The announcement comes just a day after AMD released their new processors.

During their Intel Vision Event, Intel announced that their 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" CPUs will be released starting on October 20, 2022. Much like 2021's Alder Lake (12th Gen), Raptor Lake will again utilize a blend of performance (P-Cores) and efficiency (E-Cores) cores. Raptor Lake will make use of the new Z790 chipset, but it seems as though those with Z690 boards will still be fine to upgrade.

These CPUs are said by Intel to be a stopgap between the 12th Gen Alder Lake processors and the upcoming Meteor Lake processors, which are slated for a 2023 release window. For those unaware, AMD just released their Zen 4, 7000 series CPUs yesterday. By all accounts, the Ryzen 7000 series are beasts across the board. However, the lower end models do leave a lot to be desired, not because of their performance (which is fantastic), but because the price barrier to entry with having to buy new motherboards and DDR5 memory is very steep.

To try to combat AMD's new performance dominance, Intel announced a series of new processors ranging from the top of the line i9-13900K down to the i5-13600KF.

Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lack CPUs

The flagship CPU features 24 total cores (8 P-Cores + 16 E-Cores) and a total of 32 threads. The max clock speed for the P-Cores is said to be 5.8GHz with E-Cores hitting 4.3GHz. The i9-13900K will retail for $589 (USD). This places it at the same price as AMD's new Ryzen 9 7900X 12-core, 24-thread processor. Base power consumption is said to be 125W with a max power draw hitting 253W.

Intel's provided benchmarks suggest that the i9-13900K's single threaded performance is up about 15% compared to the i9-12900K. This is due to the higher E-Core count (4 to 8), an E-Core boost clock that is 400MHz higher, and a P-Core boost that is 600MHz higher (400MHz and 200MHz higher for i7 and i5 respectively).

The Intel i7-13700K has 8 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores at 24 total threads. This CPU can boost up to 5.4GHz and retails at $409. Base and max power draw for this one is again 125W and 253W respectively.

The last new entry is the i5-13600K with 6 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores for 20 total threads. This one boosts up to 5.1GHz and can be yours for $319. While the base power draw is again 125W for the i5 model, the max power draw is just 181W.

Each of these CPUs also come in KF variants. The only difference between the K and KF variants is the fact that KF chips are not unlocked for overclocking, they do not include integrated graphics, and they are typically priced about $25 less.

Intel Raptor Lake performance per watt

Intel shows that the Raptor Lake chips are also far more power efficient compared to Alder Lake.

All of the Raptor Lake processors support both DDR4 and DDR5 RAM. This is unlike AMD's 7000 series, which only supports DDR5 RAM. Intel feels as though DDR4 will coexist with DDR5 through to the end of 2024 at the earliest.

Of course, the biggest question most of you here reading this are wondering about: How do these new processors perform in gaming? According to Intel's own slides, with everything remaining the same, the i9-13900K does perform better across the board when compared to the Ryzen 9 5950X and the Intel Core i9-12900K.

Where it gets very interesting is when Intel also includes AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D on the chart. It is here where the 5800X3D is often shown to perform better or match Intel's new flagship or, at the very least, come close to matching performance. The only major outlier on their chart here is with Arcadegeddon.

Intel Raptor Lake Gaming Performance

Since AMD's 7000 series CPUs were released only yesterday, comparisons were not able to be made to the new Raptor Lake chips. I'm sure once tech reviewers get their reviews up for Raptor Lake (presumably closer to the October 20th launch), we will see those comparisons made in spades.

The 5800X3D being an absolute beast for gaming performance really isn't too surprising. The CPU's massive cache increase often put it ahead of AMD's own 7000 series processors in review benchmarks. However, while there are big gains for the 5800X3D in gaming, it falls behind the competition in productivity due to its lower core counts and slightly lower base clocks.