Modern PCs are far more powerful than their predecessors and can handle many tasks well beyond the basics when it comes to meeting our needs. One of these increasingly important tasks that is part of a growing industry is gaming as people value it as a more important source of entertainment even as we see modern consoles increasingly resemble their PC counterparts.

While modern GPUs take the brunt of the budget when it comes to gaming PCs in general, the CPU is an important component that shouldn't be ignored as a CPU-induced bottleneck can effectively limit the performance of a PC for gaming even if you are using the latest and greatest GPU money can buy. Some CPUs are custom-equipped with features or hardware to perform better for gaming than regular work due to optimizations that tend to favor performance in games and video game engines in particular such as the Ryzen 7000 and 5000 X3D processors for example.

Here are our handpicked contenders for the best CPUs for gaming in 2023:

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is our pick for the best and fastest CPU for gaming which doubles as the best AMD CPU for gaming also. Its 8-Core, 16-Thread offerings might be more akin to mid-range Intel and AMD offerings, but the ace up its sleeve is its impressive 3D V-Cache that allows the 7800X3D to sport a whopping 96MB of L3 Cache, making it one of the fastest performing CPUs across multiple tests as it completely obliterates AMD's 7000 series processors while scoring high more often than not when it comes to Intel's flagship 13th-gen processors.

At $450 a pop, this isn't the cheapest CPU out there, but it doesn't have to be given that it is the fastest one you can buy for gaming. Thanks to it being on the new AM5 platform, it also has support for PCI-E 5.0 and DDR5 memory while running at significantly lower power than its competition, often at half or lower power draw, averaging an approximate 50W across titles in terms of power consumption reported at a CPU level.

All in all, it is an excellent CPU for gaming with efficiency and speed both important factors in it being our best overall pick for gaming as it is both the fastest overall AMD CPU and overall in terms of benchmarked gains. For creators that need the speeds the 7800X3D offers but who also want extra multi-core performance or power under the hood, AMD also offers a similarly performing 16-Core version of the same, albeit at a higher price in the shape of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

The Intel Core i9 13900K is Intel's fastest desktop-grade CPU currently available, sans the much more expensive and better-binned version of the same: The 6GHz Intel Core i9 13900KS and sports a massive 24 cores that handle 32 threads while boasting an impressive clock speed of up to 5.8GHz on a single core. It does perform better than rival AMD's newer Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 9 7900X3D in certain titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which tends to favor single-core performance significantly more than some of their peers but does get beaten in more benchmarks than it wins thanks to the latter's copious amounts of L3 cache that swing the odds in Team Red's favor.

The Intel Core i9 13900K does have its limitations however; it runs far hotter than the CPUs it competes with, making excellent liquid or air cooling not an option but a necessity. More importantly, it draws considerably higher amounts of power than most of its peers when running full speed, sometimes necessitating a mandatory PSU upgrade to avoid pushing above limited even as Nvidia's newest high-end RTX 4000 series chips push well past last-gen limits for power.

The Intel Core i9 13900K is still Intel's fastest chip by a reasonable margin and more than makes up for its price tag if you plan to use its much more powerful multicore offerings that leave the competition behind with ease. For content creators, streamers running heavy applications and gamers playing certain games, the 13900K remains the best option available to them by far, albeit at a cost that makes AMD's 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X3D also a viable choice at times.

The 6-Core, 12-Thread AMD Ryen 5 7600X is an excellently positioned processor currently thanks to a barrage of price cuts over time that see it trade at a greater than 35% price discount over its original MSRP. It is a step up to the AM5 platform as a compelling, slightly cheaper alternative to the now-aging 5800X3D which it outperforms slightly in modern games due to its newer underlying architecture, better memory support, and higher boost clocks than the locked AM4-based processor.

