Intel today launched the Core i9-14900KS Special Edition desktop processor, which forms the company's new flagship product in the desktop segment. The Core i9-14900KS is based on the same "Raptor Lake Refresh" silicon as the i9-14900K, and offers an 8P+16E core configuration. What's new is that Intel has increased clock speeds for both the P-cores and E-cores. The P-cores now boost up to 6.20 GHz, a 200 MHz increase over those of the i9-14900K; while the E-cores boost up to 4.50 GHz, a 100 MHz increase. But these tiny speed bumps aren't what make the i9-14900KS special. It's the 320 W Extreme Power Delivery Profile, something the regular i9-14900K lacks. On select Intel Z790 and Z690 motherboards with two 8-pin EPS power connectors, the processor is able to draw large amounts of power to hold onto its high boost frequencies. Intel also made the i9-14900KS from the highest bins of the "Raptor Lake Refresh" silicon.

The Core i9-14900KS comes with a 3.20 GHz base frequency for the P-cores. Each of the 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores comes with 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache. The 16 "Gracemont" E-cores are arranged in four E-core clusters. Each cluster shares a 4 MB L2 cache among its four cores. The 8 P-cores and 4 E-core clusters share a 36 MB L3 cache. The processor comes with a base power value of 150 W—25 W higher than the 125 W of the i9-14900K. Its maximum turbo power is still 253 W, and is engaged on platforms capable of Intel Performance Power Delivery Profile. It's only with some of the more premium motherboards that the 320 W Extreme Power Delivery Profile is engaged. The Core i9-14900KS is a Special Edition SKU, meaning that it may not be available in all the markets where the i9-14900K sells. Intel is pricing this chip at $690, a $100 premium over the i9-14900K, though interestingly, $50 cheaper than what its predecessor, the i9-13900KS, launched at.

Be sure to check out the TechPowerUp Review of the Core i9-14900KS.The launch press-deck by Intel, along with its first-party performance claims, follows.

China's homegrown Loongson 3A6000 CPU shows promise but still needs to catch up AMD and Intel's latest offerings in real-world performance. According to benchmarks by Chinese tech reviewer Geekerwan, the 3A6000 has instructions per clock (IPC) on par with AMD's Zen 4 architecture and Intel's Raptor Lake. Using the SPEC CPU 2017 processor benchmark, Geekerwan has clocked all the CPUs at 2.5 GHs to compare the raw benchmark results to Zen 4 and Intel's Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove) processors. As a result, the Loongson 3A6000 seemingly matches the latest designs by AMD and Intel in integer results, with integer IPC measured at 4.8, while Zen 4 and Raptor Cove have 5.0 and 4.9, respectively. The floating point performance is still lagging behind a lot, though. This demonstrates that Loongson's CPU design can catching up to global leaders, but still needs further development, especially for floating point arithmetic.

However, the 3A6000 is held back by low clock speeds and limited core counts. With a maximum boost speed of just 2.5 GHz across four CPU cores, the 3A6000 cannot compete with flagship chips like AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X running at 5.7 GHz. While the 3A6000's IPC is impressive, its raw computing power is a fraction of that of leading x86 CPUs. Loongson must improve manufacturing process technology to increase clock speeds, core counts, and cache size. The 3A6000's strengths highlight Loongson's ambitions: an in-house LoongArch ISA design fabricated on 12 nm achieves competitive IPC to state-of-the-art x86 chips built on more advanced TSMC 5 nm and Intel 7 nm nodes. This shows the potential behind Loongson's engineering. Reports suggest that next-generation Loongson 3A7000 CPUs will use SMIC 7 nm, allowing higher clocks and more cores to better harness the architecture's potential. So, we expect the next generation to set a bar for China's homegrown CPU performance.

A conglomerate of Japanese hardware outlets has tested Intel's latest batch of Raptor Lake Refresh desktop processors—their findings arrived in the form of a YouTube video (viewable below). The lowly Intel 300 CPU was sampled as part of PAD's lab tests—this 14th generation model serves as a natural successor to Team Blue's Pentium Gold G7400 processor. Pentium and Celeron brands were retired in the "essential product space" in 2022, along with the introduction of a replacement: simple "Intel Processor" in a light blue color scheme.

