Intel's approaching 13th Generation Raptor Lake processors embrace DDR5 and DDR4 memory. Notwithstanding, preliminary benchmarks reveal that the former is better for maximizing performance on the new hybrid desktop chips.
Raptor Lake may be just down the street as recent rumors claim that Intel is allegedly eyeing an October 7 launch date. The initial rollout will include the high-end K-series SKUs, such as the Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i5-13600K, in conjunction with the top-tier Z790 chipset. Although we don't have any official confirmation on the specifications, the Core i7-13700K has popped up a few times in different benchmarks.
The Core i7-13700K is a 16-core processor comprising eight Raptor Cove Performance cores (P-cores) and eight Gracemont Efficiency cores (E-cores). The Raptor Lake chip also has 30MB of L3 cache and reportedly flaunts a 3.4 GHz base clock and 5.3 GHz boost clock. A recent Geekbench 5 submission (opens in new tab) showed that the Core i7-13700K outperforms AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5950X. However, hardware sleuth Benchleaks (opens in new tab) has uncovered a new submission (opens in new tab) that indicates that the DDR4 memory was holding the Raptor Lake chip back.
The Core i7-13700K with DDR4 system used the ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E, whereas the DDR5 testbed had the Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E/D5. The two motherboards are identical except for the memory slots. The DDR4 system used DDR4-3200 memory, and the DDR5 system with DDR5-5200 memory, the native, supported data rates for Raptor Lake. From the Geekbench 5 entries, we know that both systems had 32GB (2x16GB) of memory; therefore, the results are comparable. Unfortunately, Geekbench 5 doesn't go into details, such as the model of the memory modules or the timings. Consequently, we cannot know if the 16GB DDR4 memory modules are single-rank or dual-rank.
Intel Core i7-13700K Benchmarks
| Processor | Single-Core Score | Multi-Core Score |
|---|---|---|
| Core i7-13700K + DDR5-5200 | 2,069 | 19,811 |
| Core i7-13700K + DDR4-3200 | 2.090 | 16,542 |
The results showed that DDR5 didn't do much for the Core i7-13700K in terms of single-core performance. The DDR5 system was 1% slower than the DDR4 system, but it's within the margin of error. However, the DDR5 system delivered up to 20% higher multi-core performance. That's a pretty significant performance delta.
DDR5 pricing has been improving. The pricing gap between DDR5 and DDR4 will eventually get smaller over time, but it's unlikely that DDR5 will cost the same as DDR4. The former is much more expensive to manufacture and features a more intricate design with added components like power management integrated circuits (PMIC) and VRMs.
DDR5 memory can boost Alder Lake's overall performance, depending on the workload. However, unlike Alder Lake, which wields Golden Cove cores, Raptor Lake uses Raptor Cove cores, which could behave differently to memory speeds. While the preliminary results with DDR5 look promising, we'd have to conduct thorough tests to pass judgment on whether DDR5 is worth the premium over high-performance DDR4.
