Intel Raptor Lake CPU lineup rumored for September launch

pcinvasion.com:

This summer is shaping up to be a boring season in terms of processor launches, but the good news is that fall will be chock full of new hardware. One of those launches is expected to be the 13th generation of desktop CPU products from Intel, codenamed Raptor Lake.

Intel has publicly updated us on a release timeline, but the reliable leaker Moore’s Law is Dead claims that September is likely for review samples and limited volume. We imagine it will likely be of high-end models like i9s. Interestingly, he goes on to claim that volume production of K series chips won’t begin to ramp until October, perhaps not even until the end of that month.

This would mean a slower rollout for mainstream and entry-level products like i3s, i5, and possibly i7s. The same would go for the non-K chips that cannot be overclocked, but offer better value. It’s also worth noting that OEMs like Dell (Alienware) and HP (Omen) typically make use of non-K processors.

Nothing official is known about Raptor Lake aside from the fact that it will use the same Intel 7 (10nm) manufacturing process as Alder Lake 12th gen. However, we’ve gathered together additional information from Moore’s Law is Dead and supporting sources. We expect Raptor Lake to be better for gaming than Alder Lake thanks to higher clock speeds, more cache, and other tweaks. What that means exactly for performance is hard to say until we have samples for review.

We can, however, expound on leaked performance uplift estimates a little more. The current sentiment is that top Raptor Lake models will manage higher clock speeds, perhaps around 5.7-5.8GHz. It’s expected that cores counts will also be doubled over Alder Lake for the little Gracemont cores across the majority of the lineup.