Today marks the merchandise of Intel’s 13th procreation Core processor series, codenamed Raptor Lake. The archetypal models to beryllium unleashed into retail channels are each overclockable parts, with six SKUs crossed the Core i9, i7, and i5 merchandise segments. We’ve seen Intel’s heterogeneous oregon hybrid plan with the motorboat of Intel’s Alder Lake (12th Gen Core) products, and the latest Raptor Lake halfway brings a precise akin plan to the table, but with subtle improvements designed to assistance springiness Intel the starring borderline successful the desktop market.

The motorboat of Intel's caller lineup is fundamentally the 2nd fractional of this fall's desktop CPU releases. AMD got the archetypal connection successful a fewer weeks backmost with the motorboat of their Ryzen 7000 desktop processors, which introduced the Zen 4 architecture arsenic good a important level update for AMD with Socket AM5. The caller high-end Ryzen chips were well-received (if a spot expensive), mounting a caller barroom for show and putting AMD firmly into the lead, astatine slightest for a small bit. Now it's clip for Intel's ain CPU motorboat – their rebuttal – wherever they get to amusement disconnected what they've been moving connected implicit the past fewer years and whether they tin clasp their borderline implicit AMD for this latest procreation of processors.

At a precocious level, Raptor Lake tin beryllium thought of arsenic a mid-cycle upgrade of sorts for Intel’s existent LGA-1700 platform. As the institution launched Alder Lake and LGA-1700 conscionable a twelvemonth ago, they aren’t looking to overhaul the halfway CPU architecture rather truthful soon, nor the level for that matter. Intel is keeping to their two-year level rhythm here, truthful the 13^th procreation of Core processors are designed to bring much show to the aforesaid level arsenic Alder Lake. This makes the Raptor Lake motorboat importantly much straightforward than AMD’s caller launch, wherever AMD overhauled their full level portion besides making immoderate much important CPU architecture upgrades successful the process.

Because Intel isn’t importantly tweaking their CPU architectures for Raptor Lake, the spot is fundamentally a refined mentation of Alder Lake. That means we’re inactive looking astatine a substance of P(erformance) and E(fficiency) CPU cores, based connected antithetic CPU architectures and designed to let Intel to deed precocious show levels successful some single/light-threaded workloads that favour the P cores, and heavy multi-threaded workloads that tin besides saturate the E cores. The P cores are based connected what’s technically a caller architecture, Raptor Cove, portion the E cores are inactive based connected the aforesaid Gracemont architecture arsenic what we saw connected Alder Lake.

We’ll dive into the interior bits of Raptor Lake a spot aboriginal on, but astatine a precocious level, Intel is improving show versus Alder Lake successful 3 ways.

1. Higher clockspeeds, particularly for the P cores, acknowledgment to immoderate architectural optimization enactment combined with further refinements of the Intel 7 fab process
2. Additional E cores successful each desktop SKUs, to boost show successful multi-threaded workloads
3. Additional L2 cache for some the P and E cores. The L3 cache is besides a spot larger, chiefly to accommodate the larger fig of E cores.

The higher clockspeeds and further cache mean that Raptor Lake should beryllium faster successful virtually each scenarios compared to Alder Lake. For single-threaded and lightly-threaded workloads, the faster P cores tin chew done work. Meanwhile the afloat operation of further E cores and higher clockspeeds means that multi-threaded show often shows adjacent greater gains.

Raptor Lake will, successful time, beryllium a top-to-bottom motorboat for Intel and its partners. That means not lone launching desktop processors, arsenic we’re seeing the archetypal of today, but besides a implicit stack of mobile parts, with U, P, H, and HX bid processors each planned. And portion mobile parts are a spot trickier with regards to adding clocks and cores portion staying wrong a powerfulness budget, Intel’s plan optimizations tin besides beryllium utilized to amended vigor ratio instead, which volition beryllium of greater value for the mobile market.

Starting At the Top: Core i9-13900K, i7-13700K, and i5-13600K

But to commencement things off, let’s speech astir today’s launch. Intel has opted for a top-to-bottom, desktop-to-mobile motorboat strategy, pulling the trigger connected its overclockable desktop parts first. This is emblematic of Intel's caller desktop launches, and allows them to get their comparatively little measurement desktop chips retired archetypal portion continuing to ramp for higher measurement desktop and mobile parts. Altogether Intel is launching 3 tiers of chips dispersed implicit 6 SKUs, each overclockable (K) and coming either with and without (F) integrated graphics.

Compared to the applicable 12^th Gen Core SKUs, Intel has replaced the P cores with caller Raptor Cove cores connected a 1:1 basis. Meanwhile for the E cores, Intel has efficaciously doubled the fig of E cores for each corresponding SKU. e.g., the Core i5-13600K present has 8 E-cores whereas the Core i5-12600K had four. Otherwise, TDPs stay unchanged from the erstwhile chips, with Intel officially targeting 125W – though PL2 limits person crept up from 241W to 253W.

Intel Core i9-13900K CPU-Z

Focusing archetypal connected the flagship chip, the Core i9-13900K has an unthinkable max P-core turbo of 5.8 GHz. This is an summation of 600 MHz implicit the Core i9-12900K. Although it has the aforesaid show halfway number arsenic its predecessor (though with Raptor Cove cores), it present features treble the ratio cores; a full of 24 hybrid cores comprised of 8P and 16E cores. This makes for 8 much threads, for a full of 32, up from 24 connected the Core i9-12900K. 

One happening to enactment astir the ratio cores is that Intel has lowered the basal frequence of these cores to 2.2 GHz base, which is down from 2.4GHz connected Alder Lake. But astatine the aforesaid time, however, they person besides accrued the E-core max turbo clockspeed to 4.3 GHz, 400Mhz higher than the 3.9 GHz cores connected Alder Lake.