Expectations are not set very high for a two-core, 4-thread CPU in modern times—some news outlets believe that this an Alder Lake part (AKA a frequency tweaked Pentium Gold G7400), despite being launched alongside many Raptor Lake Refresh parts. The Intel 300 sports two Raptor Cove P-cores with hyper-threading capabilities—base performance is set at 3.9 GHz, with no provisions for boosting above that figure. The rest of its basic specs consist of a 46 W TDP and 6 MB of L3 cache (3 MB on each core). Team Blue's Core i3-14100 quad core CPU sits just above the 300 in the latest batch of 14th Gen—naturally, the former pulls ahead of the latter in synthetic benchmarks. PC Watch and Co. tests present a maximum 55% multi-core performance gap between the two lower end options, although the single-threaded difference was measured 13% (in Cinebench).

Thanks to the leaked slides obtained by @InstLatX64, we have more details and some performance estimates about Intel's upcoming 5th Generation Xeon "Emerald Rapids" CPUs, boasting a significant performance leap over its predecessors. Leading the Emerald Rapids family is the top-end SKU, the Xeon 8592+, which features 64 cores and 128 threads, backed by a massive 480 MB L3 cache pool. The upcoming lineup shifts from a 4-tile to a 2-tile design to minimize latency and improve performance. The design utilizes the P-Core architecture under the Raptor Cove ISA and promises up to 40% faster performance than the current 4th Generation "Sapphire Rapids" CPUs in AI applications utilizing Intel AMX engine. Each chiplet has 35 cores, three of which are disabled, and each tile has two DDR5-5600 MT/s memory controllers, which operate two memory channels each and translating that into eight-channel design. There are three PCIe controllers per die, making it six in total.

Newer protocols and AI accelerators also back the upcoming lineup. Now, the Emerald Rapids family supports the Compute Express Link (CXL) Types 1/2/3 in addition to up to 80 PCIe Gen 5 lanes and enhanced Intel Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI). There are four UPI controllers spread over two dies. Moreover, features like the four on-die Intel Accelerator Engines, optimized power mode, and up to 17% improvement in general-purpose workloads make it seem like a big step up from the current generation. Much of this technology is found on the existing Sapphire Rapids SKUs, with the new generation enhancing the AI processing capability further. You can see the die configuration below. The 5th Generation Emerald Rapids designs are supposed to be official on December 14th, just a few days away.

With the reality of high performance Arm processors from Apple and Qualcomm threatening Intel's market share in the client computing space, Intel is working on learner more PCB-efficient client SoCs that can take the fight to them, while holding onto the foundations of x86. The first such form-factor of processors are dubbed -MX. These are essentially -U segment processors with memory on package, to minimize PCB footprint. Intel has fully integrated the PCH into the processor chip with "Meteor Lake," with PCH functions scattered across the SoC and I/O tiles of the processor. An SoC package with dimensions similar to those of -UP4 packages meant for ultrabooks, can now cram main memory, so the PCBs of next-generation notebooks can be further compacted.

Intel had recently shown Meteor Lake-MX packages to the press as a packaging technology demonstration in its Arizona facility. It's unclear whether this could release as actual products, but in a leaked company presentation, confirmed that its first commercial outing will be with Lunar Lake-MX. The current "Alder Lake-UP4" package measures 19 mm x 28.5 mm, and is a classic multi-chip module that combines a monolithic "Alder Lake" SoC die with a PCH die. The "Meteor Lake-UP4" package measures 19 mm x 23 mm, and is a chiplet-based processor, with a Foveros base tile that holds the Compute (CPU cores), Graphics (iGPU), SoC and I/O (platform core-logic) tiles. The "Lunar Lake-MX" package is slightly larger than its -UP4 predecessors, measuring 27 mm x 27.5 mm, but completely frees up space on the PCB for memory.

The upcoming Core i7-14700K "Raptor Lake Refresh" processor has a core configuration of 8P+12E. That's 8 "Raptor Cove" performance cores, and 12 "Gracemont" efficiency cores spread across 3 E-core clusters. Compared to the i7-13700K, which has been carved out of the "Raptor Lake-S" silicon by disabling 2 out of the 4 available E-core clusters and reducing the L3 cache size to 30 MB from the 36 MB present; the i7-14700K gets an additional E-core cluster, and increases the shared L3 cache size to 33 MB, besides dialing up the clock speeds on both the P-cores and E-cores in comparison to the i7-13700K.

