NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series is finally out and up for grabs at most PC hardware stores. Early January saw the release of the third contender in the line of GPUs powered by the newest Ada Lovelace architecture, the RTX 4070 Ti. With the steady release of these new powerful GPUs, many are looking to either upgrade their current build, or maybe build the PC of their dreams. Of course, getting some of the newest GPUs on the market should allow your PC to achieve top performance, but is only getting a performant GPU enough?
With the release of new hardware comes the issue of bottlenecks. If you’re planning on splurging on a brand-new graphics card to enjoy some AAA titles, you want to make sure to get the max performance out of it, especially with the current prices. Thankfully, our good friends at Intel also recently released their Intel Core 13th gen CPUs. So, is Intel’s 12th gen powerful enough to handle these RTX 40 series GPU or do you need the newest 13th gen CPUs?
In today’s article we’re going to be see if the RTX 40 series GPUs perform that much better with a 13th gen CPU than with a 12th gen CPU at a 1440p resolution. We tested six (6) different configurations with a total of two (2) CPUs and three (3) GPUs to see how they performed when it came to AAA titles.
THE GAMES
Since we’re testing out games at a 1440p resolution, we’ve decided to focus on the results obtained on AAA titles, as this is the category where players are more inclined to want a better image quality.
Here are the titles we tested:
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Each game was tested at 1440p resolution with the highest graphic settings.
The charts below show the FPS obtained for each game when running the in-game benchmark mode.
Microsoft Flight Simulator benchmark was obtained by noting the average FPS showed on screen over the course of a 5-minute flight, as the game does not posses a benchmark mode.
THE BUILD
In today’s article, we’ll be looking at the results obtained for the RTX 4090, RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti at 1440p with an i9-13900K and comparing it to the results obtained for these same GPUs but with an i9-12900K configuration.
For the i9-13900k benchmark, we are showing the benchmarks results obtained on our Odyssey Pro gaming PC (buy it here). Here is the configuration we tested:
– Intel Core i9-13900k
– 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair Dominator 5600 MHz DDR5
– 2 x 1TB m.2 PCIe SSD by Western Digital SN750
– 1000-watt Gold PSU by Corsair
– Windows 10 Home
Along with this configuration, we tested the following ASUS graphics cards:
– GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
– GeForce RTX 4080 16GB
– GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB
For the i9-12900k benchmark, we are showing the benchmarks results obtained on our Tower Pro gaming PC (buy it here). Here is the configuration we tested:
– Intel Core i9-12900k
– 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair Dominator 5600 MHz DDR5
– 2 x 1TB m.2 PCIe SSD by Western Digital SN750
– 1000-watt Gold PSU by Corsair
– Windows 10 Home
Along with this configuration, we tested the following ASUS graphics cards:
– GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
– GeForce RTX 4080 16GB
– GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB
The RTX 4090 benefits the most from the upgrade to a 13th gen CPU
Looking at the results below, we can see that out of six, only four games benefit at least a little bit from a CPU upgrade at 1440p. The game showing the most improvement is Horizon Zero Dawn with the 13900K bringing us to an incredible 196 FPS while the 12900K managed 181 FPS. This makes for a decent 8% improvement. In second place, we have Red Dead Redemption 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator showing a 4% improvement with the 13900K managing to reach 177 FPS and 202 FPS. The last game to show some change is F1 2022, with a tiny 1% improvement which translates into 2 additional frames.
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If we take into account the results above, it’s interesting to see that only four games showed an improvement in 1440p when using a 13900K. While the difference is not much to write home about, the RTX 4090 is the GPU that benefits the most overall from the upgrade to a 13th gen processor, with an improvement average of 3%. It’s also good to note that since we’re testing AAA games that are usually more GPU than CPU intensive, the minimal improvement is somewhat expected.
If you’re considering a RTX 4080, spare your wallet and stick to the 12th gen
For this comparison chart, we can see that the improvement in the performance of the RTX 4080 at 1440p with a 13900K is way less consistent than the RTX 4090. Only two games managed to boost their framerates. Horizon Zero Dawn showed the most improvement, with the 13900K allowing us to gain 12 extra frames, which makes from an 8% from the 12900K. Microsoft flight simulator is the second game showing improvement, with the 12900K reaching 187 FPS and the 13900K managing 195 FPS making for a 4% improvement between the CPUs.
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Look at the results for the RTX 4080, we can easily see that the CPU upgrade has a negligible impact on the framerate of the games that did manage to improve. Considering also that all of the games already manage to reach over 120 FPS simply with the 12900K, it’s clear that the CPU upgrade is practically useless when it comes to AAA titles. The RTX 4080 only shows an average of 2% improvement between the two CPUs, which is mostly due to the fact that four of the games tested showed no improvement whatsoever.
The RTX 4070 Ti doesn’t need an 13th gen CPU either
For the final results with the 4070 Ti, we can see that while three games showed improvement, it wasn’t very noticeable. Once again, Horizon Zero Dawn is the game that showed the most improvement with the 13900K managing an extra 8 frames for a small 4% improvement. Microsoft Flight Simulator is the second most impacted game with a 2% improvement, going from 172 FPS with the 12900K to 175 FPS with the 13900K. Meanwhile, Red Dead Redemption 2 gains one singular frame with CPU upgrade.
Click on image to enlarge
Looking at our results for this GPU, it is clear that there isn’t much improvement overall at 1440p when switching from a 12th gen to a 13th gen CPU. Even Horizon Zero Dawn, which is the game with the biggest improvement, only gained a measly 8 frames. Even with the RTX 4070 Ti being the technically the least powerful GPU out of the 3 tested, pairing it with a 12900k already allowed us to reach an average of 158 FPS for this AAA category, which is already great considering the games were tested at a higher resolution with graphic settings on max. The average improvement with the 13th gen CPU for this graphic card is only 1% and so it doesn’t seem like the RTX 4070 Ti needs to be paired with a 13900k in order to perform adequately at 1440p.
CONCLUSION: Do I need the Intel Core i9-13900k to unlock the power of the RTX 40 series at 1440p?
Looking at the results for the different RTX 40 series GPUs paired with the 12th gen and 13th gen CPUs, we can see that while there is a slight improvement at 1440p when switching to the newest CPU, it’s not very significant.
The RTX 4090 benefited the most from the upgrade to a 13900K with an average improvement on framerate of 3%, largely due to Horizon Zero Dawn showing the biggest improve with 8%.
The RTX 4080 followed second with a 2% average improvement in framerate overall, but a less consistent improvement across the different titles, as only Horizon Zero Dawn and Microsoft Flight Simulator managed to gain a bit of extra frames.
The RTX 4070 Ti came in third place as expected, with an average improvement of 1% for this AAA category.
All in all, while we can technically say that any of these GPUs would benefit from being paired with an Intel Core i9-13900K, the overall minimal improvement and the heftier price tag of the processor doesn’t make the decision to upgrade very appealing. The Intel Core i9-12900k was able to push out amazing numbers with the RTX 40 series even in 1440p. Therefore, it’s safe to say that when it comes to AAA titles, the i9-12900K does not bottleneck NVIDIA’s latest GPUs.
We hope that this article helped you better understand the capabilities of the PC industry’s latest GPUs and CPUs when it comes to AAA gaming in 1440p.
If you have any questions about the results presented here or maybe other configurations, feel free to reach out to us on our socials.
You can check out our article benchmarking NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 24GB in more detail here
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GLHF