Intel 13th Gen Core Raptor Lake Processors Impress In A Variety Of Workloads

Intel lifted the veil on 3rd-party independent performance analysis of its new 13^th Gen Core series processors, otherwise known by the code name Raptor Lake. From Intel’s faster Raptor Cove Performance Cores that bring up to an additional 600MHz of peak boost clock speed, to faster and more Efficiency Cores on board (now up to 16), and larger caches, this new generation of Intel CPUs brings significant gains across the company’s entire desktop product stack and even stiffer competition to rival AMD’s recently announced Ryzen 7000 series. What’s also readily apparent in this launch is that the Santa Clara bellwether continues to tune its Intel 7 chip fab process, which now is in its 3^rd generation of the company’s SuperFin transistor tech, that has helped deliver these gains across the power and frequency curve.

Couple these increased resources with support for faster DDR5-5600MHz memory speeds, a 900MHz faster compute fabric and a larger and smarter (dynamic INI algorithm assisted) 36MB L3 cache as well (up from 30MB), and it’s clear Intel 7 optimizations have been kind to the 13^th Gen Core design team, affording more on-chip resources and faster clock speeds all around. In fact, Intel’s performance claims are that Raptor Lake will deliver a 15-percent uplift in single-threaded throughput and a big 41-percent lift in multi-threaded throughput, which should culminate in up to 24% better gaming performance and 34% faster content creation performance.

Intel 13^Th Gen Core: More Of Almost Everything And Faster, For The Same Price

There are three processor models being launched today, with two SKUs each (with and without integrated Intel UHD Graphics), for a total of six new chips arriving in market, all of which have double the E-Cores and markedly higher clock speeds for both P-Cores and E-Cores. Here’s the quick product matrix Intel shared a couple of weeks back at its Innovation event in San Jose.

As you can see, Intel 13^th Gen processors can now have up to 24-cores on board, with a P-Core max Turbo frequency that can boost up to 5.8GHz (with a 6GHz SKU hinted as well), depending on model type. The Core i9-13900K is Intel’s current flagship chip, and it’s comprised of 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores with peak clocks at 5.8GHz and 4.3GHz, respectively. Walking down the stack a bit, you see the more mainstream Core i7-13700K 16-core chip and the new Core i5-13600K 14-core chip, both of which have slightly lower peak clock speeds than the 13900K.

Pricing for these chips (K SKUs with IGP) are listed at $589, $409 and $319, respectively, and are basically flat versus Intel’s previous 12^th Gen pricing, even though they all have more resources and faster clock speeds. All of these prices also essentially undercut their competitive AMD Ryzen 7000 counterparts, with specifically the high-end 13900K dropping in for $110 less, though the Core i5-13600KF (no IGP) is only a few dollars less at $294, versus $299 for a Ryzen 5 7600X that the 13600KF handily outperforms. In short, these chips bring a solid value proposition and are also easy drop-in, socket-compatible upgrades for OEMs, PC enthusiasts and gamers.

Intel 13^Th Gen Core Series Real-World Performance Unveiled

My colleague Marco Chiappetta put a couple of Intel’s new Raptor Lake chips through their paces in a detailed deep-dive review at HotHardware. His tests were conducted on the new flagship Core i9-13900K 24-core / 32-thread chip and the more mainstream Core i5-13600K 14-core / 20-thread chip on a midrange MSI Z790 motherboard that should retail for around $350. The benchmark results put forth by these reasonably-priced combos are impressive to be sure…

As you can see, in a variety of workloads, from productivity, to content creation and gaming, Intel 13^th Gen Core processors generally outpace their AMD counterparts and again for considerably lower cost at some SKUs, as long as street pricing lands around MSRP. There are some cases, however, where a Ryzen 9 7950X can outpace the Core i9-13900K, like with Zip compression and Blender rendering. In addition, Intel’s Raptor Lake platform generally consumes more power than AMD’s Zen 4, though to be fair that’s much less of a concern on the desktop.

For a much more detailed deep-dive review with full spec analysis and a ton more benchmark data, head on over to HotHardware for Marco’s full write-up. There’s basically everything you need to know about Intel 13th Gen Core over there.

Intel 13th Gen Core Raptor Lake Wrap-Up

In the final analysis, though this round of the great X86 CPU throwdown leans towards Intel’s new 13^th Gen Core processors, both platforms from Intel and AMD are very competitive with each other and offer appreciable gains over their respective previous-gen counterparts. I do expect strong sell-through for Intel with this platform here in Q4, with its drop-in socket compatibility and a simple firmware microcode update.

Any way you slice it, renewed competition is great for driving innovation and better products for consumers. Intel certainly brought the fight back to AMD with its 13th Gen Core series, for creators, workstation professionals, PC enthusiasts and gamers.