Intel Core i9-13900K, The 13th Gen Raptor Lake Flagship CPU, Specs, Price, Performance & Availability – Everything We Know So Far

Intel Core i9-13900K will be the flagship chip of the 13th Gen Raptor Lake Desktop CPU family that will feature support on the LGA 1700/1800 socket platform. Just like its predecessor, Alder Lake, the Raptor Lake chip will adopt a similar hybrid architecture design, composed of P-cores and E-cores but with more cores, higher clocks, and a larger cache for faster performance.

While we have already detailed what Intel's 13th Gen Raptor Lake and Z790 platform brings to the table over here, I believe that the fastest chip in the lineup deserves its own roundup. Intel's Raptor Lake isn't a massive architectural upgrade but a refinement of the existing Alder Lake design that'll entice gamers and content creators with more of virtually everything. The Core i9-13900K being the flagship of this lineup will have to prove that it's the real deal by not only showcasing a decent CPU performance gain over the Core i9-12900K but also against AMD's Ryzen 7000 flagship chip based on the Zen 4 core.

Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake Desktop CPUs Expected Features:

Intel hasn't officially confirmed the Core i9-13900K CPU part yet but there are multiple leaks that confirm its existence and also the fact that the chip will get an even faster 'Special Edition' variant with even higher clock speeds. So with that said, let's get on with the specifications.

In terms of specifications, the Intel Core i9-13900K CPU will offer a total of 24 cores and 32 threads. These are divided into an 8+16 configuration which includes 8 P-Cores based on the Raptor Cove and 16 E-Cores based on the Gracemont core architecture. All of these cores are fabricated on the 10nm ESF or 'Intel 7' process node. Given that the chip will feature more cores and cache using the same process node, the overall die size would be a bit bigger than Alder Lake's C0 desktop die.

As for cache, the Intel Core i9-13900 Raptor Lake CPU carries 16 MB of L2 cache for the P-Cores (2 MB per core) and 16 MB of L2 cache for the E-cores too (4MB per cluster of 4 cores). This gives us a total of 32 MB of L2 cache which combined with the L3 cache will offer us a total of 68 MB of cache which is rumored to be labeled as 'Game Cache'.

The Core i9-13900K will carry some impressive clock speeds of 3.0 GHz base, 5.5 GHz (all-core) boost, and a massive 5.8 GHz single-core boost clock. The CPU will feature a based TDP of 125W (PL1) and PL2 TDP (or MTP - Maximum Turbo Power) of 253W. The actual figure is said to be around 350W at max which will be 100W higher than the Core i9-12900KS.

Just like Alder Lake, the Intel Raptor Lake CPUs including the Core i9-13900K won't feature any AVX-512 support since that has been removed from the current and future mainstream processors. The CPU will also offer improved DDR5 memory support while retaining DDR4 support too. The DDR5 memory will be natively supported with speeds of up to 5600 MT/s and one can expect over 8000 MT/s speeds once Raptor Lake comes to the market.

On the other hand, the CPU will get some enhanced overclocking features such as the following:

Intel will also be launching its first 6 GHz CPU, the Core i9-13900KS, at CES 2023. This would make Raptor Lake the first x86 CPU family to offer a clock frequency that's going to breach the 6 GHz barrier. Knowing that AMD is going all-out with their own Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 chips in the clock department with 5.5 GHz+ being achieved across several threads and rumors of 5.6-5.8 GHz single-core clocks in the air, it looks like Intel will just unleash everything it is capable of with Raptor Lake.

Coming to the performance section, Intel has officially stated that the Raptor Lake CPUs bring up to a double-digit performance boost. They haven't stated if this is single-core or multi-core but based on recent leaks, we can tell that the performance bump mostly comes in the multi-threaded section thanks to the increased core count but single-core performance also gets a decent bump thanks to the increased clocks and cache.

Intel's Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake ES1 CPU is mostly on par with the Intel Core i9-12900K with a 4.0 GHz clock speed but the ES3 CPU ends up 7% faster in single and 28% faster in multi-thread tests. It also delivers a 34% higher single-threaded and 21% higher multi-threaded performance versus the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. Now AMD is expected to gain an additional >15% single-threaded IPC uplift and an overall >35% multi-threaded uplift which comes through a combination of architectural & clock improvements, gen-over-gen with Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 CPUs so it will be a really close battle in between the two flagships.

In terms of gaming performance, the Intel Core i9-13900K CPU has been said to be the better chip when it comes to running games. We have been told that the CPU will reclaim the gaming crown from AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D for a short amount of time before AMD fires back with its 3D V-Cache lineup which is expected to debut this year too.

Intel's pricing strategy starting its 12th Gen Alder Lake lineup has been very aggressive and that has definitely helped them sell enough units to start making a dent in AMD's Ryzen market share & its revenue. Segments such as the Core i5 and Core i7 are showing up in the 'Top 10 Sellers' on several NA & EU-based retailers but the top Core i9 parts are what enthusiasts settle for.

It is likely that Intel will retain the prices of its chips moving forward. Intel only bumped the pricing up by $50 US when they doubled the core counts from 8 on Core i9-11900K ($539 US SEP) to 16 on the Core i9-12900K ($589 US SEP). Since Raptor Lake isn't a doubling and is mostly a refinement of Alder Lake, we can expect the pricing to remain the same and at most, hit the $599 US mark. AMD's flagship is likely to cost around $700-$800 US which means that Intel may have a big edge in price to performance segment.

As for launch and availability, the Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake Desktop CPUs are expected to launch alongside the 700-series chipset family on 20th October for a price of $599.00 US (RCP).

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