11th Generation Rocket Lake-S Processor Image: Intel
It is rumored that the next generation of Intel desktop processors will arrive by the end of the year, and if the latest leak is accurate, these chips could provide significant gains on the company’s outputs. However, they may not be enough to bring down AMD and its upcoming Zen 4 processors.
The rumored Intel Core i9-13900 was detected in the Sandra SiSoftware reference database, VideoCardz reports. Of all the information leaked about the processor, the header is its 24 cores (with 32 threads), which are divided into eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores. Compared to last year’s Core i9-12900, the next-generation 13th chip has twice the efficiency cores for faster performance at lower power levels.
Part of a next-generation 13th-generation “Raptor Lake” based on an improved 10-nanometer process (Intel 7+), the Core i9-13900 will get 20% larger L3 cache, twice the size of L2 cache (2 MB per core for large cores and 4 MB per 4-core cluster in small cores) and supports faster DDR5 memory up to 5600 MT / s (from 4800 MT / s).
Here’s a breakdown of the improvements:
- 8P + 16E = 24 cores (32 wires)
- Support for up to DDR5-5600 memory
- 20% larger L3 cache (up to 36 MB)
- L2 cache 2 times larger (up to 32 MB)
- No support for AVX-512
- Thunderbolt 4
While more of an upgrade than a redesign of the current Alder Lake processors, the Core i9-13900 and its 13th-generation siblings should offer significant performance gains thanks to these enhanced specifications. From the SiSoftware numbers (which you should take with some skepticism), the flagship chip of Raptor Lake reached speeds between 33% and 50% faster than the current Core i9-12900 in arithmetic benchmarks ( integers and floating point numbers).
SiSoftwareImage: SiSoftware
Most impressively, the chip ran at a maximum clock speed of 3.7 GHz for P cores and 2.76 GHz for E cores, which is significantly lower than 5.0 GHz P cores and E cores. Alder Lake 3.8 GHz. Even at these lower clock speeds, the Core i9-13900 outperformed AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X (Zen 3) processor.
The performance delta of other benchmarks was not as wide, with the vectored / SIMD test suggesting a 5% to 8% better performance at Raptor Lake. That wasn’t enough improvement to put Intel above AMD in this one.
SiSoftware Benchmarks Image: SiSoftware
In general, these benchmarks are a mixed bag. The high performance gains of the ALU / FPU test suggest that 13th-generation chips can, in theory, squeeze considerably faster speeds with less power than 12th-generation processors, and even compete with the best current ‘AMD when running non-SIMD tests. These increases in L2 and L3 cache certainly help in the fight.
However, while these benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s safe to say that the 13th-generation processor won’t move the needle that far in each test. At least not with these desktop chips. If these specifications are accurate, I’m more interested in laptop variants, given the increased efficiency cores, which could allow longer runtime on mobile systems.
Intel’s 13th-generation Core desktop processors are expected to launch later this year, likely in the fall. When they arrive, they will compete against the highly anticipated AMD Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4) processors, 5 nm chips that promise significant watts of generational performance gains over the Ryzen 5000.