With twice the number of E-cores and higher clock speeds, Intel is intent on taking the performance crown.
Intel is kicking off its 13th Gen Core CPU lineup, codenamed ‘Raptor Lake’, starting with high-end desktop models aimed at gamers and enthusiasts. The company makes a fresh claim to the title of «the world’s fastest desktop processor» with the flagship Core i9-13900K, which features a 5.8GHz peak boost speed and a total of 24 cores — of which eight are high-performance ‘P-cores’ with Hyper-Threading, and 16 are smaller single-threaded ‘E-cores’ for power efficiency. Intel claims up to a 15 percent improvement in single-threaded tasks but a huge 41 percent jump in workloads that can scale to all 32 available threads, compared to last year’s Core i9-12900K.
Six CPU models have been announced, in addition to a new set of 700-series chipsets for motherboards and a new smartphone integration platform called Intel Unison. In addition to the Core i9-13900K, there’s the Core i9-13900KF which lacks integrated graphics. Both have 36MB of L3 cache, plus 2MB of L2 per P-core and 4MB per cluster of four E-cores. The base TDP is 125W but the rated maximum power draw at boost speeds, with an adequate cooling solution, is 253W.
