Intel Preps Two 13th Gen Raptor Lake Black Edition CPUs

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Intel's 13th Generation Raptor Lake family, which has several members among the best CPUS, will soon welcome two new members. Sadly, the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F may not be available in the U.S. market. Both chips have already emerged in Intel documents; however, they haven't found their way into Intel's ARK database, so their launch date is still up in the air.

With Alder Lake, Intel released the Core i5-12490F, a "Black Edition" gaming processor exclusive to the Chinese market. The Core i5-13490F is the direct successor to the Core i5-12490F, whereas the Core i7-13790F is a new addition since a Core i7-12790F has never existed. However, like the Core i5-12490F, the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F are likely "Black Edition" chips because they come in black boxes as opposed to the typical blue Intel box, and Intel doesn't include a stock cooler. Furthermore, being F-series chips, the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F lack integrated graphics, so pairing them with a discrete graphics card is a must.

The Core i5-12490F was just a means for Intel to maximize profits from its silicon production. To make a long story short, the chipmaker produced two dies for Alder Lake: C0 (8P+8E) and H0 (6P+0E). Intel utilizes the first for the high-tier chips, including the Core i9 and Core i7 SKUs, and the latter for low-tier chips, like the Core i5 and Core i3 SKUs. However, the lower tier SKUs have the benefit of using either silicon, allowing the chipmaker to repurpose C0 dies that don't meet the standards for the higher tier into the lower tier. So it's very plausible that the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F are products of Intel's recycling efforts.

Twitter user wxnod has shared the alleged specifications for the Core i5-13490F, which appears to arrive with a significant upgrade. According to the leaked CPU-Z screenshot, the Core i5-13490F has a 10-core, 16-thread configuration. It's the same configuration as the regular Core i5-13400F, which has proven to offer similar performance to the last generation's Core i5-12600K.

The Core i5-13490F wields six P-cores and four E-cores, so the most significant difference between it and its predecessor is the four additional E-cores. In addition, the CPU-Z screenshot showed the chip with a 4.8 GHz boost clock, which corresponds to the P-cores. It's a 200 MHz improvement over the Core i5-12490F and Core i5-13400F.

The Core i5-12490F had more L3 cache than the Core i5-12400F. It's the same trend with the Core i5-13490F and Core i5-13400F, although the upgrade is slightly higher. The Core i5-12490F sports 2MB more than the Core i5-12400F. However, the Core i5-13490F's L3 cache is 4MB bigger than the Core i5-12490F, putting it on the equivalent ground as the Core i7-13700F.

Since they don't belong to the K-series tier, the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F have a 65W PBP. The MTP is unknown, though. However, the previous Core i5-12490F and Core i5-12400F have the same 117W MTP, so it's not unreasonable to think that the Core i5-13490F could share the same 148W MTP as the Core i5-13400F.

The Core i5-13490F scored 779.7 points on the single-core test and 6,834.5 points on the multi-core test. For comparison, the Core i5-13400F (via NotebookCheck) put 729.1 points and 6540 points on the single-and multi-core tests, respectively. That means the Core i5-13490F delivered 6.9% higher single-core performance and 4.5$ multi-core performance than the Core i5-13400F.

On the other hand, the Core i5-12490F has a single-core score of 700 points and a multi-core score of 4,653 points. As a result, the Core i5-13490F outperformed the Core i5-12490F by 11.4% in single-core performance. In addition, the Core i5-13490F was up to 46.9% faster in terms of multi-core performance.

The Core i5-13490F's leaked results are from a retail chip, suggesting that the Core i5-13490F and Core i7-13790F may already be at retailers, in China at least. Meanwhile, we haven't seen any information on the Core i7-13790F, but the chip should be similar to the Core i7-13700F.