Our understanding of the 13th Gen Intel Core processors, codenamed “Raptor Lake”, continues to evolve ahead of their scheduled launch this fall. The current generation of Alder Lake chip motherboards are adding preliminary support for them, and now an estimated list of desktop processor lineups (according to Tom’s Hardware) suggests that Intel will rely on its low efficiency processor cores (E-cores) for most of their productivity gains.
Based on Intel disclosures, we know that Raptor Lake processors will use the same CPU and GPU architectures and Intel 7 manufacturing process as Alder Lake. Its high performance cores (P-cores) will be based on an architecture called “Raptor Cove”, although the white papers do not differentiate between the two.and Alder Lake “Golden Cove”core. And the E cores will be based on the same Atom-derived Gracemont architecture that Alder Lake uses. Large cores handle the hard work and provide the best performance for games and other applications that benefit from good single-core performance, while E-cores are suitable for lower priority and background tasks, as well as workloads such as video encoding and rendering on CPU base. jobs that can use all the cores of your processor at the same time. It’s hard to make an exact performance comparison, but AnandTech’s tests on individual E-cores show that most of the time, they’re about as fast as a midrange 6th gen Skylake CPU core.
Intel has also confirmed that some Raptor Lake chips will include up to 24 physical cores spread across eight P-cores and 16 E-cores. The maximum number of Alder Lake processors is eight E-cores, for a total of 16 physical cores.
This estimated processor list is based on this knowledge, assuming that the top Raptor Lake Core i9 processors will include 16 E-cores compared to the current eight, and that all Raptor Lake Core i7s will have eight E-cores, while Alder Lake i7 include eight or four. Clusters of four or eight E cores will also make their first appearance across the entire Core i5 tier. The current i5-12600 (no K), 12500 and 12400 have no E-cores at all, while the i5-13600 and 13500 will reportedly include eight E-cores and the i5-13400 will arrive with four. The only Raptor Lake chip without E-cores appears to be the i3-13100, which remains a quad-core processor with all P-cores.
The “add more cores”approach is in line with Intel’s strategy to improve the performance of 8th, 9th, and 10th generation processors. They were all based on some version of the 2015 Skylake architecture and 14nm manufacturing process, but the company was constantly adding more cores to counter AMD’s success with the Ryzen processor lineup. Although Intel uses the same manufacturing process for Alder Lake and Raptor Lake, it becomes easier to produce larger, faster chips in large quantities as chip yields increase and defects decrease.
The 13th gen chips are listed at the same TDP levels as their 12th gen counterparts, although base CPU clocks are reduced for all chips except the i3-13100. Turbo Boost frequencies are likely to be slightly higher than 12th generation processors, so Intel can still claim improved single-threaded performance. However, when all cores are loaded at the same time, they may not be able to run at Alder Lake speeds and stay within Intel’s default power range. As with Alder Lake, raising the power limits above Intel’s defaults should drastically increase the performance of most of these chips at the expense of (sometimes disproportionately) higher power consumption and temperatures.
AMD’s upcoming Zen 4 processor architecture will continue to use a more traditional design with varying numbers of identical “P-cores”(AMD doesn’t call them that, but it’s good to think of them that way for the sake of consistency). Early and extremely sketchy rumors suggest that Zen 5 could have a hybrid design with Zen 5 P-cores and E-cores based on a modified version of Zen 4, but AMD hasn’t confirmed this and we’re unlikely to get any official Zen 5 news until next year. of the year.
These hybrid CPU architectures have intermittently caused issues with older or obscure software, including some older games and testing software that, for one reason or another, interpret the presence of a second CPU architecture as the presence of a second physical computer. But over time, these issues are resolved with Windows patches and app updates, and at least some PCs will let you get around them in the short term by disabling electronic cores.