Prototype Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake Chip Blasts Off To 5.77GHz

@Benchleaks has surfaced a Geekbench 5 result of a prototype Raptor Lake i9-13900K boosting up to 5.77 GHz, and the chip has the benchmark scores to back up the high clock speeds: The 13900K's single-threaded results are 10% faster than the current-gen i9-12900K, and a full 47% faster in the multi-thread results.

The nearly-5.8 GHz result is impressive and a clear sign that Intel's Raptor Lake is almost ready for the production line to fend off AMD's Zen 4 Ryzen 7000. None of the other Raptor Lake samples we've covered touched 5.7 or 5.8 GHz, with the only exception being an i7 variant overclocked to 6 GHz.

The performance results speak for themselves, with the i9-13900K being a full 10% faster and a whopping 47% faster in the single and multi-threaded results compared to its predecessor. The multi-threaded score, in particular, was helped immensely by Intel doubling the number of E-cores on the 13900K over the previous-gen model. However, this also appears to be an engineering sample, so there could be even more untapped performance waiting to be unlocked by the development team.

This is also the start of a new clock-speed war that will emerge in the CPU industry after a long hiatus, with both Intel and AMD now confirmed to have chips running boost frequencies of 5.5 GHz or higher. So it's only a matter of time before each company starts fighting it out to see who can be the first to break the 6 GHz barrier.

It should also be a great time for hardware enthusiasts to jump back into the overclocking world and see how far they can push these chips. We've already seen one alleged engineering sample of the Core i7-13700K hit 6 GHz. So we wouldn't be surprised to see this frequency become commonplace among overclocking enthusiasts once these new chips come out -- as long as the "silicon lottery" is in their favor.

Raptor Lake does not have an official release date yet, but rumors report a Q4 2022 release for the new CPU generation, with a rumored release date of October 17th. AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors have already been confirmed for a release date of September 15th.