Intel announces 13th generation Core series, “Raptor Lake”, with up to 24 cores

Intel has officially announced its new 13th generation Core processor lineup codenamed “Raptor Lake”. These are its most powerful processors in the consumer area, featuring up to 24 cores, and promising boost frequencies of up to 5.8 GHz. The variants shown so far, however, were only the i5, i7 and i9 in top-of-the-line, unlocked, overclockable variants. Of course, along with these, “non-K” versions will also be coming to stores at cheaper prices.

Intel Raptor Lake seems to take every product area to the next level

Just a day after AMD lifted the embargo on Ryzen 7000 series reviews, which promises top gaming performance, Intel has officially announced details of its new desktop processors. These too promise increased gaming performance, but comparisons were made to the 12th generation and AMD 5000 models rather than the new range of competitors.

We have, in order, the Intel Core i5-13600K, the mid-range Raptor Lake series, which comes equipped with 14 cores (6 performance and 8 efficient). Basically, it becomes equivalent to what the 12-series i7 offered last year in terms of cores. The i5 starts at a base frequency of 3.5 GHz for the performance cores and 2.6 GHz for the efficient ones and reaches boosts of 5.1 GHz and 3.9 GHz respectively. Power consumption, however, is an issue for Intel’s entire new range. For the i5, consumption rises to 125W for the base frequency and 181W in boost. The $319 price for the i5-13600K version with integrated GPU is competitive, however, and the non-GPU “KF” variant costs $294.

The high-end i7-13700K comes with 8 high-performance cores and 8 efficient cores with frequencies starting at 3.4/2.5 GHz and reaching 5.4/4.2 GHz in Boost. This model also has a base power consumption of 125W, but goes up in turbo to 253W. The price is $409 for the K variant and $384 for the KF variant.

The new flagship Core i9-13900K goes up to 24 cores, but doesn’t add any performance cores, just doubles the efficient cores on the i7. Core frequencies go slightly lower, starting at 3 GHz for P-Cores and 2.2 GHz for E-Cores, suggesting low power consumption when not in demand. However, in boost, when it reaches frequencies of 5.8 GHz and 4.3 GHz on the E-Cores, consumption jumps to 250W. Intel says it would reach 253, but in reality it could be even higher. The Core i9-13900K costs $589, and the KF costs $564 US.

Those who already have Core 12th gen don’t need to change platform

Processors will still be compatible with the existing 600 platform, but the new 700 series platform, the Z790, will also be released and will benefit from an extra bus for USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 ports at 20 Gbps. Perhaps this will allow us to take advantage of the full performance of the Kingston XS2000 SSD that we couldn’t test at full capacity due to lack of hardware compatible with such speeds. Interestingly, the new Raptor Lake processors are still compatible with DDR4 RAM, while the AMD Ryzen 7000 switches exclusively to DDR5.

Intel promises a 15% performance boost in single-core applications based on architectural improvements and 41% improvements in multi-threading when you add in the extra cores available. In gaming, we can expect improvements of up to 24% in certain titles, such as League of Legends.

While performance is at times on the low end of expectations, even Intel has admitted in the charts shown that the AMD Ryzen 5800X3D is still better for gaming in some titles tested, which makes this release a little less exciting, especially when you factor in the power consumption and heat these processors will produce at full load.