Intel’s Thirteenth Gen Desktop CPUs Drop This October, Work With DDR4 and Existing Motherboards

AMD hasn’t had greater than a day because it launched what it’s claiming are the world’s new quickest gaming processors, and Intel’s already firing again with specs, a launch date, and large claims for its Thirteenth era of desktop CPUs, which it additionally claims are the world’s quickest. Speaking at “Intel Innovation” right this moment, CEO Pat Gelsinger formally detailed Intel’s Raptor Lake Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 chips.

Pricing

Let’s begin with maybe essentially the most spectacular a part of the bundle, which is its pricing. Intel’s new chips begin at $294 for the i5-13600KF and run as much as $589 for the i9-13900K. That places even the road’s (at present) costliest chip effectively under AMD’s new flagship, the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X. It additionally signifies that the Core i5 is the one chip to have been bumped up in value, regardless of a prior warning that there could be extra. But Intel’s worth proposition doesn’t finish there.

That’s as a result of Intel’s new chips are going to be much more suitable with present components than AMD’s choices. While AMD’s Ryzen 7000 sequence would require you to purchase all-new motherboards, plus put money into still-expensive DDR5 RAM, Intel’s Thirteenth gen will work with present Intel 600 sequence motherboards and can proceed to assist DDR4 RAM. That makes it lots simpler to improve an present machine with out having to exchange a bunch of your components, even when it means you gained’t essentially get essentially the most out of your new chip.

Specs

Topping out at $589 doesn’t imply a lot if Intel can’t sustain with AMD’s flagship, although. This is the place the brand new chips’ specs are available in. We’ve acquired an in depth desk down under, however the important thing takeaway is that, whereas Intel hasn’t given its chips extra P-cores (for power-hungry duties), all of them have extra E-cores, which is able to assist with multitasking and multithreaded apps. The Core i5 and Core i7 have 4 extra E-cores every, whereas the Core i9 has eight extra E-cores.

You might need observed base frequencies are down whereas enhance frequencies are up. That may sound like a scary stat, however processor “speed” is definitely deceptive, and solely tells a part of the story. AMD’s solely simply crossed the 5 GHz threshold, and but has been maintaining tempo with Intel for a couple of generations now. While frequency does inform you how briskly your chip can end a calculation, it doesn’t inform you what number of calculations a chip can carry out without delay, or how shortly it may well collect and retailer knowledge from different elements– that has to do with core rely and cache, each of that are up from the final era.

PCIe gen 5 assist additionally aids in efficiency, because it permits your pc’s elements to speak extra shortly. To make the most of the Thirteenth Gen chips’ 16 lanes of it, you’ll must put money into both an present 600 sequence or the upcoming 700 sequence motherboard that helps it—not all do. 700 sequence motherboards will even include eight extra PCIe 4 assist lanes and one further USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Fbps) slot.

While pricing has remained roughly the identical as Intel’s prior era, there’s one new value you’ll must account for: power draw. While base energy draw is at a good 125 W, the Core i7 and Core i9 now require 243 W for max turbo energy, whereas the Core i5 wants 181 W. While that’s a negligible distinction for the Core i9, which used to require 241 W, Core i7 and Core i5 customers might want to plan their energy provide upgrades accordingly. The Core i7 used to hit max turbo energy with 190 W, whereas the Core i5 used to hit it with 117 W.

So, what sort of efficiency will increase might you get with these new chips? Intel’s been beneficiant with its in-house benchmark claims, though you’ll need to take these with a grain of salt, particularly since we don’t know any particulars in regards to the system the corporate used for testing except for the processor.

In common, the corporate’s promising “15% better single-threaded performance and 41% better multi-threaded performance” during the last era, which it says interprets to “up to 24% better gaming performance” and “34% faster creator workflow.”

For a couple of examples, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered operating with the Core i9-13900K supposedly had a 52% improve in frames over the Ryzen 9 5950X, whereas Far Cry 6 had what Intel claims was a 34% improve. Pugetbench’s Adobe Premiere Pro benchmark supposedly scored 16% greater with the identical tools, whereas its Adobe Photoshop benchmark had a seeming 33% greater rating.

Release Date

Those numbers actually look aggressive with the brand new middle-of-the-pack AMD chips we reviewed simply yesterday, and we’re excited to confirm them ourselves after we get Intel’s Raptor Lake chips in hand. As for while you’ll have the ability to get them, Intel’s Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 Thirteenth gen desktop chips will hit the market on October 20 alongside Z790 motherboards. Intel’s additionally promised extra chips sooner or later, together with one that can breach the 6 GHz barrier.