Intel Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU Hits A Blistering 8GHz In Impressive Overclock
An adventurous overclocker has apparently taken a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900K processor and dipped it in liquid nitrogen, en route to achieving a staggering 8GHz clock speed across all eight Performance cores (P-cores). While obviously impractical, it's a noteworthy achievement, given that it's been more than decade since anyone has pushed an Intel chip to such frequency heights.
Had the Gigahertz War of yesteryear continued in earnest, hitting 8GHz on Intel silicon would likely be old news. However, Intel and AMD made the sensible shift to multi-core computing and put more focus on architectural upgrades, rather than being consumed by chasing higher frequencies at the expense of all else. That doesn't mean either company has stopped pushing for faster clocks, just that this is a different landscape than the Netburst era.
All the same, overclocking enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to push the MHz/GHz envelope. Over at HWBOT, older AMD CPUs dominate the frequency rankings, with the FX-8370 sitting at the top spot at 8,722.8MHz (8.72GHz).
Incidentally, the only Intel CPUs to creep into 8GHz territory are older chips as well—the Celeron D 352 and Celeron D 347 occupy the No. 5 and 16 spots, respectively. Both of those are Cedarmill parts released all the way back in 2006. There's also a Pentium 4 631 chip that has breached the 8GHz threshold, the fastest of which is 8,179.9MHz.
Source: WCCFTech
Now, it looks like Intel's next-gen CPUs will see a return to such heights. The folks at WCCFTech obtained a CPU-Z screenshot showing the unreleased Core i9-13900K hitting 8GHz on the nose. According to the site, the upcoming flagship is being tested on a Z790 motherboard. It's also said that the unnamed overclocker was "easily able to" achieve 8GHz using with the voltage pushed to 1.792v and using LN2 cooling.
Neither of those are for the faint of heart (or wallet/purse), as context matters—we're looking at extreme cooling and a big voltage bump. However, the overclocker in question feels confident that 8GHz will be the floor for extreme overclocking attempts on the Core i9-13900K, and that we should expect significantly higher clocks once Raptor Lake launches.
The other caveat that we should mention is that the overclocker disabled SMT and all Efficiency cores (E-cores). Still, hitting 8GHz is impressive, and not something anyone could boast on modern Intel silicon in a long time.
