מקור: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation
Like (speed) clockwork, this year Intel is also releasing a new generation of its flagship processors, developed among other things in Israel, and this time we are already reaching its 13th generation processor, Raptor Lake. Chipzilla continues the big change that started with the previous generation of processors with some improvements and some familiar things.
Up to 24 cores, and with improvements of tens of high percentages
The Israeli team that participated in the development. Photo: Ohad Flick
Last year Intel made a very significant change in its processor architecture, when for the first time it used two types of cores: one is “Efficient Core” and the other is “Performance Core” – if you will, its version of ARM’s successful big.LITTLE architecture. This should help with much smarter energy management of the processor, with each command sent to the processor going to the most suitable core depending on the load. In March, the company released a special version of the new processor, and claimed that it is the fastest desktop processor in the world – so it seems that it has indeed reached a significant jump in the capabilities of its processors.
Source: Intel
Raptor Lake is built on the same concept of the hybrid architecture of performance cores (P-Core) and efficiency cores (E-Core). As usual, Intel focuses in the first stage on processors for desktops with the S series in powers of 35, 65 and 125W. Once again, Intel claims that its flagship processor, the i9-13900K is the fastest desktop processor in the world, capable of reaching 5.8GHz, thanks to improved P cores and twice as many E cores, with glazing of larger L2 caches (2MB per P core and -4MB per E core cluster). The most advanced version will come with 8 performance cores and 16 efficient cores (24 cores in total). This should lead to up to 50% improvement in Single Thread and up to 41% in Multi Thread. Of course, until the processors reach independent reviewers, we will not be able to verify these details and actual capabilities.
The new processors were built on the Intel 7 architecture, which is actually an improved 10nm architecture. In this sense, Intel may have been left behind, but in other ways, it has moved forward, while remaining behind in the right places. We will explain: the new processors come with support for PCIe Gen 5.0 and DDR5-5600, but at the same time, the new processors will also support the more common and accepted standards, PCIe 4 and DDR4, so you won’t have to immediately upgrade your motherboard and all your other components. So, at least in this regard, maybe not so much It’s bad to be left behind.
Data: Intel
But not only the flagship processor received an upgrade, but also the more modest processors. The i5-13600K version will get up to 14 cores at up to 5.1GHz (an increase of 200MHz compared to last year), while the i7-13700K version will get up to 16 cores at up to 5.4GHz (an increase of 400MHz compared to last year). The director of Intel’s gaming division who came to the main press event that took place in Israel, compared the advanced i9 model to AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X, and asked to stop comparing FPS to FPS, and instead look at average FPS. As soon as he moved the conversation to Intel’s new order, the results he presented in the tests (of Intel, so take that into account) were tens of percent higher than the competitor. In Spider-Man, which was recently released for PC, the results even reached 58%, a significant difference between AMD and Intel.
Anyone can overclock
Image: Intel
Those who want to squeeze more out of the new processors will be able to do so more easily than ever before. At an event held by Intel for journalists from around the world on the occasion of the announcement, it showed us its new overclocking system, which this time is intended both for new users and enthusiasts as well as for overclockers who need control of the Element wave. The basic users will be able to overclock with one click of a button, without understanding anything about overclocking, but the advanced users can control each of the E and P cores. Intel also revealed at the event that it managed to break the 6.0GHz line with the help of its overclocking tools, but did not specify which of the models were involved.
By the way, the prices of the processors, which were leaked a short time ago, start at $309 for the basic processors and reach up to $659 for the most advanced i9 processors. These prices reflect an increase of tens of dollars per processor compared to the previous generation.