The processor likely has a P-core base frequency of 3.70 GHz, with a 5.50 GHz P-core maximum boost. In comparison, the i7-13700K tops out at 5.40 GHz P-core boost. An alleged i7-14700K engineering sample in the wild has been put through Cinebench R23, where it scores 2192 points in the single-threaded test, and 36296 points in the multi-threaded test. The processor also scored 14988.5 points in the CPU-Z Bench multi-threaded test. Intel is expected to release its 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" desktop processors some time in October 2023.

Finding itself embattled with AMD's EPYC "Genoa" processors, Intel is giving its 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processor a rather quick succession in the form of the Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids," bound for Q4-2023 (about 8-10 months in). The new processor shares the same LGA4677 platform and infrastructure, and much of the same I/O, but brings about two key design changes that should help Intel shore up per-core performance, making it competitive to EPYC "Zen 4" processors with higher core-counts. SemiAnalysis compiled a nice overview of the changes, the two broadest points of it being—1. Intel is peddling back on the chiplet approach to high core-count CPUs, and 2., that it wants to give the memory sub-system and inter-core performance a massive performance boost using larger on-die caches.

The "Emerald Rapids" processor has just two large dies in its extreme core-count (XCC) avatar, compared to "Sapphire Rapids," which can have up to four of these. There are just three EMIB dies interconnecting these two, compared to "Sapphire Rapids," which needs as many as 10 of these to ensure direct paths among the four dies. The CPU core count itself doesn't see a notable increase. Each of the two dies on "Emerald Rapids" physically features 33 CPU cores, so a total of 66 are physically present, although one core per die is left unused for harvesting, the SemiAnalysis article notes. So the maximum core-count possible commercially is 32 cores per die, or 64 cores per socket. "Emerald Rapids" continues to be based on the Intel 7 process (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin), probably with a few architectural improvements for higher clock-speeds.

Intel today expanded its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" client processor family into the commercial segment. Devices in this segment are bought in bulk by large businesses and enterprises; the processors powering them have certain in-built device security and remote management features that enforce company policy regardless of where the employees take the devices. Intel has been pioneering hardware-level remote-management and device security features for close to two decades now, with its vPro feature-set (originally launched as Centrino vPro in the 2000s. The new 13th Gen Core vPro lineup covers popular processor models across various device form-factor classes, spanning ultraportables (15 W or below), thin-and-light commercial notebooks (28 W to 35 W segment); mainstream commercial notebooks (45 W to 55 W); and commercial desktops (65 W).

The 13th Gen vPro series have a lot in common with the 12th Gen Core vPro series, At a hardware-level, these are processors based on the same "Raptor Lake" silicon as the mainstream-client 13th Gen Core processors, but with the enhanced vPro Management Engine that interacts with a compatible operating system to offer endpoint remote manageability for administrators. The desktop versions of these chips have identical SKU differentiation to 65 W 13th Gen Core processors already launched, but with either vPro or vPro Essentials feature-sets. Something similar applies to the 15 W U-segment, 28 W P-segment, and 35-45 W H-segment Core vPro processors. Along with these processors, Intel is debuting Q700-series chipsets specific to the form-factor. For U- and P-segment mobile processor SKUs, the core-logic is part of the processor package; while the H-segment and S-segment (desktop) processors come with discrete chipsets. With the 13th Gen, Intel is also standardizing a new WiFi 6E (Gig+) WLAN chipset with vPro features.

Earlier this week, we learned about the existence of the Intel Core i5-13490F, a China-exclusive processor SKU that's designed to strike "just the right" price-performance against AMD's Ryzen 5 7600 series, and possibly even the Ryzen 7 7700. It turns out that the i5-13490F isn't the only such SKU, there's also the Core i7-13790F. Positioned between the i7-13700 and i9-13900, the i7-13790F is a unique piece of silicon. It has the same 8P+8E core-configuration as the i7-13700 and i7-13700K, and even the same 5.20 GHz maximum P-core turbo frequency as the i7-13700, but comes with a little extra shared L3 cache of 33 MB.

