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 it will receive from Elder Lake as the 13th Gen Corps this fall. Intel had already confirmed some details, others were suspected – and now confirmed. But there are surprises too.

more cores and more cache

Intel has already made it public that the Raptor Lake-S will offer more cores. This is accompanied, at least in part, with the changed L2 and L3 cache configurations of the monolithic processor, as the core structure has not changed compared to Intel’s Elder Lake. The doubling number of E-Cores along with their L3 cache slices ensure that the total L3 volume also increases. In addition, the L2 cache capacity has been increased in the cores of both the E-Core and P-Core.

Raptor Lake-S still supports DDR4

On the other hand, the platform’s tools only take a small step forward. The 700 chipset series surrounding the Z790, H770, B760 & Co now officially supports DDR5-5600 with CPUs, overclocking has been improved for both CPU and RAM. Intel also highlights the renewed support for DDR4-3200 on the slide. In the coming year, this will be a unique selling proposition, as competing AMD will only offer DDR5 with the AM5 platform.

The graphics card is 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 gives the first surprise: apparently they should stick with the PCIe 4.0 standard and not upgrade to PCIe 5.0, as rumors have always claimed. At this point, AMD will be ahead of the AM5. However, it remains to be seen how mainboard makers will implement the Intel-provided premise, as there are already Elder Lake mainboards that support PCIe 5.0 SSDs, but then only with PCIe x16 slots for lane sharing. Via – An example is the mainboard with the ASRock Deskmini B660.

Intel also emphasizes PCIe lanes in addition to the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) in the Raptor Lake-S. The chipset, as it is still colloquially called, should include, among other things, an additional USB 3.2 port and Thunderbolt 4 with 20 Gbps.

Core i9/i7/i5/i3-13000 from autumn

The first mainboard manufacturers are already producing their own circuit boards, and the launch date is expected to be autumn of this year. Recently, the first benchmarks came out with early samples, but they gave a very mixed picture. The 13th generation Intel Core will also run on the mainboard with the current 600 chipset and LGA 1700 – assuming a compatible BIOS.