What is Intel's Raptor Lake? 3 Things You Need to Know

Intel's 13th Generation chips, codenamed Raptor Lake, are right around the corner. But is it going to be worth upgrading?

We were introduced to Intel's 12th Generation of Core chips a little earlier than usual. While the first 11th Gen chips graced the market in March 2021, the 12th Gen followed up quite quickly, getting announced and released by the end of 2021. This means we're getting closer to what's next. With the launch of AMD's Zen 4 CPUs also closing in, the stakes are high for Intel to keep its streak with its 13th Gen chips, codenamed Raptor Lake. Those are expected for the end of 2022.

Some details about the new generation of Intel CPUs are now making the rounds, though. Here's what we know so far.

1. Intel 13th Gen Is Mostly a Minor Refresh

Alder Lake was a huge improvement over its predecessor, Rocket Lake. It added PCIe Gen 5 support, DDR5 memory, an all-new socket (LGA 1700), an all-new fabrication process (Intel 7), and, more importantly, a hybrid core configuration with big, performance-focused Golden Cove cores and smaller, efficient Gracemont cores—part of why it pulled off such a big generational performance boost.

For Raptor Lake, though, Intel is not really changing any of that. Instead, you can expect the improvements for this generation to be pretty similar to those we saw from 10th Gen (Comet Lake) to 11th Gen (Rocket Lake). This means that you can expect Intel to keep support for the same socket and (most) of the same features we have in Alder Lake currently, meaning Raptor Lake will essentially just be a minor refresh focused on making Intel's existing chips even more powerful.

The socket will be the same, the connectivity options will be the same, and the process will be the same.

This is good news for people who just want to grab a new CPU for their existing Alder Lake machine—compatibility with Raptor Lake chips should just be a thing of releasing a BIOS update for your motherboard. Then, drop in the new CPU, and you're done.

As we mentioned, Intel is no stranger to these kinds of releases. The company has been working with a "tick-tock" release cycle, working on minor improvements (or ticks) before releasing major ones (tocks) that are typically marked by the inclusion of a new socket and newer technologies. Alder Lake was the tock, and Raptor Lake will be more of a tick. And if you're waiting for another tock, you'll have to wait until 2023 and the release of Meteor Lake chips.

2. Better Performance and (Way) More Cores

The fact that this is a minor improvement doesn't mean it's not packed with surprises. How do 24 processing cores sound?

The Intel Core i9-12900K, currently the best high-end enthusiast chip you can get, has 16 processing cores comprising eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores. This matches the core count of the Ryzen 9 5950X released in 2020, at a time when Intel's chips only went up to 10 cores. But the upcoming Intel Core i9-13900K might outdo everything else before it by offering 24 cores and 32 threads—still the same eight performance cores, but now joined by 16 efficiency ones.

Going down the line, the i7-13700K might get 16 cores—the same amount of cores the i9-12900K currently has, with an identical configuration with eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores, and an improvement over the current i7-12700K with 12 cores (eight performance, four efficiency). And the i5-13600K might instead get 14 cores: six performance ones and eight efficiency ones. The current-Gen i5 has ten cores—six performance and four efficiency.

In shorter words, it looks like efficiency cores are being doubled across the board. The ones who used to have four now have eight, and the ones who used to have eight now have 16.

Raptor Lake is also expected to have a 15% improvement in single-core performance and 40% in multi-core. A few reasons could explain those improvements, but we'll likely know for sure once they're officially unveiled. Among those reasons, we have the fact that the Golden Cove cores in Alder Lake will be swapped out for newer, refreshed "Raptor Cove" cores, and performance might also be enhanced as a result of Intel's process (Intel 7) being more matured for this generation. Multi-core performance might also be greatly enhanced from the vastly-increased core count.

3. More Cache than Ever

Finally, Intel seems to be catching up with AMD in terms of cache—or at least, taking baby steps in that direction. Raptor Lake will be packing a notable upgrade to both L2 and L3 CPU caches, and while things aren't really looking to the massive cache sizes AMD has added to its chips, especially with 3D V-Cache into the equation, it looks at least promising.

As per leaks, performance cores will be getting 2MB of L2 cache and 3MB of L3 cache per core, while efficiency cores should get 4MB of L2 and 3MB of L3 per core cluster (clusters have four cores).

Applying that formula to the expected core layout of the i9-13900K CPU, its eight efficiency cores should contribute with 3MB of L3 and 2MB of L2 each, and its 16 efficiency cores, grouped into four clusters, add 3MB of L3 and 4MB of L2. In total, we're looking at 32MB of L2 cache and 36MB of L3 cache, for a total of 68MB cache for that chip. By contrast, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D has 96MB of L3 cache alone, so Intel still has a lot of room for improvement. This is still the right step, though.

Raptor Lake is Coming In Hot

Intel's next generation of chips is packing a lot of cool changes, taking what made Alder Lake so great and bringing it all a step further. Raptor Lake is promising considerable generational performance improvements, bringing up core counts and cache in a Ryzen-like move to see if Intel can go after AMD's upcoming Zen 4 chips and keep the performance crown for another year.

Right now, it looks promising—but 2022's chip war is yet to break out, and we'll have to wait until Zen 4 and Raptor Lake are both out to compare them better.