Each of the 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores on the i7-13790F has 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache, and each of the two available E-core clusters has 4 MB of L2 cache that's shared among the four "Gracemont" E-cores in the cluster. The L3 cache that's shared among the 8 P-cores and 2 E-core clusters, has been bumped up to 33 MB from 30 MB on the other 13th Gen Core i7 desktop SKUs. This is still short of the 36 MB physically present on the "Raptor Lake-S" silicon. There are a couple of gotchas, though. Firstly, this is still a "locked" (non-K) SKU having minimal overclocking capabilities, with a 65 W base power and possibly the same 219 W maximum turbo power as the i7-13700; and secondly, as an "F" SKU, it lacks integrated graphics. The i5-13490F and i7-13790F appear to be targeting the SI and retail channels, and come in an exclusive black paperboard box. The i7-13790F is priced at RMB ¥2,999 including taxes, or about $440.

Intel today formally launched the Core i9-13900KS "Raptor Lake" flagship desktop processor. At an MSRP of USD $700, the i9-13900KS is positioned a notch above the $590 i9-13900K, which it replaces as the top 13th Gen Core desktop part you can buy. The i9-13900KS features the same 8P+16E core-configuration as the i9-13900K, but at increased clock speeds and power limits. It is the world's first 6 GHz processor, with its maximum boost frequency set at exactly 6.00 GHz, up from 5.80 GHz of the i9-13900K. This is not just a minor +200 MHz speed bump, but backed by increased power-limits, which enable improved multi-threaded boost-frequency spread thanks to the Adaptive Boost Technology carried over from the previous-generation i9-12900KS.

The 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores of the i9-13900KS are clocked at 3.00 GHz base with up to 6.00 GHz boost, compared to 3.00/5.80 GHz of the i9-13900K, while the E-core frequencies are left untouched at 2.20 GHz base and up to 4.30 GHz boost. The big change here is the processor base power value, which is now set at 150 W, compared to 125 W of the i9-13900K, and while the maximum turbo power value is the same 253 W, Intel has changed the way its power headroom is utilized to support improved boost frequency spread across the P-cores. It seems like Intel hasn't sampled tech publications this processor, and the handful publications that have posted their reviews today using processors sourced from friendly retailers, report increased power-draw, and the need for large aftermarket cooling solutions even at stock frequencies. The i9-13900KS is being offered as an overclocking-friendly chip to those who know what they're doing and can handle extreme cooling solutions.

Intel today launched its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors, and companion 700-series motherboard chipset. These processors are built in the same LGA1700 package as the previous generation "Alder Lake," and are backwards-compatible with 600-series chipset motherboards through a BIOS update. Likewise, 700-series chipset motherboards support older "Alder Lake" processors. With the new 13th Gen Core, Intel is broadly promising an up to 15% uplift in single-threaded performance, which has a bigger bearing on gaming performance; and an up to 41% multi-threaded performance uplift; over the previous-generation, when comparing the top Core i9-13900K with its predecessor, the i9-12900K. Intel also claims to have outclassed the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in multi-threaded performance, and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in gaming performance.

Intel's performance claims are backed by some impressive hardware changes despite the company sticking with the same Intel 7 (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) foundry node as "Alder Lake." To begin with, the single-thread performance uplift comes from the new "Raptor Cove" performance-core, which promises an IPC uplift over the previous-generation "Golden Cove," comes with more dedicated L2 cache of 2 MB per core (compared to 1.25 MB per core in the previous-generation); and significantly higher clock-speeds, going all the way up to 5.80 GHz. "Raptor Lake" has up to 8 P-cores, but the company has put in a lot of work in improving the contribution of E-cores to the processor's overall multi-threaded performance uplift. This is achieved by doubling the E-core count to 16. These are the same "Gracemont" E-cores as previous-generation, but Intel has doubled the L2 cache that's shared in a 4-core Gracemont cluster, from 2 MB per cluster to 4 MB. There are upgrades to even the hardware prefetchers of these cores.

