Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake processors might be the most anticipated PC hardware launch this year. It’s not that the chips are particularly exciting on their own — Intel is already battling AMD on the list of the best processors — but because AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors were released just a few weeks ago. Intel is promising competitive performance while undercutting AMD on price, aided in no small part by continuing to support DDR4 memory and 600-series motherboards. Intel isn’t reclaiming dominance as it did with the Core i9-12900K, but smart pricing and competitive performance make Raptor Lake a very compelling upgrade option. Raptor Lake is mostly a refresh to the previous generation of Alder Lake processors. There are a lot of changes, but the approach is very similar in this generation. Thirteenth-gen processors use a hybrid architecture that combines performance (P) cores and efficient (E) cores, which helps boost multi-threaded performance without wasting power on extra cores. ...
Cheaper than AMD competition; Support for 600-series motherboards and DDR4; Solid multi-core improvements; Surprising gen-on-gen improvements;
High power demands; Small gaming performance gains;