Intel is about to launch two new processors belonging to the Raptor Lake family: Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F. In the past, the Santa Clara company had made the Core i5-12490F "Black Edition" available with Alder Lake architecture exclusively for the Chinese market. In this case, the Core i5-13490F is the successor of the Core i5-12490F, while the Core i7-13790F is a real novelty.
However, both could belong to the "Black Edition" series as they are distributed in black boxes instead of the usual blue of the brand and do not include a heatsink. Also, being F-series chips they have no integrated graphics and must be paired with a dedicated graphics card. Both chips could be the result of Intel's efforts to recycle dies that do not fully meet the standards of other more powerful CPUs and/or with a working integrated GPU.
In the screenshots posted by Twitter user wxnod we can see see that CPU-Z indicates that the Core i5-13490F has a 10-core (6 P-Cores, 6 E-cores) and 16-thread configuration, the same as the standard Core i5-13400F. Additionally, the processor appears to have a boost clock of 4.8GHz, a 200MHz increase over the Core i5-13490F. Finally, the Core i5-13490F's L3 cache is 4MB larger than the Core i5-12490F, putting it on par with the Core i7-13700F. We end the roundup of specifications by saying that the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F have a PBP (Processor Base Power) of 65W, while the MTP (Maximum Turbo Power) is unknown. However, the previous Core i5-12490F and Core i5-12400F had a MTP of 117W, so it's possible that the Core i5-13490F also has the same 148W MTP as the Core i5-13400F.
Photo Credit: wnxod/Twitter
Test results showed that the Core i5-13490F offers superior single-core and multi-core performance over its predecessors. Notably, the Core i5-13490F delivered 6.9% and 4.5% greater single-core and multi-core performance, respectively, than the Core i5-13400F. Additionally, the Core i5-13490F outperformed the Core i5-12490F by 11.4% in single-core performance and was up to 46.9% faster in multi-core performance.
As it turns out, the Core i5-13490F under review was a very definitive retail processor, which could indicate that both the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F are already available at Chinese retailers.