Intel kicked off its 13th Gen Core (“Raptor Lake”) generation today with six new processors that executives say deliver the “world’s best gaming experience” for enthusiasts, with up to 24% gaming performance improvement compared to Intel’s own 12th generation Core chips.
The unlocked Core i9-13900K reaches a boost speed of 5.8GHz, although the other processors operate at slower speeds. “To be clear, we are offering the world’s fastest desktop processor out of the box,” said Mandy Mock, vice president and general manager of desktop, workstation and channel at Intel.
You may have anticipated higher prices for the new chips, perhaps after the sticker shock surrounding Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs and recent shortage prices. But other than the Core i5-13600K and -KF (which received a $30 boost), prices for Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake Core chips are identical to Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake. And now, AMD’s rival Ryzen CPUs aren’t always a cheaper option.
AMD said its recently launched Ryzen 7000 series will handily beat the best Intel has to offer. Not only does AMD’s new Ryzen 7950X claim a huge performance advantage over previous Ryzens, but the high-end 7950X shaved $100 off the sticker price, to boot. Intel also promised that Raptor Lake would reach 6GHz – and these initial 13th-gen Core chips haven’t yet, with CEO Pat Gelsinger saying he expects this chip “in limited volumes” next year. It will be a tight race for the best desktop processor of 2022.
Intel
Discover Intel’s 13th generation Core CPUs
Intel will eventually fill out its processor lineup for the rest of the desktop space as well as mobile devices: U, P, H, and HX series chips for laptops and 35W and 65W S series processors for desktops will accompany these new processors. of the K-series in time, Mock said – the 13th-generation family will eventually offer no fewer than 50 CPUs. For now, though, the new K- and -KF-series chips are in the spotlight.
Here’s a quick summary of what Intel is announcing:
- Core i5-13600K ($319): 14 cores (6 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores)/20 threads at up to 5.1 GHz; P-Core: 3.5 GHz (base) to 5.1 GHz (turbo); E-core: 2.6 GHz (base) to 3.9 GHz (turbo)
- Core i7-13700K ($409): 16 cores (8 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores)/24 threads at up to 5.4 GHz; P-Core: 3.4 GHz (base) to 5.3 GHz (turbo); E-core: 2.5 GHz (base) to 4.2 GHz (turbo)
- Core i9-13900K ($589): 24 cores (8 performance cores, 16 efficiency cores)/32 threads at up to 5.8 GHz; P-Core: 3.0 GHz (base) to 5.4 GHz (turbo); E-Core: 2.2 GHz (base) to 4.3 GHz (turbo)
- Intel also has three “KF” variants that eliminate the integrated GPU to save costs: the $564 Core i9-13900KF, the $384 Core i7-13700KF, and the $294 Core i5-13600KF.
Intel
Unfortunately, we are past the days where we can assign a processor a simple clock speed. Now even the fastest speeds need to be qualified. While the performance core in the Core i9-13900K can “only” reach a boost speed of 5.4 GHz, one core may be able to reach the chip’s overall boost speed of 5.8 GHz. This is thanks to Intel technology Turbo Max 3.0 Intel launched in 2019.
Power is also not as simple as it once was. What’s known as the PL2 value – the power needed to push the 13900K or KF series into turbo mode – is 253W, Intel executives said, and 181W for a Core i5-13600K.
Intel
All three chips integrate Intel’s UHD Graphics 770 graphics, with slight differences in clock speeds: 1,550MHz, 1,600MHz and 1,650MHz for the Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 parts.
Intel’s new processors are built on the Intel 7 process, which Mock hinted is producing better yields than the 12th-generation Alder Lake chip, also on Intel 7. 1 million units sold by the end of 2021.
“We are on track to go even faster with the 13th generation, so there will be ample supply in the market to meet our customers’ demand,” said Mock. Intel anticipates that 140 partners in 30 countries will ship 13th-generation “Raptor Lake” chips, with 70 different versions of the Z790 motherboards, it said.
And in case you were wondering, yes, Intel held an internal discussion about officially naming these chips “13th” generation Core chips. Qualcomm, for example, named a recent chip the Snapdragon 888 to capitalize on a number that is seen as lucky in Asia. American buildings usually skip the thirteenth floor. But what happened was a certain smartphone company having success with version 13 of its own operating system and Intel deciding to follow suit.
What’s Inside 13th Gen Raptor Lake PCs
What improved? First, the new 13th-generation Core “Raptor Lake” chips include an updated “Raptor Cove” processor core with improved speed paths, said Daniel Rogers, senior director of mobile marketing at Intel. Inside Intel’s updated Intel 7 process is a 3rd generation SuperFin transistor. Essentially, Intel is benefiting from an improved design coupled with a performance boost from the “maturation” of the process technology, according to Guy Therien, an Intel fellow.