An early review of a retail Intel Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" 8P+16E processor shows it holding up to the rumored "20-40" claim, the idea that the processor can be up to 20% faster in gaming, and up to 40% faster in productivity, compared to the current i9-12900K. Much of the gaming performance increase is attributed to the higher IPC of the new "Raptor Cove" P-cores, and the much higher boost clocks they run at (up to 5.80 GHz); whereas the multi-threaded performance boost comes from not just the faster P-cores, but a doubling in the E-core count to 16, and improved E-core cache structures, besides higher clock speeds that they run on. For tests that scale across P-cores and E-cores, the i9-13900K behaves like a 24-core/32-thread processor, which is what it is. Among the tests included are CSGO, AIDA64, 7-Zip, WinRAR, Cinebench R15, R20, and R23; and their average, in comparison to the i9-12900K.

OneRaichu, who has access to engineering samples of both the AMD "Raphael" Ryzen 7000-series, and Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake," performed IPC comparisons between the two, by disabling E-cores on the "Raptor Lake," fixing the clock speeds of both chips to 3.60 GHz, and testing them across a variety of DDR5 memory configurations. The IPC testing was done with SPEC, a mostly enterprise-relevant benchmark, but one that could prove useful in tracing where the moderately-clocked enterprise processors such as EPYC "Genoa" and Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" land in the performance charts. OneRaichu also threw in scores obtained from a 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processor for this reason, as its "Golden Cove" P-core powers "Sapphire Rapids" (albeit with more L2 cache).

With DDR5-4800 memory, and testing on SPECCPU2017 Rate 1, at 3.60 GHz, the AMD "Zen 4" core ends up with the highest scores in SPECint, topping even the "Raptor Cove" P-core. It scores 6.66, compared to 6.63 total of the "Raptor Cove," and 6.52 of the "Golden Cove." In the SPECfp tests, however, the "Zen 4" core falls beind "Raptor Cove." Here, scores a 9.99 total compared to 9.91 of the "Golden Cove," and 10.21 of the "Raptor Cove." Things get interesting at DDR5-6000, a frequency AMD considers its "sweetspot," The 13th Gen "Raptor Cove" P-core tops SPECint at 6.81, compared to 6.77 of the "Zen 4," and 6.71 of "Golden Cove." SPECfp sees the "Zen 4" fall behind even the "Golden Cove" at 10.04, compared to 10.20 of the "Golden Cove," and 10.46 of "Raptor Cove."

With Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" facing stiff competition from AMD's Ryzen 7000 series, and the "Zen 4" series being augmented with 7000X3D series in early-2023, it's becoming a foregone conclusion that Intel will launch a possible "Core i9-13900KS" SKU, which is on its way to being the world's first desktop processor that can boost up to the 6.00 GHz mark. The processor should be able to boost its 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores to the 6.00 GHz mark, given that the maximum boost frequency of the stock i9-13900K is already rumored to be at 5.70 GHz.

At its Tech Tour event in Israel, Intel confirmed that "Raptor Lake" brings a 15% single-threaded, and 41% multi-threaded performance gain over "Alder Lake." The single-threaded gain is from the higher IPC of the "Raptor Cove" P-core, coupled with its frequency set as high as 5.70 GHz; whereas the multi-threaded performance gain is a combination of increased IPC of the P-cores, and increased frequencies for both the P-cores and E-cores. The E-core clusters get more shared L2 cache, which should improve their performance, too.

Remember how 12th Gen Core i5 non-K was vastly different in performance from the Core i5 K/KF on account of being 6P+0E processors in comparison to more L3 cache and a 6P+4E core-count of the i5-12600K/KF? Intel is doubling down on creating architectural confusion in the mid-range, according to a 3DCenter.org article citing a leaked slide from Intel's 13th Gen Core launch press-deck.

