13700 vs 13600 versions K, KF, or others

[Azurael]

I have gotten lots of suggestion to pick a 13600 type of CPU over a 13700 type of CPU when it comes to gaming. 

If anyone could enlighten me as to the reasoning I am quite curious.

[dizmo]

The performance is about the same. No real reason to spend more.

[Bismut]

K = overclockable
F = no iGPU

The 13600 is about as fast as the 13700, games usually don't use all of the cores on the 13700, rendering them useless unless you stream/record at the same time
 

[RONOTHAN##]

The -F in a SKU means that it doesn't have an iGPU, whether or not it's combined with a -K or any other letter. The -F SKUs are generally ~$5-10 cheaper, so they're usually worth looking at if you are going to use the dGPU, though assuming they're the same price you pretty much always want to go for the non-F version (the exception is the 13900KF vs. 13900K if you're doing competitive overclocking, as the 13900KF is unbinned while the 13900K is a down bin of the 13900KS, so you have a better chance of getting a golden chip in the 13900KF than the 13900K). 

 

The -K is a little bit more complicated. It usually means that the chip has a higher base/boost clock and is unlocked for overclocking. That said, since 12th gen it can also mean that the CPU is actually physically different, at least in the i5s (the 12600 didn't have E cores while the 12600K did, for instance). On 13th gen, it's a bit more subtle, the 13600 has just over half the amount of L2 cache that the 13600K does, so in some workloads the 13600K can be a fair bit slower. That distinction is not present on the 13700 and 13700K, there it's just overclocking and base/boost clocks. 

 

As for why people suggest picking something like a 13600K over a 13700 or 13700K for gaming is that 6 core are generally fine enough for most gaming tasks, so you can save money going that way. 

[Dedayog]

22 minutes ago, Azurael said:

I have gotten lots of suggestion to pick a 13600 type of CPU over a 13700 type of CPU when it comes to gaming. 

If anyone could enlighten me as to the reasoning I am quite curious.

It's got performance almost at the 13700k level, due to games not scaling much past a certain core count.  Right now peak gaming is done on 6-8 core CPUs, so that is your sweet spot.  13600K for Intel, 7700x for AMD (not counting the x3d variants).

 

 

 

[Fasauceome]

buying an i7 = bragging rights

Buying an i5 = saving money

[Azurael]

2 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The -F in a SKU means that it doesn't have an iGPU, whether or not it's combined with a -K or any other letter. The -F SKUs are generally ~$5-10 cheaper, so they're usually worth looking at if you are going to use the dGPU, though assuming they're the same price you pretty much always want to go for the non-F version (the exception is the 13900KF vs. 13900K if you're doing competitive overclocking, as the 13900KF is unbinned while the 13900K is a down bin of the 13900KS, so you have a better chance of getting a golden chip in the 13900KF than the 13900K). 

 

The -K is a little bit more complicated. It usually means that the chip has a higher base/boost clock and is unlocked for overclocking. That said, since 12th gen it can also mean that the CPU is actually physically different, at least in the i5s (the 12600 didn't have E cores while the 12600K did, for instance). On 13th gen, it's a bit more subtle, the 13600 has just over half the amount of L2 cache that the 13600K does, so in some workloads the 13600K can be a fair bit slower. That distinction is not present on the 13700 and 13700K, there it's just overclocking and base/boost clocks. 

 

As for why people suggest picking something like a 13600K over a 13700 or 13700K for gaming is that 6 core are generally fine enough for most gaming tasks, so you can save money going that way. 

Sorry, I really should have specified that I understand the letter idetifiers that corrispond to the Processors. I was looking for why the 13th Gen I5 is recomended over the 13th Gen I7.