Everything We Know About Intel’s Raptor Lake

Intel and AMD are in constant competition with each other, and gamers sit comfortably in their respective camps no matter what happens. In November 2021, Intel released Adler Lake, which took over AMD as the best CPU on the market – unless you factor in the debt-inducing Threadripper. Now, new reports suggest that Intel is gearing up to release Raptor Lake, which takes their award-winning benchmarks to the next level. In the blue camp, fans are hoping for a hybrid core, which will help beat AMD’s Zen 4 processor. As we try to contain our excitement, we’ll tell you everything we know so far about Raptor Lake. 

Proposed Specs

The Raptor Lake will be modelled on Adler Lake’s Intel 7 node processing. Further, they will integrate the same 12th Generation Cores as the LGA 1700, which means that the next-gen chipsets should support backwards compatibility, which is always a bonus in this economy. Already, it has been confirmed that DDR4 and 5-type RAM will be supported, which means there’s no need to dismantle your entire PC to upgrade the motherboard. 

In the course of Intel’s 2022 Investor’s Meeting, they released thread and core information for raptor lake, with the numbers being 24 and 32 respectively. However, this doesn’t measure up to the power of AMD’s Threadripper for Gaming PC, which is the best that money can buy. 

Benchmarking

Throughout Intel’s Investor Meeting 2022, they showcased the power of Rapture Lake by running a Blender and Adobe After Effects process simultaneously, and it coped well. During the same meeting, it was suggested that Rapture Lake will be almost 50% more powerful than its predecessor, which is an impressive metric to boast. Further, there are significant rumours that point to Rapture Lake smashing clock speed records, with the ability to reach around 6Ghz. Considering the average for a good clock speed is 3.5 GHz to 4.0 GHz, this has got us pretty excited. 

Estimated Pricing

Pricing is always difficult to speculate on before launch, but we can take a look at the i9-1200K’s recommended retail price ($589) and hedge a bet that it’ll be somewhere around this mark. However, with AMD likely to release their Zen4 at a lower cost, the blue camp is hoping that Intel will feel pressured into reducing the price, which likely won’t happen – but we have to be hopeful. 

Potential Release Date

During Intel’s Investor’s Meeting 2022, it was confirmed that Raptor Lake will likely have a Q3 or Q4 release date, but nothing has been officially confirmed at the moment. However, with AMD getting ready to release its Zen4 Ryzen 7000 processor in late 2022, this prediction makes sense. 

We don’t know everything about Intel’s next-gen CPU, but we know enough to feel the excitement. With the red camp releasing the Gen4 later in the year, the confirmation of Rapture Lake gives us hope that Intel will keep hold of their title of best CPU in the business – gamers everywhere will rejoice this Christmas.