Intel has made akin trade-offs crossed each of its 13^th Gen Core SKUs – truthful this isn’t conscionable the lawsuit for the i9 parts, but besides the i7 and i5 parts arsenic well. Ultimately portion Intel would ideally similar to tally the E cores astatine their highest clockspeeds astatine each times, the expanded fig of cores makes it harder to enactment wrong Intel’s authoritative 125W TDP, necessitating a simplification connected the basal clockspeeds.

Intel Core i5-13600K CPU-Z

Moving down the stack, the Core i7-13700K and KF processors some person a full of sixteen CPU cores (8P+8E), which is up from 8P+4E connected the Core i7-12700K. For these parts the maximum P-core turbo clockspeed is 5.4 GHz, portion the P-core basal clockspeed stands astatine 3.4 GHz.

Finally, filling retired the i5 spot successful Intel’s lineup is the Core i5-13600K, which we volition besides beryllium investigating today. The 13600K parts travel with a full of fourteen cores successful 6P+8E configuration, 4 much cores than connected the Alder Lake i5-12600K. Both the Core i5-13600K and i5-13600KF diagnostic a P-core max turbo of up to 5.1 GHz (up from 4.9 GHz), and an E-core turbo of up to 3.9 GHz (up from 3.6 GHz).

Z790 Chipset & DDR5-5600 Support

The motorboat of the 13^th Gen Core chips besides comes with a caller procreation of motherboards from Intel: Z790. As noted earlier, the 13^th Gen Core chips are backwards-compatible with 600 bid boards (with the indispensable BIOS update), truthful they tin beryllium utilized arsenic a drop-in upgrade oregon arsenic portion of a caller built. But for builders looking for the champion – oregon adjacent conscionable guaranteed CPU compatibility retired of the container – Intel is hoping to entice you with Z790.

Like the remainder of the Raptor Lake platform, Z790 is not a important overhaul of Intel’s existing wares. But Z790 does connection perks. Most notable for aspiring builders volition beryllium that Z790 boards volition beryllium the archetypal boards validated for the higher DDR5 representation speeds that Raptor Lake is susceptible of. Whereas Alder Lake officially topped retired astatine DDR5-4800, Alder Lake tin tally astatine DDR5-5600, helping to provender the beast a spot much with higher representation clockspeeds. Enthusiasts volition apt tally overclocked with XMP kits, but for anyone gathering systems to spec – beryllium it OEMs oregon idiosyncratic builders – this is simply a bully bump successful bandwidth. Meanwhile it should beryllium noted that there’s thing stopping existing Z690 boards from being validated for higher speeds arsenic well, but that volition beryllium up to motherboard manufacturers moving a caller circular of validation with the caller Raptor Lake chips.

As for the Z790 chipset itself, it brings a spot much I/O flexibility compared to Z690. Z790 present sports 20 PCIe 4 lanes, versus 12 connected Z690. That’s augmented with 8 PCIe 3 lanes, 8 less than connected Z690. Z790 besides brings enactment for 1 much USB 20Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2) larboard than its predecessor, making for a full of 5.

Sizing Up the Competition: 13^th Gen Core vs. Ryzen 7000

With Intel’s displacement to a heterogeneous CPU architecture, like-for-like comparisons betwixt Intel and AMD person go a small harder. None the less, arsenic AMD and Intel person evolved to person similarly-named merchandise stacks – and for that substance akin pricing – it’s not excessively hard to enactment up what chips are chiefly successful contention with each other.

At the high-end, Intel is going up against AMD’s flagship with less P cores (or their AMD equivalent), but is augmenting that with a overmuch larger fig of E cores. As a effect Intel has much CPU cores to connection overall, but the show implications are precise workload dependent. The 13900K shines connected tasks that tin capable each 24 cores/32 threads, and ideally tin relationship for the quality successful show betwixt the halfway types. Otherwise, AMD offers less full cores, but much show connected a per-core ground erstwhile 9 to 16 cores are needed.

In Intel’s favour is simply a little CPU outgo ($589 vs. $699), arsenic good arsenic authoritative enactment for faster DDR5 representation (and DDR4, if you request it). Whereas AMD offers much I/O flexibility with up to 28 PCIe 5 lanes coming from the CPU, arsenic good arsenic a larger wide L3 cache.

Meanwhile astatine the different extremity of the spectrum, the bottommost of the stack for the 2 companies is brought up by the i5-13600K and Ryzen 5 7600K. The Intel spot offers 6 Raptor Cove P cores to AMD’s 6 Zen 4 cores, and past Intel added 8 E cores connected apical of that. But successful this lawsuit Intel nary longer has the terms advantage, arsenic the 13600K is $20 much costly than its AMD competition. This gives Intel a perchance ample vantage successful multi-threaded workloads, though for less threads, AMD does person a spot of a clockspeed lead.

1. Intel Core i9-13900K and i5-13600K Review: Raptor Cove, What's New?
2. Raptor Lake In Detail: Raptor Cove P-Cores, More Efficiency Cores
3. Z790 Chipset: More I/O Than Z690, But Same Performance
4. Test Bed and Setup: Updating Our Test Suite for 2023
5. Core to Core Latency
6. SPEC2017 Single-Threaded Results
7. SPEC2017 Multi-Threaded Results
8. CPU Benchmark Performance: Power and Office
9. CPU Benchmark Performance: Science
10. CPU Benchmark Performance: Simulation
11. CPU Benchmark Performance: Rendering And Encoding
12. CPU Benchmark Performance: Legacy Tests
13. Gaming Performance: iGPU
14. Gaming Performance: 720p and Lower
15. Gaming Performance: 1080p
16. Gaming Performance: 1440p
17. Gaming Performance: 4K
18. Closing Thoughts