E-cores to the Core i5-12400, which was one of Intel's best mid-range desktop CPUs in years . E-cores don't matter much for games, but they can help when you're trying to run background tasks behind your game, and they can also provide a decent boost to heavily multithreaded CPU workloads like video encoding or CPU-based rendering.

This is nominally a review of the Core i5-13400, which is a good CPU and (when considered together with the cost of a motherboard and RAM) one of the better bargains you'll find if you're building a PC right now. The problem is that Intel sells a lot of very similar 12th- and 13th-generation Core i5 chips, and the prices are constantly bouncing around in that $160–$250 band. The one you should usually get depends on what you're doing and which one happens to be the cheapest at the moment you're buying.

Enlarge / Intel's new laptop CPU lineup is a lot like the old CPU lineup. (credit: Intel)

Intel's 13th-generation desktop CPU refresh is interesting because processors up and down the lineup are picking up extra clusters of four or eight E-cores, significantly improving how they handle heavily threaded tasks. The new laptop CPUs that Intel has also announced are much less interesting—the ones that will end up in most laptops increase clock speeds and support faster memory but are otherwise mostly identical to the 12th-generation CPUs they're replacing.

This isn't uncommon; Intel's 7th generation refresh was similarly low-key, and the 10th generation mostly was, too. The days when every year would bring either a new architecture or a new manufacturing process are long gone. Just know when you're shopping for a laptop that the jump from the 11th- to the 12th-generation represents a much larger performance leap (and, sometimes, a battery life reduction ) than the jump from the 12th- to the 13th-gen.

• 

  Because they're desktop chips repackaged for mobile, the HX CPUs improve more than the other 13th-gen laptop CPUs. Like the desktop CPUs, they pick up extra E-cores. [credit: Intel ]

Intel spent most of its presentation talking about the high-end HX-series processors, mainly because they're the only ones that are significantly different from their 12th-gen predecessors. HX laptop processors are essentially Intel's Raptor Lake desktop CPUs, repackaged to be soldered down to a laptop motherboard. Like those desktop CPUs, they all include additional E-cores relative to 12th-gen CPUs. The Core i9 CPUs and the i7-13850HX also support faster DDR5-5600 RAM, though the others stick with DDR5-4800.

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

The 13th-generation "Raptor Lake" Intel Core CPUs we've tested so far have performed well by virtue of throwing lots and lots of cores at most workloads , and the less-expensive processors in the lineup are going to take the same approach. The number of large high-performance P-cores is staying the same, but CPUs from i5 to i9 are all picking up extra E-cores to help with rendering, encoding, and other high-end professional apps that can use every CPU core you give them.

Leaks and other early reports appear to have gotten everything from core counts to clock speeds to cache size mostly correct, so if you've been paying attention, none of today's announcements will come as a surprise. But for people who aren't familiar, the short version is that these are riffs on the 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs' hybrid architecture, and their designs haven't changed much. They'll also continue to fit into the same LGA1700 motherboards as 12th-generation CPUs, so 600-series motherboards should recognize them just fine after a BIOS update.

• 

  The 65 W versions of Intel's new 13th-gen Core CPUs. The Core i9 and i7 variants include more cache per core than the i5 and i3 chips. [credit: Intel ]

Core i9 and Core i7 CPUs all have eight P-cores, but i9 chips come with 16 E-cores while i7 chips come with eight. Core i5 CPUs all come with six P-cores, but the amount of E-cores varies—the i5-13600 and i5-13500 come with eight, while the lowest-end i5-13400 comes with four. The Core i5-12500 and 12400 didn't come with any E-cores at all, so people in the market for a good mainstream CPU for a budget-conscious gaming PC or workstation will benefit even more from the jump between the 12th- and 13th-gen chips. The Core i3 remains the only CPU in the lineup with no E-cores, though their four P-cores should still do just fine for office work and low-end gaming desktops.

Enlarge / An overview of the improvements coming to Intel's 13th-gen desktop chips. (credit: Intel)

If there's one thing Intel has gotten good at in the last few years, it's refining a CPU architecture. Between 2015 and 2020, manufacturing troubles pushed Intel to release not one, not two, but five processor generations based on iterations of the sixth-gen Skylake core, while still managing to increase clock speeds and core counts enough to stay competitive through most of that timespan.

It's an approach Intel is returning to for its 13th-generation Core CPUs, the first of which are being officially announced today. Codenamed Raptor Lake, Intel says it has made some improvements to the CPU architecture and the Intel 7 manufacturing process, but the strategy for improving their performance is both time-tested and easy to understand: add more cores, and make them run at higher clock speeds.

Intel is announcing three new CPUs today, each with and without integrated graphics (per usual, the models with no GPUs have an "F" at the end): the Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i5-13600K will launch on October 20 alongside new Z790 chipsets and motherboards. They will also work in all current-generation 600-series motherboards as long as your motherboard maker has provided a BIOS update, and will continue to support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory.

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel is gearing up to release the first products in its 13th-generation Core processor family, codenamed Raptor Lake. Among the topline facts that the company announced at its Intel Technology Tour is that at least one member of the Raptor Lake family will be capable of hitting 6 GHz out of the box ( via Tom's Hardware ). Core counts and architectural improvements are generally more important than clock speed when it comes to increasing a CPU's performance these days, but after many years hanging out in the 5 GHz range, it's neat to hit the next digit.

As for what this means for performance, Intel is saying that Raptor Lake will perform roughly 15 percent better in single-threaded tasks and 41 percent better in multi-threaded workloads than the current 12th-generation Alder Lake chips. Clock speed is more important for boosting single-threaded performance, while adding more cores is usually the best way to improve multi-threaded speeds.

It's not clear which of the CPUs will be capable of hitting 6 GHz or under what circumstances or for how long. An Intel SKU chart published by Igor's Lab suggests that the Core i9-13900K will top out at 5.8 GHz, though it's possible that it's capable of further boosting beyond that.