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Raptor Lake Review Kit Revealed, Includes Only Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K
Thanks to German YouTuber by the name of Caseking, we have an early look at Intel's reviewer kit for the 13th Gen Raptor Lake launch. The review kit comes in a large box, featuring a die shot of Raptor Lake printed on the inside of the box lid. Raptor Lake comes to market on October 20th.
The box itself is large but skinny, with Intel's logo on the top and die shots of Raptor Lake CPUs on each side of the box. Inside the box we get a fully blown-up die shot of Raptor Lake itself which shows off the architecture in all its glory — including the E core and P core configuration, caches, and more.
(Image credit: YouTube - Caseking)
If that's not enough, the review kit also includes a glass ornament with yet another die shot of Raptor Lake on one side, and the core specifications of all three K series SKUs on the other. Its something reviewers can use as a backdrop item in videos, and use as a ornament their desk.
Similar to previous review kits, Intel's Raptor Lake kit only comes with the Core i5-13600K and the Core i9-13900K — and lacks the i7-13700K variant. This means we will be seeing reviews of the i9-13900K and i5-13600K models first, before we see any reviews of i7-13700K variants. There's a chance some news outlets will manage to grab an i7-13700K variant from retailers before the review embargo lifts, but it's slim.
Raptor Lake is Intel's new 13th Generation CPU architecture to succeed the current 12th Gen Alder Lake architecture. These new chips feature serious upgrades from the Alder Lake microarchitecture including 2x more E cores, more L2 and L3 cache, and clock speed enhancements bringing Intel's flagship i9-13900K up to 5.8GHz boost. If that wasn't enough Intel has shared hints of a upcoming "6GHz" Raptor Lake CPU that will be coming in the future — possibly an i9-13900KS.
Intel claims these chips will offer up to 15% higher single-threaded performance and 41% more multi-threaded performance compared to Alder Lake. If these results prove to be true, Raptor Lake will be a big performance upgrade for all buyers — including current Alder Lake owners.
AMD has 4 SKUs at launch, so there's more "middle ground" to cover, but Intel only has the 3 SKUs (ignoring the F variants) and it's safe-ish to assume the i7 will fall smack in the middle between the i5 and i9, I'd say.
People can cover the i7 with later more in-depth reviews I guess? Also, the smell detector says the i7 13K will be, more or less, a direct replacement of the i9 12K.