We had earlier thought that the 13th Gen non-K Core i5 will have a 6P+4E core-config, but still be based on "Raptor Lake" (i.e. "Raptor Cove" P-cores + "Gracemont" E-cores), in comparison to the i5-13600K/KF, which are confirmed "Raptor Lake" chips with 6P+8E configuration; but it turns out that Intel is basing the non-K 13th Gen Core i5 on the older "Alder Lake" microarchitecture. These chips will be 6P+4E (that's six "Golden Cove" P-cores + four "Gracemont" E-cores), which make them essentially identical to the i5-12600K, but without the unlocked multiplier, and a lower 65 W processor base power.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" flagship desktop processor continues to amaze with its performance lead over the current i9-12900K "Alder Lake," in leaked benchmarks of the processor tested in a number of synthetic benchmarks. The 8P+16E hybrid processor posts a massive 30% lead in multi-threaded performance with Cinebench R23, thanks to higher IPC on the P-cores, the addition of 8 more E-cores, higher clock speeds, and larger caches all around. These gains are also noted with CPU-Z Bench, where the i9-13900K is shown posting a similar 30% lead over the i9-12900K.

In gaming benchmarks, these leads translate into a roughly-10-15 percent gain in frame-rates. Games still aren't too parallelized, Intel Thread Director localizes gaming workloads to the P-cores, which remain 8 in number. And so, the gaming performance gains boil down mainly to the IPC increase of the "Raptor Cove" P-cores, and their higher clock-speeds, compared to the 8 "Golden Cove" P-cores of the i9-12900K. From the looks of it, the i9-13900K will maintain a competitive edge over the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 7950X mainly because the high IPC of 8 (sufficient) P-cores sees it through in gaming benchmarks, while the zerg-rush of 24 cores clinches the deal in multi-threaded benchmarks that scale across all cores.

A leaked Intel company document detailing the "go to market" (GTM) plan for its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors, reveals key dates associated with it. Intel will likely hold a launch event for the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors on September 27, 2022 (when it's September 28 in Taiwan). This happens to be the same day AMD's Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors go on sale. Pre-orders for these processors will open on October 13, 2022 (or October 14 in Taiwan). This is when you'll be able to order one online. October 20 is when the processors will be available to purchase off the shelf (October 21 in Taiwan). This document does not deal with review NDAs, so we'll have to guess that reviews go live somewhere between September 27 and October 13.

Built on the same Intel 7 process as "Alder Lake," "Raptor Lake" introduces an IPC increase with its "Raptor Cove" P-cores, and a doubling in the count of its "Gracemont" E-cores, along with increases in L2 cache sizes for both the P-cores and E-core clusters. The processor is said to be built on the same LGA1700 package as the 12th Gen, and compatible with Intel 600 series chipset motherboards with a UEFI firmware update. The processors launch alongside new Intel 700-series chipset motherboards that have out-of-the-box support for them.

When it releases, the Core i5-13400 will join a long like of Intel processors that are extremely successful in the market—chips that are priced around the $200-mark, and bang in the middle of the market bell-curve. Other chips in the lineup include the i5-12400, i5-11400, i5-10400, and the i5-9400. With the 13th Generation "Raptor Lake," Intel is configuring the i5-13400, i5-13500, and the i5-13600 (non-K) as 6P+4E processors (that's 6 "Raptor Cove" P-cores with 4 "Gracemont" E-cores); whereas their 12th Gen predecessors only had 6 "Golden Cove" P-cores, and no E-cores. The top Core i5 part, the i5-13600K, will stand out featuring a 6P+8E configuration.

Maximum boost frequencies of the Core i5-13400 and i5-13500 surfaced on the web thanks to Passmark screenshots scored by TUM_APISAK. Boost frequencies of 13th Gen Core processors weren't part of the recent lineup leak. The i5-13400 has a maximum boost frequency of 4.10 GHz, while the i5-13500 comes with 4.50 GHz. Both SKUs have an identical base frequency of 2.50 GHz. The maximum turbo frequency of 4.10 GHz for the i5-13400 is significantly lower than the 5.80 GHz of the flagship i9-13900K, and the 5.10 GHz of the i5-13600K. It's also quite spaced apart from the i5-13500, with its 4.50 GHz. Perhaps Intel really wants some consumer interest in the Core i5 SKUs positioned between the i5-13400 and the i5-13600K.

An Intel Core i9-13900 "Raptor Lake" (non-K) processor was spotted in the wild by Benchleaks. The non-K parts are expected to have 65 W Processor Base Power and aggressive power-management, compared to the unlocked i9-13900K, although the core configuration is identical: 8 P-cores, and 16 E-cores. Besides tighter power limits out of the box, and a locked multiplier, the i9-13900 also has lower clocks, with its maximum boost frequency for the P-cores set 5.60 GHz, compared to the 5.80 GHz of the i9-13900K. It's still a tad higher than the 5.40 GHz of the i7-13700K.

Tested in Geekbench 5.4.5, the i9-13900 scores 2130 points in the single-threaded test, and 20131 points in the multi-threaded one. Wccftech tabulated these scores in comparison to the current-gen flagship i9-12900K. The i9-13900 ends up 10 percent faster than the i9-12900K in the single-threaded test, and 17 percent faster in the multi-threaded. The single-threaded uplift is thanks to the higher IPC of the "Raptor Cove" P-core, and slightly higher boost clock; while the multi-threaded score is helped not just by the higher IPC, but also the addition of 8 more E-cores.

The flagship Core i9-13900K/KF "Raptor Lake" processor could come with a maximum boost frequency as high as 5.80 GHz, according to early store listings by a Canadian retailer that mentions the processor's retail SKU. This would be the highest possible clock speed sustained by the "Raptor Cove" P-cores of the processor, with its best available boosting algorithm (Intel processors tend to have many). The listing also reveals the maximum boost frequency of the Core i7-13700K/KF to be 5.40 GHz. Intel typically gives its unlocked Core i7 SKUs one less boosting algorithm than the Core i9, besides lower frequencies. The fastest mid-range part from the series, the Core i5-13600K, ticks at speeds of up to 5.10 GHz.

The listings see the Core i9-13900K go for CAD $941 (USD $727), the i9-13900KF at CAD $901 (USD $696), the Core i7-13700K at CAD $663 (USD $512), the i7-13700KF at CAD $626 (USD $484); the mid-range Core i5-13600K at CAD $461 ($356), and the i5-13600KF at CAD $424 (USD $327). These prices may seem high as they're pre-launch listings, and hardware in Canada tends to be slightly pricier than in the States. Going by launch prices of the 12th Gen Alder Lake, Intel seems to be raising the launch prices of "Raptor Lake" by a single-digit percentage.

According to an investigative report by "Chips and Cheese," the larger L2 caches in Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake-S" doesn't come with a proportionate increase in cache latency, and Intel seems to have contained the latency increase well. "Raptor Lake-S" significantly increases L2 cache sizes over the previous generation. Each of its 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores has 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache, compared to the 1.25 MB with the "Golden Cove" P-cores powering the current-gen "Alder Lake-S," which amounts to a 60 percent increase in size. The "Gracemont" E-core clusters (group of four E-cores), sees a doubling in the size of the L2 cache that's shared among the four cores in the cluster, from 2 MB in "Alder Lake," to 4 MB. The last-level L3 cache shared among all P-cores and E-core clusters, sees a less remarkable increase in size, from 30 MB to 36 MB.

Larger caches have a direct impact on performance, as more data is available close to the CPU cores, sparing them a lengthy fetch/store operation to the main memory (RAM). However, making caches larger doesn't just cost die-area, transistor-count, and power/heat, but also latency, even though L2 cache is an order of magnitude faster than the L3 cache, which in turn is significantly faster than DRAM. Chips and Cheese tracked and tabulated the L2 cache latencies of past Intel client microarchitectures, and found a generational increase in latencies with increasing L2 cache sizes, leading up to "Alder Lake." This increase has somehow tapered with "Raptor Lake."

An Intel Core "Raptor Lake" engineering sample was de-lidded by Expreview giving us a first look at what will be Intel's last monolithic silicon client processor before the company switches over to chiplets, with its next-generation "Meteor Lake." The chip de-lidded here is the i9-13900, which maxes out the "Raptor Lake-S" die, in featuring all 8 "Raptor Cove" P-cores and 16 "Gracemont" E-cores physically present on the die, along with 36 MB of shared L3 cache, and an iGPU based on the Xe-LP graphics architecture.