With decent single-core performance and somewhat underwhelming multi-core performance, the Ryzen 5 7600X is also a considerable $80-100 cheaper than the Intel Core i5 13600K it is regularly compared with. A fairer comparison would be the Intel Core i5 13500 which it does go neck and neck with, with arguably better single-core performance and much worse multi-core performance; Multiple games do tend to favor single-core performance, making the 7600X an excellent, current-gen mid-range AMD CPU for gaming that has grown increasingly competitive the past few months.

The Core i5 13600K is Intel's sweet spot for gamers in the 13th generation. The 14-core, 20-thread CPU is in a similar configuration as Intel's cheaper i5 13500 processor with an important distinction: it comes with higher clocks and unlocked cores out of the box. The Intel core i5 13600K is simply the best value-for-money Intel processor for gaming currently, performing notoriously close to this more expensive i7 13700K sibling and within spitting distance of the i9 13900K flagship.

While it isn't the fastest Intel Chip out there this generation, it does come close enough to warrant consideration and has enough under the hood to pack a serious multicore punch to apps that are more demanding in terms of CPU horsepower or thread needs. As with all Intel 13th gen CPUs, the 13600K runs warmer than the competition and draws more power. It also doesn't ship with a stock cooler as an unlocked processor, making the task of getting adequate cooling an important and ultimately necessary one to get the most out of Intel's Raptor Lake-based value-centric processor.

AMD's last generation 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600X processor still packs a punch and offers great value versus some of Intel and AMD's other entry-level offerings thanks to its capable hexacore Zen 3-based offerings. The 5600X lacks integrated graphics much like AMD's other 5000 series CPUs (ex the G series APUs) but offers decent single-core performance, albeit lower clocks and performance than Intel's 12th and 13th generation processors. It benefits from a very mature AM4 platform with motherboards available at various price points and unlike its newer 7600X sibling, works fine with DDR4 memory out of the box.

Deeper discounts by AMD on the 7000 series since the launch of the 7000 X3D processor offerings mean that the 5600X is no longer as popular as it used to be at a certain time as a value purchase, but if you have an AM4 motherboard or DDR4 memory spare, or are simply looking for an AM4-based upgrade on your existing PC, the Ryzen 5 5600X is still a capable processor that does not meaningfully bottleneck most games at 1080P or higher resolutions.

The Intel Core i3 13100 is essentially a slightly higher-clocked version of the Intel Core i3 12100 with performance remaining locked within a similar range with it able to Turbo to as much as 4.5 GHz versus the 4.3 GHz its predecessor offered. It is a great quad-core CPU that serves as an entry into Intel's more expensive backyard of 13th-generation core series processors with an upgrade possible down the line for most users as both Intel and AMD compete increasingly fiercely in this market segment.

One would however want to consider that buying a quad-core CPU, even at an entry-level price might not be an ideal play to make for gamers, power users, or creators as apps continue to become more power-hungry, requiring more multi-threaded horsepower under the hood than before even as games keep a relatively strong single-core bias.

All in all, the Intel Core i5 13100 is a capable processor, somewhat limited by core count and subsequent thread counts, but makes up for it somewhat thanks to the price point it aims to be competitive at with no new current-gen AMD offerings in the same price segment in 2023, making it as good as any a path to start your gaming journey with.

FAQ:

Q: Why is single-core performance so important for games?

A: Video games are complex code structures that often consist of millions of lines of code. As a result, they are often unable to fully exploit multi-core performance as one thread or core often bears the brunt of our game-centric demands of the CPU, making it a bias that is well-founded in terms of raw performance in multiple game titles that rely on it as a good benchmark of how well the title will run on a processor.

Q: Which processors come with a CPU cooler?

A: All locked intel processors come with a stock CPU cooler in the box. All unlocked Intel CPUs ship without one as you are expected to use adequate cooling to get more performance out of the CPU in an overclocked state. For AMD, this seems to be more centric to which tier the CPU belongs to; cheaper CPUs tend to have stock coolers on offer as more expensive, larger CPUs including those for gaming seem to skip on one altogether.