The 13th Gen Core processors continue to face various issues when paired with the older Z690 motherboards, most notably on ASUS hardware. This was first reported by the editor of Hardware Luxx, according to whom the Core i9-13900K was up to 25% slower on the ASUS ROG Z690 Hero (compared to its Z790 successor). Today, we report a similar incident, replicated on an ASUS board, more specifically, the TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WiFi D4.
Brought to our attention by a reader, the Core i7-13700KF was found to be an unbelievable 48% slower than its predecessor on the Z690-Plus WiFi D4. Scoring just cores 32.37 FPS in the 3DMark TimeSpy CPU test, it falls short of the 12700K by a margin of 37%.
In some runs, the Core i7-13700KF gets beaten by a sizable 59% in the CPU benchmark despite running at a higher boost clock (5.4GHz vs. 4.9GHz). The chips were paired with a GeForce RTX 3090, and unlike the CPU score, the graphics score remained consistent.
These tests were conducted using the latest BIOS (version 2103) on a fresh version of Windows. In addition to the performance issues, our reader has had to contend with many compatibility issues affecting the NVMe drives and the memory. For example, the motherboard didn’t recognize the drive on the first M.2 slot, while the memory (rated for 3600MT/s) refused to run at the expected speeds. According to the client, he has tried using a brand-new memory kit from Corsair, officially compatible with the board.
The BIOS has a bunch of issues. None of the SSDs show up in the NVMe section. Out of the 64GB memory installed, only 32GB is recognized by the BIOS and OS. Swapping the DIMMs didn’t help either.
Our reader is in touch with ASUS support, but they’re yet to arrive at a satisfactory fix:
