Raptor Lake is right around the corner

Enthusiastic Citizen(opens in new tab) (ECSM_Official), the same hardware leaker who brought us the first Core i5-13600K benchmarks, has shared the alleged launch dates for Intel's 13th Generation Raptor Lake family. 

According to the leaker's sources, Intel will reportedly announce Raptor Lake at the Intel Innovation 2022 event on September 28. If the information is accurate, September 28 is also when the chipmaker lifts the embargo for reviews so consumers can see what level of performance Raptor Lake brings to the table.

Raptor Lake's retail availability starts on October 17, per Enthusiastic Citizen's sources. Similar to Alder Lake, the Raptor Lake K-series chips, such as the Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i5-13600K, will lead the charge along with the premium Z790 chipset. The initial Raptor Lake lineup also includes the KF-series counterparts. Unfortunately, we may not see the non-K chips and more affordable H760 and B760 chipsets until next year.

It would seem that Intel will save its Raptor Lake non-K lineup and H760 and B760 chipsets for CES 2023, specifically on January 5. The official release date, however, will be sometime in the second half of January. Enthusiastic Citizen confirmed with his sources that there wouldn't be an H710 chipset this generation. Instead, Intel will purportedly reuse the H610 chipset for Raptor Lake. Remember that Intel's current 600-series chipsets support Raptor Lake through a firmware update. So current Alder Lake motherboard owners don't necessarily have to upgrade to a 700-series motherboard if they don't want to.

Unlike Zen 4, which has left DDR4 in the dust, Raptor Lake will continue to support the standard. While Alder Lake did DDR5-4800 natively, Raptor Lake arrives with official DDR5-5600 support. Raptor Lake retains the hybrid microarchitecture combining Raptor Cove Performance cores (P-cores) and Gracemont Efficiency cores (E-cores). Raptor Lake comes with double the E-cores, pushing the total core count to 24 (eight P-cores and 16 E-cores).

Therefore, the Core i9-13900K features an 8P+16E configuration, whereas the Core i7-13700K will likely use an 8P-8E setup. Lastly, the Core i5-13600K gets four extra efficiency cores to create a 6P+8E design. Besides the increased E-cores, Raptor Lake also boasts a larger L3 cache and faster clock speeds.

Once again, Intel will battle it out with AMD in the mainstream desktop processor market. We don't have an official launch date for Ryzen 7000, but AMD has committed to Fall 2022, coinciding with Intel's Raptor Lake debut.