Intel’s new 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs are still relatively new to the market. Some of the Alder Lake chips including the Core i5-12600K and the Core i9-12900K are holding the top spots in our collection of the best CPUs on the market. That being said, there’s no shortage of rumors and speculations about Intel’s next-generation chips. In fact, there’s already a decent amount of info available about Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs, so we decided to create a page to detail all the relevant info. Here’s everything you need to know about the Intel 13th-gen Raptor Lake processors:
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Intel 13th-gen Raptor Lake: Specifications
Raptor Lake CPUs, in case you don’t know, will be Intel’s 13th-generation processors. They’ll essentially be a follow-up to the Alder Lake CPUs that are dominating the performance charts right now. The Raptor Lake CPUs are expected to bring stronger performance with an enhanced 10nm design.
As a part of the Investors Meeting 2022, Intel officially demoed its first engineering sample of Raptor Lake CPU. This particular chip was equipped with a powerful 24-core processor with 32-threads. The processor is said to utilize the same hybrid architecture used by the Alder Lake chips, which means we’ll get to see the same combination of Performance (P-cores) and Efficiency (E-cores) working together for a great overall performance.
Another interesting thing about the Raptor Lake chips is that they’re also said to feature as many as 16 Efficient cores. This means we’re looking at twice as many small cores as the current-gen Alder Lake chips. This 24-core processor could be the one that Coelacanth-dream spotted. It’s presumed to be the Core i9-13900K, an upgrade to the current-gen Intel Core i9-12900K. Just to put things into perspective, Intel’s 12th-gen Core i9-12900K is a 16 core CPU with eight P and E cores each.
The first evidence of Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake CPUs dates all the way back to a leak from March 2021. The leak, as you can see, reveals some official material on Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs. Chip-makers tend to plan and stay ahead of the launch cycles, so it’s not surprising to see documents about Raptor Lake surfacing way before the Alder Lake release.
Another piece of information worth noting is the code from Bootleg shows Raptor Lake without support for AVX-512. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise considering Alder Lake doesn’t support AVX-512 either. It’s still very early to tell whether Raptor Lake CPUs will support AVX-512 on hybrid chips, though. Intel may change its stance, so we’ll refrain from speculating this further, at least for now.
Well, that’s all we have in the name of specifications of the Raptor Lake CPUs, for now. We’ll definitely learn more about these new chips as we get closer to the release date. We’ll have more to talk about these chips later, hopefully.
Intel 13th-gen Raptor Lake: Socket Compatibility
Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake CPUs will use the same LGA1700 CPU socket used by Alder Lake chips. This will come as a relief for those who are eyeing a Raptor Lake upgrade later this year. This also means you’ll be able to carry the existing LGA1700 motherboards and CPU coolers too, This would also mean the upcoming chips will support DDR4 memory modules too, although there is no official confirmation on that just yet. There are currently no rumors or leaks pointing towards Intel’s plans to keep the LGA1700 socket for the 14th-gen Core processors too.
The LGA1700 socket codenamed “15R1”, is physically bigger than the LGA1200 socket. The new socket has more pins to support new features including DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0. Here’s a quick look at the specifications of the LGA1700 socket:
| Specification | Intel socket LGA 1700 |
|---|---|
| IHS to MB Height (Z-Stack, validated range) | 6.529 – 7,532 mm |
| Socket Seating Plane Height | 2.7 mm |
| Thermal Solution Hole Pattern | 78 x 78 mm |
| Maximum Thermal Solution Center of Gravity Height from IHS | 25.4 mm |
| Static Total Compressive Minimum | 534N (120 lbf), Beginning of Life 356 N (80 lbf) |
| End of life maximum | 1068 N (240 lbf) |
| Socket Loading | 80-240 lbf |
| Maximum Thermal Solution Mass | 950 gram |
| Dynamic Compressive Maximum | 489.5 N (110 lbf) |
Intel 13th-gen Raptor Lake: ‘Intel 7’ Process Node
Just like Alder Lake CPUs, Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake chips will also use a 10nm SuperFin process known as Intel 7. However, it looks like Raptor Lake could be the last to utilize the 10nm node before the company’s transition to Intel 4 which is essentially the 7nm EUV manufacturing process. Just to be clear, AMD moved to 7nm Zen 2 architecture in 2019, which means Intel is already a few years behind. AMD is also on track to release the 5nm Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs later this year.
Intel 13th-gen Raptor Lake: Release Date
In the same presentation to investors, Intel discussed its CPU plans for the next few years. The plans highlighted four new generations of CPUs, and the company is planning to launch its 13th-gen Raptor Lake processors this year. This is in line with the earlier rumors too. If everything goes well, we should have the first set of 13th-gen Raptor desktop parts by the end of the third quarter this year. The mobile parts — including the H/HX/U — should follow soon by the fourth quarter or by the end of 2022, at best. We’ll keep an eye on the launch details and update this space if/when more information is made available to us.
Intel’s Alder Lake chips have already sent huge waves in the computing space with their performance. As we mentioned in our Intel Alder Lake review, the new chips offer a significant gen-on-gen performance improvement to trounce the competing Ryzen chips. We expect an incremental upgrade for Raptor Lake chips, but it’ll be interesting to see how they’ll compete with the new Ryzen 5nm Zen 4 at the time to become our pick for the best gaming CPU.