Intel’s 13th CPU generation is official: Raptor Lake vs. Ryzen 7000 – who will come out on top?

AMD was about a month ahead of Intel to unveil their next in-house line of processors. Initially, the launch of the first four Raphael CPUs was planned for mid-September, but AMD postponed the start of sales to September 27 – on the same day that Intel launched the first CPUs of the 13th core generation, codenamed Raptor Lake of his innovation event. Some even believed it was a small dig at AMD. However, the specifications for the first six 13th generation CPUs, which have been manufactured using an improved Intel 7 process, have now been officially announced. We round up what Intel has to offer.

The Raptor Lake line-up at a glance

Intel’s K processors and their KF siblings, which will do without integrated graphics units, will start again. The flagship is the Core i9-13900K, which Intel also calls the “world’s fastest desktop processor” on its presentation slides – a title that the CPU has to earn in the exchange of blows with the Ryzen 7000. But Intel doesn’t let up on the superlatives: The CPU also delivers the “world’s best gaming experience”.

CPU and platform specifications.

Source: Intel




The 13900K is followed by the K processors of the i7 and i5 series, the Core i7-13700K and the Core i5-13600K. According to their own statements, Intel wants to cover the high-end (i9), the upper class (i7) and the middle class (i5) with the three processor divisions. For the entry-level class, the small i3 processors will be added next year, which will probably be at the CES 2023 in January. According to Intel, it will bring a total of 22 desktop processors to the market for Raptor Lake, led by the aforementioned K series.

Core i9-13900K – The “fastest desktop processor in the world” clocks at 5.8 GHz

With the desktop CPUs of the 13th generation, Intel packs significantly more efficient cores into the equipment, so that there are 24 cores (8 P and 16 E cores) and 32 threads on the Core i9-13900K to admire. The maximum turbo clock should increase to 5.8 GHz thanks to Thermal Velocity Boost on the Core i9-13900K, while the maximum P-core turbo clock should be able to reach up to 5.4 GHz. The chip manufacturer promises that higher frame rates when playing shouldn’t be a problem with the Core i9-13900K.

Intel cites 6 GHz as the general peak value for Raptor Lake with standard settings, which would be 200 MHz more than the upcoming flagship. This clock rate will probably be seen in a possible KS model. The Core i7-13700K comes with half the E-cores and 24 threads and does not have access to Thermal Velocity Boost, but thanks to Turbo Boost Max 3.0, which identifies the fastest CPU cores and assigns them to critical workloads, it is said to have 100 Squeeze MHz out of the turbo clock and thus reach a maximum of 5.4 GHz. The Core i5-13600K, which has to make do with two P cores fewer than the i7 and i9 and 20 threads, largely dispenses with the frequency-increasing processes mentioned and clocks at a maximum of 5.1 GHz.

More cache should guarantee higher performance

In addition to higher clock speeds and the number of cores, Intel provides its 13th generation desktop CPUs with additional L3 cache for the E cores, which according to the manufacturer benefits the execution of larger data sets and better performance, and with more L2 -Cache per P-Core and E-Core cluster. Intel promises to minimize the time spent exchanging data between the caches and the memory, which speeds up the workflow. There is an additional 2 MiByte L2 cache per P core and 4 MiByte L2 cache per E core cluster. The Core i9-13900K should accordingly come up with 36 MiByte L3 and a total of 32 MiByte L2 cache.

With all these small improvements, Intel envisioned a 15 percent boost in single-threaded performance and a 41 percent boost in multi-threaded performance (at 253W versus the 12900K) on the 13900K, as measured by SPECintrate_2017. On the power consumption side, it can be said that all six processors have a processor base power (PBP) of 125 watts, while the maximum turbo power (MTP) is 253 watts, at least for the Core i9-13900K and Core i7-13700K. The smallest of the first three CPUs, the Core i5-13600K, requires 181 watts.

Which RAM should it be for the 13th generation?

However, detailed information on the specifications and the expected performance of the CPUs is not the only thing Intel has to report. Alongside this, Raptor Lake also has platform support news. The 13th core generation CPUs are said to be able to serve 16 PCI Express 5.0 lanes that deliver 32 GT/s for fast access to discrete graphics, memory and peripherals. There are also four PCI Express 4.0 lanes that are supposed to provide 16 GT/s.

Forward and backward compatibility as well as support for DDR4 and DDR5 RAM.

Source: Intel




In contrast to AMD and AM5, there is support for both DDR5 RAM with up to 5,600 MT/s and DDR4 RAM with up to 3,200 MT/s. It’s worth noting that Alder Lake’s former upper limit was DDR5-4800 (DDR5-4400 on boards with four DIMMs), which is 16.7 percent higher for a DPC. If Intel also promises higher energy efficiency for Raptor Lake, the higher RAM clock could make a contribution.