Intel's Raptor Lake CPU Appears 20% Faster Than Core i9-12900K on UserBenchmark

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's 13th Generation Core 'Raptor Lake' processors due to be released later this year, but since samples of these CPUs are in the wild, it is not surprising that preliminary benchmark results of these chips get published. This time around someone with a Raptor Lake sample at hands has revealed results of the processor in UserBenchmark (via@Tum_Apisak). The CPU appears to be around 20% faster when compared to existing flagship products from AMD and Intel — the best CPUs available today

UserBenchmark may not be exactly the best tool to test hardware performance since it is very generalized but when it comes to CPUs, it can give a clue about single-thread and multi-thread performance of microarchitectures as well as processors. Therefore, it makes sense to compare results of pre-production Raptor Lake against existing processors from AMD and Intel.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The benchmarked Intel's Raptor Lake-S 'U3E1' processor packed 24 cores and could process 32 threads simultaneously while running at a 2.4 GHz base clock and a 4.6 GHz turbo clock. This corroborates with previous leaks and benchmark results which indicate that Intel's next-generation desktop chips will integrate eight performance cores with 2-way SMT as well as 16 efficiency cores. 

The system also appears to be equipped with Intel's Arc Alchemist A770 graphics card, but considering that this 'card' only has 1GB of memory and performs very poorly, we believe that the GPU was detected incorrectly.

Meanwhile, Intel's current flagship Core i9-12900K is a 16-core/24-thread chip operating at 3.2 GHz – 5 GHz, whereas AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core/32-thread chip working at 3.4 GHz – 4.6 GHz. Given the fact that the Raptor Lake-S sample operates at rather low clocks, it is not surprising that it loses to both rivals in workloads that use eight threads or less. Meanwhile, in server workloads that use 64 threads, it is about 20% faster than the Core i9-12900K and Ryzen 9 5950X. 

 It's noteworthy that Raptor Lake's 24 physical cores along with its thread dispatcher hardware looks to be more efficient than AMD's 16 high-performance Zen 3 cores with simultaneous multithreading technology (SMT) support. Of course, it remains to be seen how Raptor Lake will perform against AMD's Zen 4-based 'Raphael' offering with up to 16 cores, but for now, multi-threaded performance of Intel's next-generation CPUs looks very competitive.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • TerryLaze
    Admin said:
    Intel's 2.4 GHz Raptor Lake beats current flagship CPUs from AMD and Intel by a significant margin.

    Intel's Raptor Lake CPU Appears 20% Faster Than Core i9-12900K on UserBenchmark : Read more
    Meanwhile, Intel's current flagship Core i9-12900K is a 16-core/24-thread chip operating at 3.2 GHz – 5 GHz, whereas AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X is a 16-core/32-thread chip working at 3.4 GHz – 4.6 GHz. Given the fact that the Raptor Lake-S sample operates at rather low clocks, it is not surprising that it loses to both rivals in workloads that use eight threads or less.
    According to the picture you posted it's basically margin of error to the 12900k and wins against the 5950x.
    Also the 12900ks was already released some time ago, the 12900k is not the flagship anymore.
    If the clocks are actually accurate and the new intel CPU gets the same performance at 4.6 as the 12900k gets at 5Ghz then that would be a pretty nice increase in IPC, basically 10% and if final clocks are closer to 5Ghz then that would be another 10%
    If the clocks are just read from the firmware though then it might already be running at 5Ghz for all we know.
    Reply
  • osfanbuff63
    TerryLaze said:
    According to the picture you posted it's basically margin of error to the 12900k and wins against the 5950x.
    Also the 12900ks was already released some time ago, the 12900k is not the flagship anymore.
    If the clocks are actually accurate and the new intel CPU gets the same performance at 4.6 as the 12900k gets at 5Ghz then that would be a pretty nice increase in IPC, basically 10% and if final clocks are closer to 5Ghz then that would be another 10%
    If the clocks are just read from the firmware though then it might already be running at 5Ghz for all we know.

    I take it like how the RTX 3080 is technically the flagship, but the 3090/Ti is better.
    Reply
  • KananX
    AMD already said 7950X will be about 40%+ faster than 5950X, so it will easily beat Raptor Lake then. 12900K isn’t even faster in pure multi threading against 5950X.
    Reply
  • wifiburger
    KananX said:
    AMD already said 7950X will be about 40%+ faster than 5950X, so it will easily beat Raptor Lake then. 12900K isn’t even faster in pure multi threading against 5950X.
    BS ! 40%+ faster
    Reply
  • KananX
    wifiburger said:
    BS ! 40%+ faster
    AMD didn’t lie since FX times, but whatever, we will see in a few months right.
    Reply
  • btmedic04
    userbenchmark is trash and referencing it is trash. please refrain from posting this garbage
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    KananX said:
    AMD didn’t lie since FX times, but whatever, we will see in a few months right.
    Depends on what you consider a lie.
    AMD claimed boost clocks with the 3000 series that only a small percentage of CPUs would reach. Some would consider that lying, hence why they did that survey.
    DgSoZAdk_E8View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgSoZAdk_E8
    Reply
  • Liquidrider
    Why is Tom's Hardware using userbenchmark as a source?
    Just using them as a source lowers Tom's Hardware credibility

    Sounds over dramatic? No. Because userbenchmark was banned from
    /r/hardware
    /r/amd
    /r/techsupport
    even /r/intel banned them.

    and if I am not mistaken now banned on /r/buildpc
    for a VERY good reason.

    UserBenchmark is not a trusted source by a majority of tech enthusiasts... you know your target audience.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Liquidrider said:
    Why is Tom's Hardware using userbenchmark as a source?
    Just using them as a source lowers Tom's Hardware credibility

    Sounds over dramatic? No. Because userbenchmark was banned from
    /r/hardware
    /r/amd
    /r/techsupport
    even /r/intel banned them.

    and if I am not mistaken now banned on /r/buildpc
    for a VERY good reason.

    UserBenchmark is not a trusted source by a majority of tech enthusiasts... you know your target audience.
    So it was banned from one site total....
    And that probably only because the users would not stop bickering about it.
    It's a very early leak and it's presented as that and nothing more, it's not like anybody said that these results are trustworthy.
    Reply
  • shady28
    I find the single and two core benchmark more interesting than the all core workload. All core has a lot of other variables, and for most users is not a situation they run into very often. I've done a lot of looking at perfmon during the work day and game playing times, it's almost always a single thread that limits performance on my 10850K.

    It looks like at 4.6Ghz turbo it is beating a 5.05Ghz 12900K by 1-3%. That implies a single or low thread count 10-15% performance bump vs Alder Lake at the same frequency.
    Reply