Raptor Lake
Intel’s Raptor lake is built on the ‘Intel 7‘ process. These new CPUs feature the Raptor Cove architecture for the performance cores whereas the old Gracemont architecture is used for the efficient cores. Making use of the LGA 1700 socket, Raptor Lake is backwards compatible with the -600 series motherboards.
13th Gen vs 12th Gen
Coming to the technical specifications, Raptor lake supports DDR5-5600 RAM which is 800MHz faster than last Gen. Additionally, 13th Gen CPUs are powered by 2x more efficient cores which bumps the max core count to 24.
The SKUs
From Intel themself, a leaked chart which might have been used for their presentation gives us the full specs of the upcoming CPUs. The lineup of each family (i5,i7 and i9) includes only the K/KF variants. We expect the others to be announced at the upcoming CES 2023.
i9 Lineup
i7 Lineup
i5 Lineup
Cache Improvements
With Raptor Lake, you will see enhanced cache performance along with improved on-paper numbers. In Alder Lake, the L2 cache per each performance core stood at 1.25MB. Raptor Lake bumps this to 2MB which is a 60% increment. Similarly, each e-core cluster (4 e-cores) in Alder Lake shipped with just 2MB of L2 Cache, which is increased by 2x (4MB) with Raptor Lake. The i9-13900K is powered by 24 cores (8p + 16e). This makes the 8 performance cores have (8x2MB) = 16MB of L2 cache. The Raptor Lake king contains (16e/4) = 4 e-core clusters which make up for an additional 4x4MB = 16MB of L2 cache. What’s interesting is that the e-cores along with the the cache/e-core cluster are doubled in this generation. This leads to a massive 4x increment in L2 cache across the e-cores (4MB in 12900K vs 16MB in 13900K).
Turbo Max Technology
Ever heard of the term ‘silicon lottery’? Basically, not all chips are made the same. Some differ in terms of maximum available clocks. When manually overclocking, this term is often used and makes a huge difference. Similarly, the best cores may also vary a bit. Intel’s signature Turbo Max technology 3.0 selects the best available Performance-cores and uses them to deliver enhanced single-core performance.
AI Acceleration
Are you a gamer looking for ‘NVIDIA Broadcast‘ like abilities but do not have an RTX GPU? Fear not, for Intel’s neural noise cancellation software will remove background noise and even keyboard clatter. This feature began back with Rocket Lake (11th Gen). You can read more about this here.
Enhanced iGPU Capabilities
Team blue’s Xe architecture has been a massive improvement over last-Gen. Alder Lake featured the same architecture for its iGPUs. With Raptor Lake you can enjoy features such as 8K HDR, AV1 Decode, HEVC 10b and Intel Quick Sync Video supported with GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD.
The Z790 Chipset
We have finally come to the final part and that is the chipset(s) for Raptor Lake. The diagram below is from Intel themself. The 13th Gen processors support 1×16 PCIe 5.0 or 2×8 PCIe 5.0 Lanes for your GPU. Only 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes are available directly for the processor. The chipset on the other hand, features support for 20x PCIe 4.0 lanes having speeds of up to 6Gb/s. In addition, the Z790 can power up to 5 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, 10 USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 and 10 USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 Ports. That was a mouthful. The -600 vs Z790 chipset comparison is present below:
Conclusion
All in all, these numbers from Intel seem promising and we cannot wait for the reveal which is set to take place on the 27th of September. The complete schedule for Raptor Lake was leaked a while back. All credits go to igorslab.de for providing us with the information we needed to work with.
