CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2023: Processor Ranking Charts

Our CPU benchmarks performance hierarchy ranks current and previous-gen Intel and AMD processors based on performance, including all of the best CPUs for Gaming. Below the CPU ranking charts and tables, this guide also gives you a basic introduction to CPU benchmarks and includes a list of commonly-used CPU benchmark applications. Tom’s Hardware has benchmarked CPUs for over 25 years, so we’ve preserved many of our legacy historical CPU rankings on the second page of this article.

Your CPU greatly affects overall performance and is considered a computer’s most important component. CPU benchmark comparisons help us sort out the differences between chips, but when it comes time to buy a CPU for your desktop, you’ll find a dizzying collection of model numbers and specs from both Intel and AMD. We’ve listed the best cheap CPUs and best CPUs for workstations and even refereed the Intel vs AMD feature debate in other articles, but if you want to know the CPU ranking and how you can run CPU benchmarks of your own, this CPU benchmarks hierarchy is for you.

The $449 Ryzen 7 7800X3D is now the fastest gaming chip money can buy. This eight-core 16-thread chip uses AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology to accelerate gaming performance, but the tech doesn’t accelerate all games and results in reduced performance in some applications. However, for gaming, AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech is the uncontested leader. For ultra-high-end gaming-focused rigs, the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the uncontested leader with 16 cores and 32 threads that are just as adept at cutting through the heaviest productivity workloads as they are at blasting through the latest game titles. We also recently reviewed the Ryzen 9 7900X3D which has the same tech, but its pricing is too high.

That chip faces off with the Intel Core i9-13900KS, which has a record 6 GHz clock rate. Overall, the 13900KS is among the fastest desktop PC chip ever made, but it has a $699 price tag and a voracious appetite for power that requires expensive supporting componentry to deliver a single-digit percentage CPU benchmark improvement over the standard Core i9-13900K. Overall, the 13900KS’ small performance gains don’t make sense for the average user.

On the lower end of the spectrum, we also recently tested the $110 Core i3-13100F, which is also available with graphics as the $150 Core i3-13100. The Core i3-13100F provides solid performance in gaming for its price point, but you should avoid the non-F Core i3-13100 and pick the Ryzen 5 5600 instead.

We’ll explain how we ranked the processors under each table. The game testing ranking is first. We also include a productivity application performance metric, which we’ve split up into single- and multi-threaded measurements. We also have an integrated graphics CPU gaming benchmark ranking so you can see how AMD’s APUs stack up to Intel’s processors. 

CPU Benchmarks Rankings 2023 – Windows 10 and Windows 11

We have two sets of benchmarks in the album above. Our step up to a new RTX 4090 has re-ordered our hierarchy quite a bit, so we have made a clean break for our rankings. All of our Windows 11 tests above were conducted with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and we’ll build out all future test results with this platform.

We rank all the Intel and AMD processors using the Windows 11 and RTX 4090 test bench in the tables below, but we don’t include CPU overclock performance rankings. You can see all of those numbers in the charts above. We’ve also added separate charts for integrated graphics testing below.

Because we have a much broader selection of test results with our now-legacy Windows 10 and RTX 3090 platform, we’ve also included slides with those results in the above album. You can also find those results in table form in our legacy section at the end of the article.

Bear in mind that the charts above use the raw performance numbers, whereas our CPU benchmarks rankings in the tables below use a score to rank the chips relative to one another.  Here are also a few of our faceoffs that pit top gaming CPUs head-to-head: 

