The Raptor Lake processor from Intel upcoming generation has been found in a leaked benchmark, where it displays a good turn of speed.
According to Tum Apisak on Twitter (via VideoCardz(opens in new tab)), the Core i9-13900K has appeared in PassMark, where it is rated on four example runs.
The 13900K achieved an average single-thread performance score of 4,833, which is over 10% faster than the special edition 12900KS and about 15% faster than its predecessor. This achievement earns it the top spot in the PassMark rankings, which is a rather astounding feat.
In PassMark’s CPU Mark, the 13900K scored 54,433 points for multi-threaded, beating out the 12900K by 31% and the Ryzen 9 5950X by approximately 20%. Again, that’s a strong start and has undoubtedly raised hopes for what the Raptor Lake flagship might offer, though we should always exercise extreme caution when dealing with benchmarks that have been leaked.
Analysis: This is promising; is this a sign that Raptor Lake will soon be here?
There is obviously a limit to what we can deduce from this because there are only four sample runs in this benchmark suite. PassMark isn’t the benchmark we’re most eager to see in leaks either, but it still adds to the picture of the 13900K’s overall performance. However, many would contend that it is only one piece, and not even the most important one.
There is no doubting, however, that the type of uplift shown here is eye-opening. Unfortunately, no next-generation Ryzen 7000 processors have yet appeared on PassMark, which would certainly make for the most instructive comparison. And it’s a little odd considering that AMD’s Zen 4 chips will be available very soon—on September 27—while Raptor Lake hardware hasn’t even been unveiled. (That reveal is anticipated to coincide with the launch of Ryzen 7000, which appears to be an artful ploy by AMD to lessen Intel’s competitive advantage.)
Raptor Lake chips won’t be available until next month, perhaps in the middle of October, but the fact that these benchmarks are appearing now may be a sign that they may arrive sooner rather than later in October. We’ll have to wait and see, but at least this suggests that the 13th-generation Intel CPUs won’t be launched later than expected.
We already know that the 13900K can boost to 5.8GHz (although for a small period of time) at stock, and Intel just informed us that a future chip, the 13900KS, which is likely to appear as a special, higher-binned edition of the flagship, is slated to boost to 6GHz. Once more, that pertains to stock performance, as in default, out of the gate.
The next-generation flagship Ryzen 7950X is already setting records in several benchmarks where the best performers utilised things like liquid nitrogen, while the 7950X ran with basic you-can-do-this-at-home cooling. Raptor Lake is therefore shaping up impressively, but so is AMD’s Zen 4.
