Alleged Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU Spotted on the Black Market

Intel XTU guide image
(Image credit: Intel)

According to a report by VideoCardz, a Chinese retailer has managed to grab an engineering sample of Intel's Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU and sold it online. The listing says this Core i9-13900K packs eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, with a total thread count of 32, and claims to be working on a ROG Z690 Apex motherboard. The part was sold for 2850 RMB, or about $426.

For the uninitiated, Raptor Lake is Intel's upcoming 13th generation of CPUs running on an enhanced Alder Lake architecture called Raptor Lake. We don't know all the details about Intel's new architecture just yet, but we know that Raptor Lake will pack far higher core frequencies than Alder Lake and double the number of efficiency cores -- at least on the higher-end SKUs. This listing does at least back up the core configuration of Raptor Lake, with this 13900K allegedly having 16 efficiency cores, which is double that of the Core i9-12900K.

Performance is rumored to be around 20% higher than Alder Lake (in some benchmarks), according to two reports we've seen. The chips are rumored to peak at 6 GHz, and that's before CPU overclocking. If true, Raptor Lake will be even faster when released, with enhanced core frequencies over Alder Lake. We believe part of this performance bump will result from the new Raptor Cove cores going into Raptor Lake, which will be an upgrade over Alder Lake's Golden Cove performance cores.

Raptor Lake still does not have an official release date from Intel. However, this listing seems to confirm that Raptor Lake will probably release sometime later in Q3 or Q4 of 2022. Furthermore, since this listing confirms Intel already has working engineering samples of Raptor Lake, it shouldn't be long before full production variants are prepared and ready for market.

However, it's worth noting that none of the information listed on the Chinese site can be confirmed as real. For all we know, the Chinese faked the listing entirely. So take this information with a grain of salt. 

Aaron Klotz
Freelance News Writer

Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • octavecode
    Raptor Lake specs look "Bendy" if you catch my drift.
    Reply
  • Why_Me
    octavecode said:
    Raptor Lake specs look "Bendy" if you catch my drift.
    https://www.ebay.com/itm/134129530671
    Reply
  • KoshTheVorlon
    Admin said:
    A Chinese black market retailer just sold an engineering sample Core i9-13900K on the black market. It's a sign that Intel is finalizing Raptor Lake development.

    Alleged Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU Spotted On The Black Market : Read more

    The results look reasonable, Alder Lake gets to 5.2 ghz pretty easy, so a more mature process and a new stepping to get to 5.5 ghz is well within range.

    Does anybody know if Intel will still simply fuse off the AVX512 execution units, or actually delete them from the die? - AVX512 is BIG (as in die area) and over 10s of millions of CPU's this is a lot of die area/cash to be saved. 8 extra E cores is +/- the same as two P cores in terms of die area, so I assume intel is trying to minimize the size of the dies.....

    The IPC jump of about 7% is roughly what you would expect from the bigger l2 cache.

    The L1 stays the same which implies little or no change to the OOO execution/branch prediction, etc.
    Reply
  • The Inquisition
    Has there been any talk or indication that Intel will do an (S) version, i.e., 13900KS?
    Reply