The number of efficiency cores has also doubled. In addition to the additional cores, Mock said the cache attached to the efficiency cores has been increased. Intel’s hybrid architecture uses performance cores for foreground tasks you’re actively working on, as well as efficiency cores that handle background tasks that would normally steal CPU cycles from the active application.
Intel’s thread scheduler, fully integrated into Windows 11, can also assign priority tasks to efficiency cores under extreme workloads. In the new Windows 11 2022 update, not only has Thread Director been optimized, but the way background tasks are handled by Windows has been improved, increasing the overall efficiency of a Raptor Lake PC running the latest version of Windows. (Incidentally, Intel has no plans to release a version of the Thread Director software that allows you to manually assign performance cores or efficiency cores, the executives said.)
Intel
Intel’s debut Volley Raptor Lake will be paired with Z790 motherboards, an updated chipset that now adds support for DDR5-5600 and -5200 memory, as well as DDR4-3200 memory. Board manufacturers will be able to take advantage of 16 PCI Express 5.0 lanes outside the CPU, plus four additional PCIe 4.0 lanes. The compute fabric that bridges the two has become 900 MHz faster, increasing I/O performance. Finally, Thunderbolt 4 and Intel’s Killer WiFi 6E will continue to appear.
Basically, all of Intel’s 600 and 700 series cards will be backwards compatible as long as they have a manufacturer-supplied update that supports 13th Gen Raptor Lake.
There is another thing that is quite interesting: additional support for USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 I/O. That’s a lot of gobbledygook for most people, but the result is that the USB ports on Z790 systems will be capable of 20 Gbps, as opposed to the normal 10 Gbps that most USB-A and USB-C ports allow. This will potentially add extra performance headroom for USB-C dongles, provided Intel brings this feature to the mobile space.
13th Gen Intel Core ‘Raptor Lake’ Performance
There are many metrics you can use to compare a processor’s performance, but here’s how Intel breaks it down: The new Core i9-13900K delivers 15% more performance in single-threaded applications and 41% multi-threaded performance over the Core i9 -12900K. Raptor Lake’s single-threaded performance has improved decently over Alder Lake, but thanks to the significant increase in the number of cores and threads, overall performance should increase dramatically. Marcus Kennedy, general manager of Intel’s gaming and esports segment, also showed a set of gaming tests that indicated that 13th generation Core chips were up to 24% faster in games.
Intel
Intel
All of this should mean fairly small improvements in most graphics-heavy games, though more substantial performance improvements in more CPU-intensive games like League of Legends and DOTA.
Creatives, however, should see some real benefits. Intel claims the 13th Gen Raptor Lake cores are 27% faster in a workload involving Adobe Media Encoder and Adobe Photoshop, as well as 34% faster in a media creation workload involving Blender and Unreal Engine for game development. In the demo, Intel ran Photoshop in the foreground and the encoder in the background, as it did for Blender rendering.
Intel
Intel
But Intel and Mock may have to prove that their Raptor Lake is faster than the Ryzen 7000 in tests. On paper, it’s an interesting comparison: the Ryzen 7950X has “only” 16 cores and 32 threads, but runs at a base clock of 4.5 GHz and up to 5.7 GHz in turbo mode. However, they are all high-performance “big” cores. Intel’s Core i9-13900K includes more cores (24) and 32 threads, but has a mix of performance (8) and efficiency (16) cores that start at 2.2-3.0 GHz but can increase up to 5 .8 GHz. AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X consumes 170W, compared to the 165W that the Core i9 requires.
Since direct testing is not yet officially possible, Intel compared its 13th generation chip with AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series. Intel’s own tests showed a huge 58% improvement over the Ryzen 5950X in games like Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. In content creation, the difference was even deeper: 69% in creating Autodesk Revit models.
Gamers who choose to water-cool their system should see higher overclocking frequencies with “12th Gen-like headroom,” Intel said, with overclocked DDR5 memory pushing up to 6,600 megatransfers per second. While extreme overclocking is still a niche application, Intel believes that cooling the cores using liquid nitrogen will push performance core frequencies beyond 8 GHz, with overclocked DDR5 memory exceeding 10,000 MT/s.
Intel
With Intel’s announcement of Raptor Lake, we now know what AMD’s plans are for at least the majority of its Ryzen 7000 processor lineup, as well as where the performance of these chips falls off. Now we wait for independent benchmarks that can tell us the same for Intel’s 13th generation Core chips.
Fall is typically one of the most exciting times of the year for enthusiasts hoping to build their own desktop systems. AMD, Nvidia and now Intel have outlined their offerings for next year. Now, we await official tests to confirm whether its claims will hold up in the real world.
