As Intel reclaims the mid-range, Paul Alcorn assesses that the company has lost the low-end.
The Intel Core i3-13100F comes to market with big shoes to fill; its predecessor, the Core i3-12100F, built a reputation as the best budget CPU. Intel is obviously looking to repeat that success, but perhaps the Core i3-13100F follows in the footsteps of its predecessor too closely — the company repurposed the previous-gen design for the Core i3-13100, so it has the same four P-cores paired with an ever-so-slightly-improved 200MHz-higher boost clock of 4.5GHz.
As such, outside of some microcode tuning, the 13100 is identical to the 12100. That is evident from the L2 cache capacity, which weighs in at 1.25MB per core for the 13100. In contrast, the truly new Raptor Cove cores come with 2MB per core.
Like its predecessor, the Core i3-13100F (the F lacks an iGPU) comes with four performance cores and eight threads, but no E-cores for background tasks. Intel sprinkled on 200MHz of extra boost frequency, bringing it to 4.5GHz, and 100MHz higher base clock, taking it to 4.3GHz. The clock speed adjustments are all that Intel has to justify the step up to 13th-gen branding and the much higher price tag, while AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600 has seen substantial price reductions that change the circa-£130 landscape entirely.
Picking up speed
If you’re looking for a gaming processor for around £100, the £120 Core i3-13100F is 8% faster than the £95 Ryzen 5 5500, giving it the win. The Ryzen 5 5500 is also limited to the PCIe 3.0 interface, while the 13100F supports the faster PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 interfaces, giving it a big drive speed boost.
However, if you’re looking for a chip with a little more heft in productivity workloads, or if you can’t find a Core i3 F-series model in stock, you’ll have to jump up to the £130 to £150 price range. The £130 Ryzen 5 5600 is 8% faster than the Core i3-13100 in 1080p gaming, yet costs $10 less, making it an easy recommendation even before we take its other advantages into account. The £120 Core i3-12100 remains a viable alternative here if you absolutely must have an iGPU (the Ryzen model doesn’t have one), but the R
