Intel Raptor Lake-S – Block diagram shows the most important (new) features

In Asia, the Intel Raptor Lake-S block diagram was leaked from an Intel event. It reveals all the facts about the desktop platform that it will inherit from Alder Lake this fall as the 13th Gen Core. Intel had already confirmed some details, others were suspected, and now they have been confirmed. But there are also surprises.

More cores and more cache

Intel had already made public that Raptor Lake-S will offer more cores. This is accompanied, at least in part, by the modified L2 and L3 cache configuration of the monolithic processor, because the basic structure has not changed compared to Intel Alder Lake. The doubled number of E-Cores with their L3 cache segments ensures that the total L3 volume is also increased. In addition, the L2 cache capacity has been increased in both the E-Core and P-Core cores.

Raptor Lake-S also continues to support DDR4

The platform equipment, on the other hand, only takes a small step forward. The 700 series of chipsets around Z790, H770, B760 & Co now officially support DDR5-5600 along with the CPU, overclocking has been improved for both CPU and RAM. Intel also highlights revamped support for DDR4-3200 on the slide. In the next year, this will be a unique selling proposition, because competitor AMD will only offer DDR5 with the AM5 platform.

The graphics cards are again supplied with 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the processor, and four lanes are available directly from the CPU for mass storage. This is where the block diagram offers the first surprise: apparently they should stay with the PCIe 4.0 standard and not upgrade to PCIe 5.0, as rumors have always claimed. At this point, AMD would be ahead with AM5. However, it remains to be seen how motherboard manufacturers will implement the Intel-provided base, because there are already Alder Lake motherboards that support PCIe 5.0 SSDs, but only via lanes shared with the PCIe x16 slot; an example is motherboard with ASRock. DesktopMini B660.

Intel also emphasizes additional PCIe lanes through the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) on the Raptor Lake-S. The chipset, as it is still colloquially called, should offer, among other things, additional USB 3.2 ports with 20 Gbps, and Thunderbolt 4 is also included.

Core i9/i7/i5/i3-13000 fall

The first motherboard manufacturers are already preparing their circuit boards, and the start date is expected to be in the fall of this year. Recently, the first benchmarks appeared with the first samples, but they gave a very mixed picture. The 13th Gen Intel Core will also run on motherboards with the current 600 chipset and LGA 1700, assuming a compatible BIOS.