Raptor Lake is Intel’s 13th generation processor and is one of the most exciting hardware launches of the year. Continuing the momentum it built with its Alder Lake line of CPUs, Intel looks to retain some of its hard-won performance crowns. But it’s got new and stronger competition, in the form of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 CPU series, which have already impressed with their efficiency and performance.
How will these new CPU lines fair in the encounter? Here’s everything you need to know about Raptor Lake.
Prices and availability
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The first Raptor Lake processors arrived on October 20, 2022. Intel says its 13th generation lineup will include a total of 22 processors, but only six are available now. As usual, Intel releases unlocked versions of its i5, i7, and i9 CPUs, along with unlocked variants that don’t have integrated graphics. Here’s what the list price looks like:
- Core i9-13900K — $590
- Core i9-13900KF — $564
- Core i7-13700K — $410
- Core i7-13700KF — $385
- Core i5-13600K — $320
- Core i5-13600KF — $295
Closer to launch, pricing will likely be slightly higher than Intel’s stated numbers. The last-gen Core i9-12900K, for example, sold for around $620 to $650 before launch (though it dropped a few weeks later). Availability shouldn’t be a problem, but similar to pricing, supplies may be limited closer to release date.
Glasses
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Raptor Lake is largely an upgrade of Alder Lake, using the same node and hybrid architecture. We’ll go into more detail about that architecture in the next section, but in terms of specs, Intel is mainly focusing on higher core counts and clock speeds, as well as increased cache to compete with gaming processors like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
| Core i9-13900K | Core i7-13700K | Core i5-13600K | |
| Cores/Threads | 24 (8+16)/32 | 16(8+8)/24 | 14(6+8)/20 |
| Base clock speed | 3 GHz (P-core), 2.2 GHz (E-core) | 3.4 GHz (P-core), 2.5 GHz (E-core) | 3.5 GHz (P-core), 2.6 GHz (E-core) |
| Increase clock speed | Up to 5.8 GHz | Up to 5.4 GHz | Up to 5.1 GHz |
| L2 cache | 32 MB | 24 MB | 20 MB |
| L3 cache | 36 MB | 30 MB | 24 MB |
| Maximum gain power | 253 W | 253 W | 181W |
| Price | 589 dollars | 409 dollars | 319 dollars |
Although the number of cores has increased, Intel is not adding more P-cores, choosing instead to increase the number of E-cores. This might help with heavy multitasking, but E-cores do not support Hyper-Threading. You get 24 cores on the Core i9-13900K, for example, but only 32 total threads.
The clock speed has also increased, with the flagship Core i9-13900K at 5.8 GHz on a single core. Intel has shared demos of a single Raptor Lake core reaching over 8GHz with LN2 extreme overclocking, suggesting you could increase your clocks, given you have enough power and cooling.
The biggest departure from Alder Lake comes in the form of cache. Raptor Lake comes with double the amount of L2 cache, which could help with cache-sensitive games like Far Cry 6.
Power limits remain high, as they were on 12th generation CPUs. Intel is pushing the boundaries a bit more this time, with a 12W increase on the i9 and i7 and a 31W jump on the i5. Intel’s 12th generation processors are already running hot, so the extra power and number of cores doesn’t help the situation much. Fortunately, this does not limit performance, given that you have enough cooling.
Architecture
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Raptor Lake is very similar to Alder Lake, and that becomes clear when you take a closer look at the architecture. The 13th generation CPUs use the same Intel 7 manufacturing process and adopt a hybrid architecture. The cores are divided into performance cores (P) and efficiency cores (E) to improve multitasking performance without high power and thermal requirements.
Intel is sticking with the same Gracemont E-cores that appeared in Alder Lake, just increasing their number on the chip. Intel has confirmed that the P-cores also use the new Raptor Cove microarchitecture. The updated design offers “improved speeds,” according to Intel.
In practical terms, Intel says it was able to optimize the core voltage as the frequency increased, allowing the Raptor Lake processors to reach higher clocks than their Alder Lake counterparts. The new design also offers 2MB of L2 cache per core, double what was available on Alder Lake.
To accommodate the higher power, Intel uses a larger die that fits more E-cores along with their cache. The different cores and their different architectures are connected by a larger computing fabric that spans the die. The new fabric supports clock speeds up to 900MHz from the previous iteration, as well as opens up a pool of up to 36MB of shared L2 cache.
While there are a few notable changes under the hood, Intel says most of its performance improvements still come down to frequency and thread count. In addition to hardware improvements, Intel says it continues to optimize features such as Intel Thread Director, which helps distribute workloads to the most appropriate core.
Performance
Intel has a lot to build on, with its existing Alder Lake CPUs leading most categories for most of their lifespan, including monster chips like the Intel Core i9-12900KS. However, Raptor Lake goes further, and with increasing clock speeds and core counts, we found impressive performance gains in our Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K review.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Overall, the flagship Core i9-13900K does well with the competing Ryzen 9 7950X. Intel said that Raptor Lake will deliver a 15% increase in single-threaded tasks and up to 41% in multi-threaded tasks, which is a bit optimistic. Our testing shows closer to a 10% jump in single-threaded and a 35% jump in multi-threaded, but that depends on the application.
Handbrake, for example, doesn’t show the same gains as Cinebench and Geekbench. The Core i9-13900K tops the list, but it also shows about a 21% advantage over the Core i9-12900K (and even less compared to the Core i9-12900KS). PCMark 10 similarly showed only a 10% gain for the Core i9-13900K, although this is admittedly not the best benchmark for displaying the power of a 24-core main CPU.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
However, creative applications show bigger improvements, with the Core i9-13900K offering a 26% increase over the Core i9-12900K in Photoshop. However, the Core i5-13600K offered a gen-on-gen boost of 15%. In Premiere Pro, the Core i9-13900K offered a smaller improvement of 12%, although Intel was still able to claim the top slot in both of these tests.
While performance is up, even if it’s a bit below what Intel promised, gaming doesn’t see much of an improvement. Most titles won’t see much of a difference at all, and if there is, the Raptor Lake chips are within a few frames of the previous generation. However, the increased number of caches and cores can help in some games, as shown in Forza Horizon 4.
Motherboard and chipset
Players looking to upgrade to Gen 12 Alder Lake this year will get some good news if they’re looking at the Raptor Lake upgrade. Intel uses the same LGA1700 socket as the previous generation, so most Z690 motherboards will support 13th generation CPUs. Intel also unveils Z790 motherboards along with a release date.
Regardless of the chipset, you will be able to use DDR4 or DDR5 memory as long as you have a motherboard that supports the memory standard you want to use. Although many Z690 motherboards have already brought support for 13th generation processors, most B-series and H-series boards have not. Check with your motherboard vendor to make sure the new generation is supported. Intel says all 600-series chipsets should work, provided they have the appropriate BIOS update.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn