This summer is shaping up to be a boring season in terms of processor launches, but the good news is that fall will be chock full of new hardware. One of those launches is expected to be the 13th generation of desktop CPU products from Intel, codenamed Raptor Lake.
Intel has publicly updated us on a release timeline, but the reliable leaker Moore’s Law is Dead claims that September is likely for review samples and limited volume. We imagine it will likely be of high-end models like i9s. Interestingly, he goes on to claim that volume production of K series chips won’t begin to ramp until October, perhaps not even until the end of that month.
This would mean a slower rollout for mainstream and entry-level products like i3s, i5, and possibly i7s. The same would go for the non-K chips that cannot be overclocked, but offer better value. It’s also worth noting that OEMs like Dell (Alienware) and HP (Omen) typically make use of non-K processors.
What to expect from Raptor Lake
Nothing official is known about Raptor Lake aside from the fact that it will use the same Intel 7 (10nm) manufacturing process as Alder Lake 12th gen. However, we’ve gathered together additional information from Moore’s Law is Dead and supporting sources. We expect Raptor Lake to be better for gaming than Alder Lake thanks to higher clock speeds, more cache, and other tweaks. What that means exactly for performance is hard to say until we have samples for review.
We can, however, expound on leaked performance uplift estimates a little more. The current sentiment is that top Raptor Lake models will manage higher clock speeds, perhaps around 5.7-5.8GHz. It’s expected that cores counts will also be doubled over Alder Lake for the little Gracemont cores across the majority of the lineup. The large core counts are expected to remain the same. Single-threaded performance could increase by ~10%, while multi-threaded performance will likely improve more than 30%.
Interestingly, the socket could slightly change without causing motherboard compatibility. The expectation is that Raptor Lake will fit into an LGA 1800 socket, which Z690 motherboards already support but don’t utilize all the pins. This shift would accommodate higher power consumption to achieve the performance targets. What we don’t know is if Intel 14th gen, codenamed Meteor Lake, will be LGA 1800 compatible. This is still up for dispute among sources.
Pictured is the Alder Lake 12900K die shot for illustration. Raptor Lake could feature twice the little cores (on the right). (Image credit: Intel).
AMD sounds dangerous to Intel
This leads us to the golden question of how Raptor Lake will compete with Zen 4. Moore’s Law is Dead’s current sentiment on this matter, which is also now supported by public information from AMD, suggests a competitive market overall. However, AMD also confirmed that it will refresh its Zen 4 lineup in 2023 with V-Cache options, possibly on the higher performing 4nm node as well. If the 5800X3D reviews are anything to go by, Raptor Lake will be outclassed until Intel can launch Meteor Lake.
We’ll just have to see how everything plays out in the CPU space with Intel Raptor Lake and AMD Zen 4. The good news is that we as consumers don’t have anything to worry about with fierce competition. Expect a healthy market with excellent gaming performance and attractive prices as these two companies duke it out to be the best.
