FAQ
What is Raptor Lake?
Raptor Lake is Intel's 13th generation of CPUs, and was easily one of 2022's most anticipated product releases, being the successor to Alder Lake. With impressive clock speeds as well as increased E-Core (Efficiency Cores) and P-Cores (Performance Cores), Raptor Lake is designed to handle the latest games and demanding creative applications, while remaining a champion in all price categories. From entry level to high end user, Raptor Lake is targeted at PC users who require excellent performance while future-proofing their specification for years to come.
Intel's 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors allow for improved connectivity and performance, with a revamped core architecture, and offering support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Raptor Lake offers an official 6.0 GHz peak boost clock, and will benefit from a 15% gain in single-threaded performance and 41% gain in multi-threaded performance when compared to 12th-Gen Alder Lake.
Is Raptor Lake good for gaming?
Intel designed the 13th-Gen Raptor Lake series with gamers in mind, being 37% faster than previous generation CPUs, yet with the same 241W power draw as Alder Lake. There have been some significant increases in performance over previous gen in gaming; the flagship Intel Core i9-13900K is 5% faster than Intel Core i9-12900K in more than half of the 32 games tested by Intel, and up to 25% faster in others.
The 32 games tested by Intel included F1 22, CS:GO, Watch Dogs Legion, and League of Legends, which means the 13th-Gen processors are absolutely perfect for all genres of gaming, including competitive Esports titles, simulations and AAA variety games.
What architecture does Raptor Lake use?
Raptor Lake uses Intel 7 process (10nm Enhanced SuperFin), and has double the amount of L2 cache over Alder Lake. The chip can also handle extreme OC clock speeds, with a Raptor Lake core achieving over 8GHz with LN2 overclocking. Though there are similarities to the 12th-Gen line-up of CPUs, the Raptor Lake chip is a larger die, thereby fitting more E-cores (Efficiency) with L2 cache.
Each of the 13th-Gen line have various core counts and different architectures, using a larger compute fabric. This new fabric can achieve clock speeds of up to 900MHz higher than 12th-Gen with up to 36MB of shared L2 cache on the die.
Does Raptor Lake use LGA 1700 (Socket 1700)?
Yes. Raptor Lake is a Socket LGA 1700 processor, compatible with all brands of LGA 1700 motherboards.
Does Raptor Lake support DDR4/DDR5?
Yes. 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors can be installed in motherboards that support either DDR4 or DDR5, from either the 600-Series or 700-Series chipsets.
Some high-end Z790 motherboards support high OC (overclocked) clock speeds for DDR5 up to 7600+MHz, and accept up to 128GB of memory. Incredibly, Raptor Lake is capable of supporting DDR5-10000 with the appropriate support from the motherboard.
Which motherboards are compatible with Raptor Lake?
600-Series
Raptor Lake CPUs are compatible with 600-series motherboards - H610, B660, H670 and Z690, though you should always check with your motherboard manufacturer to see if a BIOS, UEFI or firmware upgrade is required.
700-Series
The Raptor Lake series of CPUs bring with them the 700-Series motherboards, with the flagship being the Z790 motherboards which have the following minimum specifications: -
- TDP 6 W
- Supports Memory Overclocking: IA, BCLK, Memory
- DMI 4.0
- PCI Express Revision: 3.0, 4.0
- PCI Express Configurations: x1, x2, x4
- Max number of PCI Express Lanes: 28
- Supported Processor PCI Express Port Configs: 1x16+1x4 or 2x8+1x4
- Up to 5 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gb/s) Ports, Up to 10 USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 (10Gb/s) Ports, Up to 10 USB 3.2 Gen 1x1 (5Gb/s) Ports
- USB Revision: 3.2, 2.0
- Max number of SATA 6.0 Gb/s Ports: 8
- RAID Configuration: 0,15,10 - PCIe/SATA
- Integrated Wireless: Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211(Gig+)
- Intel® ME Firmware Version: 16
- Intel® HD Audio Technology
- Intel® Rapid Storage Technology
- Intel® Rapid Start Technology
- Intel® Rapid Storage Technology for PCI Storage
- Intel® Smart Sound Technology
- Intel® Platform Trust Technology (Intel® PTT)
- Intel® Boot Guard
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