Gaming CPU Benchmarks Ranking 2023

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2023 Gaming CPU Benchmarks Ranking — Windows 11
  1080p Gaming Score 1440p Gaming Score Architecture Cores/Threads (P+E) Base/Boost GHz TDP / PBP / MTP Buy
Ryzen 7 7800X3D 100.00% 100.00% Zen 4 8 / 16 4.2 / 5.0 120W / 162W Ryzen 7 7800X3D
$699 — Ryzen 9 7950X3D 99.1% 98.0% Zen 4 16 / 32 4.2 / 5.7 120W / 162W Ryzen 9 7950X3D
$599 – Ryzen 9 7900X3D 94.6% 94.8% Zen 4 12 / 24 4.4 / 5.6 120W / 162W Ryzen 9 7900X3D
$699 – Core i9-13900KS 89.9% 92.3% Raptor Lake 24 / 32 (8+16) 3.0 / 5.8 150W / 253W / 320W Core i9-13900KS
$589 – Core i9-13900K 89.0% 91.8% Raptor Lake 24 / 32 (8+16) 3.0 / 5.8 125 / 253W Core i9-13900K
$409 – Core i7-13700K 87.6% 90.7% Raptor Lake 16 / 24 (8+8) 3.4 / 5.4 125 / 253W Core i7-13700K
$365 – Ryzen 7 5800X3D 86.5% 90.4% Zen 3 8 / 16 3.4 / 4.5 105W Ryzen 7 5800X3D
$319 – Core i5-13600K 83.4% 87.7% Raptor Lake 14 / 20 (6+8) 3.5 / 5.1 125 / 181W Core i5-13600K
$569 – Ryzen 9 7950X 80.0% 83.9% Zen 4 16 / 32 4.5 / 5.7 170 / 230W Ryzen 9 7950X
$329 – Ryzen 7 7700 78.9% 82.5% Zen 4 8 / 16 3.8 / 5.3 65 / 88W Ryzen 7 7700
$474 – Ryzen 9 7900X 78.9% 83.8% Zen 4 12 / 24 4.7 / 5.6 170 / 230W Ryzen 9 7900X
$429 – Ryzen 9 7900 77.6% 82.1% Zen 4 12 / 24 3.7 / 5.4 65 / 88W Ryzen 9 7900
$349 – Ryzen 7 7700X 76.9% 84.7% Zen 4 8 /16 4.5 / 5.4 105 / 142W Ryzen 7 7700X
$249 – Ryzen 5 7600X 76.6% 82.0% Zen 4 6 / 12 4.7 / 5.3 105 / 142W Ryzen 5 7600X
$229 – Ryzen 5 7600 73.0% 79.8% Zen 4 6 / 12 3.8 / 5.1 65 / 88W Ryzen 5 7600
$220 – Core i5-13400 / F 68.0% 73.9% Raptor Lake 10 / 16 (6+4) 2.5 / 4.6 65 /148W Core i5-13400 / F
$550 – Ryzen 9 5950X 66.0% 71.9% Zen 3 16 / 32 3.4 / 4.9 105W Ryzen 9 5950X
$350 – Ryzen 9 5900X 65.7% 73.2% Zen 3 12 / 24 3.7 / 4.8 105W Ryzen 9 5900X
$210 – Ryzen 7 5700X 63.7% 71.1% Zen 3 8 / 16 3.4 / 4.6 65W Ryzen 7 5700X
$189 – Core i5-12400 63.1% 69.6% Alder Lake 6 / 12 (6+0) 2.5 / 4.4 65 / 117W Core i5-12400
$165 – Ryzen 5 5600X 61.8% 69.3% Zen 3 6 / 12 3.7 / 4.6 65W Ryzen 5 5600X
$140 – Ryzen 5 5600 61.2% 67.0% Zen 3 6 / 12 3.5 / 4.4 65W Ryzen 5 5600
$110 – Core i3-13100F 56.7% 62.7% Raptor Lake 4 / 8 (4+0) 3.4 / 4.5 60W / 89W Core i3-13100F
$100 – Core i3-12100 56.2% 62.5% Alder Lake 4 / 8 (4+0) 3.3 / 4.3 60W / 89W Core i3-12100
$135 – Ryzen 5 5600G 52.8% 58.3% Zen 3 6 / 12 3.9 / 4.4 65W Ryzen 5 5600G
$99 – Ryzen 5 5500 52.4% 56.7% Zen 3 6 / 12 3.6 / 4.2 65W Ryzen 5 5500