The flagship of the next generation of Intel CPUs has probably appeared in the database of the popular benchmark Geekbench. The results give hope for a big leap in performance.
However, the processor discovered in the “wild” is probably still an early engineering sample. The supposed Intel Core i9-13900K should be the top model of “Raptor Lake”. This should be a minor upgrade from Alder Lake, based on the same manufacturing process but arguably bringing more cores than its predecessor. In the case of the engineering sample, there are a whopping 24 cores, which have a total of 32 threads.
If we assume the core & thread logic of the predecessor, then we can still expect eight performance cores, which are now supported by up to 16 efficiency cores. The latter are – as their name suggests – very efficient, but can only process one thread at a time.
In addition, the pre-series model has already reached up to 5.5 GHz. This means that the clock rate is already higher than that of its predecessor – and of every other CPU currently available.
Supposed Intel Core i9-13900K: Clearly ahead of the competition
But what about the performance data? As I said, we would have expected a smaller improvement from Raptor Lake, but what is shown suggests a decent jump: The sample got 2,133 points in the single-core benchmark and a whopping 23,701 points in the multi-core test. The Raptor Lake processor leaves AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X behind by up to 48% (SC: 1689; MC: 16,508 points). The direct predecessor 12900K is beaten by 37%.
via wccftech
Quite strong values, but we must not forget that AMD will soon compete with Zen 4 in the desktop. The new Ryzen 7000 CPUs are expected within the next few months and should at least catch up with Intel. Whether they will beat Raptor Lake, however, is uncertain. Because the promises made by AMD sound rather conservative in comparison. I’m therefore assuming an efficiency win for AMD and another performance crown for Intel.
Rarity value: Raptor Lake also runs on “older” mainboards
Incidentally, Raptor Lake was tested on a current ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme in combination with 32 GB DDR5-6400 RAM. In contrast to previous CPU upgrades from Intel, you can now continue to use the LGA1700 platform. Team Blau seems to have taken AMD as a role model here, which has provided its aging AM4 series with CPU updates over the long term. MSI has even rolled out Raptor Lake support for its own motherboards – so it shouldn’t be too long before we can hunt for frame rates with the Raptors. 😉
With the 14th generation called “Meteor Lake” from 2023 there will probably be another mainboard upgrade for Intel fans. The jump in performance should then be even greater. Nevertheless, it’s nice that an Intel platform finally offers support for two CPU generations again.
What do you think of the current values of the supposed Core i9-13900K? Will Intel finally be able to reclaim the CPU crown or will AMD come back with Zen 4? Let us know in the comments section.
