We know Intel is officially launching six 13th Gen Core ‘Raptor Lake’ high-performance CPUs on October 20. Already available for pre-order, all that remains are benchmark results, with range-topper Core i9-13900K looking a formidable competitor to the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. The full 13th Gen payload extends to 22 processors, staggered over time, according to a leak from Gigabyte’s motherboard website.
This rather lengthy slide details CPU support for the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master motherboard. Zooming in shows familiar processors such as the Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K, but goes on to detail a whole host more.
Arguably the most interesting are five 13th Gen models identified as Raptor Lake but using the C0 stepping rather than B0. Core i5-13600, i5-13600T, i5-13500, i5-13500T and i5-13400T all fit this description and actually use the Alder Lake architecture massaged into the correct number of cores and threads for 13th Gen.
Core i5-13400 and i5-13400F are identified as using B0/C0 steppings, meaning they are hewn from either Alder Lake or Raptor Lake architectures. As we know the latter has better IPC at the same frequency, it’s interesting they carry the same model name… yet can be built from two different base designs.
Nevertheless, that is something to worry about further along the line; the six-chip vanguard coming on Thursday are all pukka Raptor Lake processors riding on the B0 stepping.
