Is Raptor Lake worth waiting for?

Raptor Lake is still several days away from release, but is it even worth waiting for?

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Intel showed its latest PC-chip technology at CES and promised an exponential increase, claiming up to a “15% increase in single-threaded performance and 41% increase in multithreaded performance” overall. But one question still remains: is Raptor Lake worth waiting for?

We would have to say, yes!

Its next-gen Raptor Lake processor is how Intel arms itself against the newest Apple Silicon and the innovative AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs. The truth is that Intel has been a disappointment of late, with its many delays and poor innovation. What once was a market leader, now looks like a dog chasing ice cream.

However, following the debut of Raptor Lake and other assorted surprises, like new budget Intel Arc GPUs, now the firm takes on the appearance of a robotic dog featuring rockets much faster than the ice cream it once pursued.

Raptor Lake 13th Gen Intel CPU specs and price

Core i9-13900KCore i7-13700KCore i5-13600K
Base clock (GHz)3.0P/2.2E3.4P/2.5E3.5P/2.6E
Boost clock (GHz)5.8P/4.3E5.4P/4.2E5.1P/3.9E
Cores/threads8P/16E/32T8P/8E/24T6P/8E/20T
Cache (L2)36MB24MB20MB
System power target (watts)125-253125-253125-181
Boxed processor price$589$409$319

The new Raptor Lake CPUs are the hybrid architecture’s technology reaching its peak, a maturation and improvement that was once before expected on Intel’s 12th gen chips. In order to achieve these improvements, Intel has confirmed that these 13th gen Raptor Lake processors would feature up to 24 cores (8 performance + 16 efficiency cores) for the most expensive model, the Core i9, which marks an amazing leap compared to what Alder Lake currently offers. 

13th Gen vs 12th Gen CPUs

If we compare the new processor to its predecessor, it seems to be able to draw more power when pushed to its limits: 253 watts compared with 241 watts previously for the i9-13900K and i7-13700K, and 181 watts versus 150 watts for the i5-12600K, plus promising even less power consumption thanks to the integrated hybrid technology.

Overall, Intel’s Raptor Lake will take the company back to its peak, and this time it may well stay there. Let’s just hope Intel continues this endeavor and doesn’t disappoint again as they would on previous launches.

When do 13th Gen CPUs release?

Intel has announced that the “K” version processors will officially debut on October 20th alongside Intel’s Z790 chipset motherboards. The remaining bundle of 13th Gen processors has no official release just yet and Intel will share the launch details later in the year.