The "Raptor Lake-S" silicon is built on the same Intel 7 (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) silicon fabrication node as "Alder Lake-S." The "Raptor Lake-S" (8P+16E) die measures 23.8 mm x 10.8 mm, or 257 mm² in area, which is 49 mm² more than that of the "Alder Lake-S" (8P+8E) die (around 209 mm²). The larger die area comes from not just the two additional E-core clusters, but also larger L2 caches for the E-core clusters (4 MB vs. 2 MB), and larger L2 caches for the P-cores (2 MB vs. 1.25 MB); besides the larger shared L3 cache (36 MB vs. 30 MB). The "Raptor Cove" P-core itself could be slightly larger than its "Golden Cove" predecessor.

Intel's 13th Gen Core i5 "Raptor Lake" desktop processor lineup could see the top Core i5-13600K and i5-13600KF feature a 6P+8E core-configuration (that's six performance cores and eight efficiency cores). Each of the six P-cores has HyperThreading enabled, making this a 14-core/20-thread processor. Each of the six "Raptor Cove" P-cores has 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache. The eight "Gracemont" E-cores are spread across two E-core clusters with four cores, each. Each cluster shares 4 MB of L2 cache among the four E-cores (increased from 2 MB per cluster on "Alder Lake"). The P-cores and E-cores share 24 MB of L3 cache, increased from 20 MB on the i5-12600K.

A qualification sample (QS) of the Core i5-13600K made its way to social media, where it was put through a bunch of synthetic tests. In CPU-Z Bench, the i5-13600K QS scores 830 points in single-thread, compared to 648 points of the Ryzen 9 5950X "Zen 3," and trails it in the multi-threaded tests, with 10031.8 points, compared to 11906 points for the Ryzen. The QS comes with a Processor Base Power (PBP) value of 125 W, same as that of the i5-12600K. "Raptor Lake" is backwards compatible with Intel 600-series chipset motherboards, although it launches alongside the Intel 700-series chipset. It shares the LGA1700 socket with 12th Gen "Alder Lake," and is built on the same Intel 7 node (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) as its predecessor.

Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" is shaping up to be another leadership desktop processor lineup, with an engineering sample clocking significant increases in gaming minimum framerates over the preceding 12th Gen Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake." Extreme Player, a tech-blogger on Chinese video streaming site Bilibili, posted a comprehensive gaming performance review of an i9-13900K engineering sample covering eight games across three resolutions, comparing it with a retail i9-12900KF. The games include CS:GO, Final Fantasy IX: Endwalker, PUBG, Forza Horizon 5, Far Cry 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the synthetic benchmark 3DMark. Both processors were tested with a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, 32 GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and a 1.5 kW power supply.

The i9-13900K ES is shown posting performance leads ranging wildly between 1% to 2% in the graphics tests of 3DMark, but an incredible 36% to 38% gain in the CPU-intensive tests of the suite. This is explained not just by increased per-core performance of both the P-cores and E-cores, but also the addition of 8 more E-cores. Although the same "Gracemont" E-cores are used in "Raptor Lake," the L2 cache size per E-core cluster has been doubled in size. Horizon Zero Dawn sees -0.7% to 10.98% increase in frame rates. There are some anomalous 70% frame-rate increases in RDR2, discounting which, we still see a 2-9% increase. FC6 posts modest 2.4% increases. Forza Horizon 5, PUBG, Monster Hunter Rise, and FF IX, each report significant increases in minimum framerates, well above 20%.

In what could be evidence of Intel pulling off a major generational IPC increase, Chinese PC enthusiast Extreme Player, with access to a Core i9-13900K engineering sample (ES), tested the chip on a handful synthetic tests, with the processor yielding significant performance gains over its predecessor, the i9-12900K. The most striking performance number has to be the CPU-Z Bench single-core test, which shows an impressive 9.41 percent increase over that of the i9-12900K.

The i9-13900K packs "Raptor Cove" performance cores, which Intel claims come with a generational IPC increase over the "Golden Cove" P-cores. The 9.4% performance increase could be a result of not just increased IPC, but also higher clock speeds (set at 5.50 GHz, the assumed maximum boost frequency of the retail processor). The multi-threaded CPU-Z Bench sees an incredible 46.34% performance increase. This stems from not just increased performance on the eight P-cores, but also the doubling in E-cores from 8 to 16. The E-core clusters also see a doubling in L2 cache sizes. The story repeats with Cinebench R23, with an incredible 13.53% single-thread performance increase, and a 40.25% multi-threaded performance increase.