BenchPair

Core i5-13400F bottleneck & gaming FPS

Ranked 98 of 201 desktop processors for gaming in our database (51th percentile). It can sustain roughly 128 fps in a typical AAA title regardless of resolution — that ceiling is what decides whether a graphics card is worth pairing with it.

SpecificationsRaptor Lake · 2023
ArchitectureRaptor Lake
Cores6 performance + 4 efficiency
Threads16
Boost clock4,600 MHz
L3 cache20 MB
TDP65 W
Released2023
Processor ceiling by game1080p, high

The frame rate this chip could sustain with an infinitely fast graphics card. It is almost the same at every resolution, because rendering more pixels gives the processor no extra work.

GameCPU ceilingWith GeForce RTX 3090
Cyberpunk 2077 126 fps 88 fps
Fortnite 164 fps 162 fps
Counter-Strike 2 185 fps 182 fps
Baldur's Gate 3 111 fps 110 fps
Red Dead Redemption 2 146 fps 98 fps
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 73 fps 72 fps
Best matched graphics cards1080p, high

Ranked by how little performance the pairing wastes. Anything much faster than the top entry will sit partly idle at this resolution — though it may still be worth it if you plan to move to 1440p or 4K.

Graphics cardEst. FPSUnused
GeForce RTX 3090 126 0.9%
Radeon RX 6950 XT 124 1.6%
Radeon RX 9070 124 1.9%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB 123 2.4%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 123 2.4%
GeForce RTX 4070 Super 126 2.5%

What a Core i5-13400F is good for

This chip is capable at 1080p with a mid-range card, but it will become the limit if you pair it with something substantially faster. If you are considering a large graphics upgrade, check the pairing first — you may find most of the new card sitting idle.

Moving to a higher resolution is the cheapest way to get more out of it, because it shifts work onto the card and away from the chip.

Performance cores and efficiency cores

This chip mixes 6 performance cores with 4 efficiency cores. Games run almost entirely on the performance cores; the efficiency cores absorb background work so it does not interrupt them. That is genuinely useful, but it means the headline core count overstates gaming capability — our model counts about 8.8 effective cores here, weighting an efficiency core well below a performance one.

Hyper-threading is enabled, adding 16 total threads.

Where it sits

Ranked 98 of 201 desktop processors for gaming. Nearest faster: Ryzen 7 5800, Core i5-13400. Just below: Core i9-11900K, Core i9-11900KF. Full method on the methodology page.