First test on an Intel Core i9-13900 ES Raptor Lake

We will still have to wait until the arrival on the market of Raptor Lake, the thirteenth generation of Intel Core, which after the great changes introduced by Alder Lake in relation to the architecture of Intel silicon, will mean the consolidation of the hybrid architectureas well as new marks in terms of performance, partly due to the addition of more cores, but also due to their own novelties.

The leaks that have occurred so far tell us that the top of the range of Raptor Lake, the expected Intel Core i9-13900K will add a whopping 24 cores, eight of performance and 16 of efficiency, which will provide no less than 32 threads. As for them, it is expected that the efficiency ones will be similar, perhaps with some optimization, to those of Alder Lake, although yes, a generational leap is expected in the performance ones, currently identified as Raptor Cove.

If you are one of the people who are waiting for news about the thirteenth generation of Intel Core, we have good news for you, and that is that Expreview has gotten a preview of the future Raptor Lake top of the range, identified as Intel Core i9-13900 ES (Early Sample) and has subjected it to a battery of tests that tell us what we can expect, although we must take this data with certain reservations, since it is quite likely that the performance of the 13900K will be at some point superior to that of this sample.

The first thing we look at is the specifications of this processor, which we can see in the following file:

With this tab, we can confirm that the top of the range Raptor Lake will integrate the aforementioned 24 cores (8/16) accompanied by a total of 36 megabytes of cache memory. Looking at core speeds, we see performance cores running in a range from 1.4GHz to 3.8GHz, while one group of efficiency cores runs at 1.0 gigahertz and the other at 2. 0 gigahertz, a somewhat strange figure, which reminds us again that we are talking about a previous sample, not a definitive model.

But let’s move on to the most important thing, namely the performance difference between an Intel Core i9-12900K and this sample of Raptor Lake’s future top of the range, the i9-13900. And the most striking fact is found when verifying that, in single-wire performance, Alder Lake would beat Raptor Lake by 10%. And yes, I know I have done it in the previous paragraph, but I have to remind again that we are talking about a previous sample, so we can expect improvements in this regard in the future 13900K. In multithread performance, however, the 13900 ES is 25% faster at CINEBech 23:

In Expresview they have not fallen short when it comes to testing the Core i9-13900 ES, these are the results of the tests:

So, as you can see, in its current state (well, the current state when that chip was produced), Raptor Lake would be able to offer 20% more performance than Alder Lake, something that fits with the increase in the total number of cores. However, and as I mentioned before, it is likely that the final frequencies of the cores, especially of the Raptor Cove, are higher than what we can see in this sample.

With an AMD that has already shown that it is capable of offering top-of-the-range performance capable of fiercely competing with Intel, Raptor Lake is a key generation for check if Intel is able to regain its traditional supremacy Regarding performance, although we can be clear that AMD, with the Ryzen 7000, is not going to make it easy for them. And this is a competition in which we, the consumers, are the winners. And in that respect, with Raptor Lake, Ryzen 7000, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40, and AMD Radeon RX 7000, an exciting fall and winter await us.