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Intel Raptor Lake breaks the 6GHz barrier, and it’s not even the flagship

With the release of Intel Raptor Lake inching closer, we’re now seeing a flurry of benchmarks, spec leaks, and tests that all do a good job of driving up the hype for the next-gen processors. This time, it’s once again the Intel Core i7-13700K that makes an appearance in two or three different tests. One thing is certain: It doesn’t just make an appearance — it shines.

The CPU appeared in a couple of CPU-Z tests, reaching intensely high clock speeds. It actually managed to hit 6GHz, surpassing the tests done on the flagship of the lineup, the Core i9-13900K.

Intel Core i7-13700K overclocked to 6GHz.
VideoCardz

The screenshots, sent to VideoCardz by an anonymous source, show a next-gen Intel processor with 16 cores in its full, overclocked glory. As mentioned above, in one of the tests, the processor actually managed to hit the elusive 6GHz mark. In order to do this, the leaker disabled hybrid mode and only left the eight performance cores enabled.

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With this overclock, the processor managed to score 983 points in the single-core benchmark, but obviously, disabling the small efficiency cores affected the multicore performance. While the single-core score proved to be higher than that of the Core i9-13900K clocked at 5.5GHz, the multicore result of 7,814 points puts it at a disadvantage.

The processor was then tested again without disabling the efficiency cores. This brought down the clock speeds a notch, but it also improved the CPU-Z benchmark performance significantly. In this test, the Core i7-13700K managed to reach 5.8GHz across all performance cores, while the efficiency cores were clocked at 3.7GHz. As a result, the single-threaded score was now 947, but the multithreaded test brought a massive 12,896 improvement. These gains put the Core i7-13700K 10% ahead of the Core i9-13900K when tested at 5.5GHz, and 16% ahead of the current flagship Core i9-12900K clocked at 5.2GHz.

In both cases, the screenshots were taken after the test, so don’t take the 25-37 degrees C temperatures at face value. Multiple sources have already reported that Intel Raptor Lake might be one power-hungry beast, and that will certainly warrant much higher temps. However, a third test (seemingly from the same leaker) also emerged, and that one shows the voltage and the thermals during the overclock.

pic.twitter.com/gtLfib2wq6

— esperonslaie (@esperonslaie) July 31, 2022

As seen in a video posted on Twitter, the CPU was put through a Cinebench stress test when overclocked to 5.9GHz. During that benchmark, it reached a voltage of 1.445V with temperatures of up to 85 degrees C.

The CPUs in question are engineering samples, so these tests can’t be regarded as fully accurate. Even so, it certainly seems like Intel will deliver quite a boost with Intel Raptor Lake. The processors are currently rumored to release in October and will use the same socket as the current-gen Alder Lake CPUs.

Monica J. White
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
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