Things are quite hot in the processor market, where both Intel and AMD are constantly showing their weapons and, every time new information appears about one of them, it seems to represent the ace up their sleeve they need to leave the other behind. Today it is the turn of Intel with its 13th Generation Core processors (codenamed Raptor Lake), with which it could truly finally leave behind the AMD Ryzen, at least in terms of gross power.
Intel Raptor Lake-S processors, with up to 24 cores
The Raptor Lake-S line of processors will replace the Alder Lake-S (theoretically launching this year) and will feature two completely new core architectures. We talk about Raptor cove for performance cores and Gracemont for the efficiency cores, since like Alder Lake, this 13th Generation of the brand’s processors will have a hybrid architecture.
Based on the leaked data, the processor catalog will have three segments (all filtered) based on their power recommendations. These include the K-series enthusiast SKUs rated at 125W, the conventional SKUs with a power of 65W and the low consumption SKUs with only 35W of TDP. Coming to the high-end variants, we see models with up to 24 cores followed by 16, 10, 4, and 2-core variants. The SKUs are detailed below:
- Intel Core i9 K-Series (8 Golden + 16 Grace) = 24 Cores / 32 Threads / 36 MB L3 Cache
- Intel Core i7 K-Series (8 Golden + 8 Grace) = 16 Cores / 24 Threads / 30 MB L3 Cache
- Intel Core i5 K-Series (6 Golden + 8 Grace) = 14 Cores / 20 Process threads / 24 MB L3 Cache
- Intel Core i5 S-Series (6 Golden + 4 Grace) = 14 Cores / 16 Threads / 21 MB L3 Cache
- Intel Core i3 S-Series (4 Golden + 0 Grace) = 4 Cores / 8 Threads / 12 MB L3 Cache
- Intel Pentium S-Series (2 Golden + 0 Grace) = 4 Cores / 4 Process threads / 6 MB L3 Cache
Enthusiast-grade desktop SKUs will feature Core i9 models with up to 8 Raptor Cove cores and 16 Gracemont cores, for a total of 24 cores and 32 threads. The Core i7 line will consist of 16 cores (8 + 8), the Core i5 models will have 14 cores (6 + 4) and finally, the Core i3 models will have 4 cores, all of them high performance.
This catalog of processors will also include Pentium models that will have only 2 Raptor Cove cores, and all variants will have Integrated GPU Xe upgraded from 32 EU (256 cores). Some Core i5 and Pentium variants will also come with a 24 EU or 16 EU iGPU.
Other details include a larger L2 cache that will be marked as “Game Cache” and the operating speeds of these Intel Raptor Lake-S processors will be boosted to 200 MHz, so we can expect speeds of up to 5.5 GHz easily. The chips will also support better speeds of DDR5 RAM, with up 5,600 MHz natively.
Power requirements, the trickiest topic
As for the Power requirements, The 125W Raptor Lake-S variant will feature a PL1 rating of 125W (same in performance mode), a PL2 rating of 188W (253W in performance mode) and a PL4 rating of 238W (314W in performance mode). We can see that the PL4 rating is lower due to the reactive operation recently introduced and that we have already told you about in the past, but PL2 has slightly increased compared to Alder Lake.
The same is true for the 65W Alder Lake chips, which are rated PL1 of 65W (same in performance mode), PL2 of 133W (219W in performance), and PL4 of 179W (277W in performance mode). Finally, we have that 35W CPUs have a PL1 of 35W (same in performance), PL2 of 80W (106W in performance) and 118W (152W performance) in the PL4 rating.
It certainly gives the impression that Intel is greatly increasing the performance level but the consumption, and we will see what happens with the requirements of heat dissipation in light of this.
