New Intel Raptor Lake ES CPU Rumored to Boost up to 5.5 GHz

A Chinese tech forum user has shared the first un-mosaiced images of a purported Intel Core i9-13900K Engineering Sample (ES) that has been widely circulated recently. Twitter's HXL spotted the post by Lordzzz, but the most interesting thing about the post is that it contains some very interesting claims about newer Raptor Lake ES chips. The key nugget of news we can gather from the forum post if that the new Intel i9-13900K ES3 chip is far faster and more performant than the ES1. As a reminder, ES processors are pre-production versions of a chip representing various stages of development, and in this case, ES1 is the first revision while ES3 is the third. 

Lordzzz appears to have shared the new CPU image to establish himself as a reliable source regarding Intel engineering samples. As well as the ES1 chip pic, Lordzzz has published screenshots from multiple CPU-Z app tabs – again showing ES1 information. With these stats established, Lordzzz says that the new Core i9-13900K ES3 can run much faster and score much higher in the simple benchmark tool built into CPU-Z. For the sake of clarity and comparison, we have created a table with key stats of the leaked Raptor Lake chips compared to the current-gen Intel Core i9-12900K that has made it to the list of best CPUs for gaming.

The above may be evidence of some good progress since Alder Lake, as well as since the ES1, but of course, we need to add a large pinch of salt to this information. The source of the ES3 information says that he sold on his ES1 sample, but for the time being, can't share images or screenshots for the ES3.

In the screenshots of CPU-Z, you can see these Raptor Lake chips are being tested on current Intel 600-series motherboards. A tested DDR4 motherboard failed to boot, says Lordzzz, while a DDR5 motherboard worked with DDR5-7200 memory speeds. Contacts of the source located in Taiwan allegedly say that they have motherboards that support Raptor Lake CPUs and DDR5-8000, but they won't be available until October. In either case, we expect even higher memory frequencies due to Intel's typically-impressive CPU overclocking headroom. 

Raptor Lake leaks have been quite numerous in recent weeks, but with the motherboards tipped for October availability, it looks like the chips – also known as the 13th gen Intel Core desktop processors – won't be launched for at least three months. Those chips will contend with AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors that will arrive in Fall.