Highly anticipated: Intel’s upcoming Raptor Lake processors face stiff competition with AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series. Previously-leaked Cinebench results indicate the flagship i9-13900K might perform similarly to the Ryzen 9 7950X. However, AMD’s offerings might come out on top in power efficiency due to switching to a more advanced TSMC 5nm process node.
Even though we’re still weeks away from Intel’s 13th-gen Core CPUs announcement, Igor’s LAB has published some leaked slides confirming the full specs of the desktop Raptor Lake lineup. The company will initially release six unlocked SKUs, with the cheaper non-K processors likely arriving next year around CES.
These Raptor Lake CPUs feature several improvements over their Alder Lake counterparts, including higher frequencies, twice the amount of E-cores, and more L2 and L3 cache. They’ll also have more advanced memory controllers, with official support for DDR5-5600 (vs. AL’s DDR5-4800) and DDR4-3200 memory.
According to the chart, Intel’s flagship Core i9-13900K(F) will be a 24-core CPU (8P + 16E) that can boost up to 5.8Ghz out of the box if it has enough thermal headroom. The company rates base power (PL1) at a conservative 125W, while maximum Turbo power (PL2) stands at 253W (vs. the 12900K’s 241 W).
Opting for an i7-13700K(F) will get you fewer cores (8P + 8E), reduced cache, and a lower 5.4GHz max frequency for the P-cores. Rated power consumption is identical to the i9, likely due to binning. Finally, the i5-13600K(F) offers 14 cores (6P + 8E), even less cache, and a 5.1GHz max P-core frequency. Its maximum turbo power also gets lowered to 181W.
Like their predecessors, Raptor Lake processors will offer 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes and remain compatible will 600-series motherboards. However, high-end Z790 motherboards might come with an “Extreme Performance Mode” toggle in the BIOS, allowing the new processors to draw up to 350W and further improving performance if you have an adequate cooling solution. The Z790 chipset also features more PCIe 4.0 lanes and up to one extra 20Gbps USB port compared to Z690.
Intel will likely announce Raptor Lake at its Innovation event on September 27, the same day AMD plans to launch its Zen 4 CPUs. At this point, the only details we’re missing are pricing and availability, although previous leaks suggested Team Blue’s processors might start shipping on October 20.