DDR5 Boosts Raptor Lake CPU Multi-Core Performance By 20 Percent In New Benchmark
Intel’s upcoming 13th generation Raptor Lake processor uses DDR5 and DDR4 memory. Nonetheless, preliminary benchmarks show that the former excels at maximizing the performance of new hybrid desktop chips.
According to recent rumors, Intel is aiming for a release date of October 7, and Raptor Lake may be in the immediate vicinity. The first rollout includes high-end K-series SKUs such as the Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i5-13600K, as well as the top-of-the-line Z790 chipset. There is no official confirmation of the specifications, but the Core i7-13700K has popped up several times in various benchmarks.
The Core i7-13700K is a 16-core processor consisting of 8 Raptor Cove Performance cores (P cores) and 8 Gracemont Efficiency cores (E cores). The Raptor Lake chip also has a 30MB L3 cache, which is reported to show off a 3.4GHz base clock and a 5.3GHz boost clock. A Recent Geekbench 5 submissions (Opens in a new tab) We have shown that the Core i7-13700K is superior to AMD’s flagship product, the Ryzen 9550X.However, hardware investigation Bench leak (Opens in a new tab) discovered New submission (Opens in a new tab) This indicates that DDR4 memory was suppressing the Raptor Lake chip.
The Core i7-13700K with DDR4 system used ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E, while the DDR5 testbed used Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E / D5. The two motherboards are identical except for the memory slots. The DDR4 system used DDR4-3200 memory and the DDR5 system used DDR5-5200 memory. This is the native data rate supported by Raptor Lake. From the Geekbench 5 entry, you can see that both systems have 32GB (2x16GB) of memory. Therefore, the results are equivalent. Unfortunately, Geekbench 5 doesn’t provide details such as memory module models and timing. Therefore, it is not possible to know if the 16GB DDR4 memory module is single rank or dual rank.
Intel Core i7-13700K Benchmark
| processor | Single core score | Multi-core score |
|---|---|---|
| Core i7-13700K + DDR5-5200 | 2,069 | 19,811 |
| Core i7-13700K + DDR4-3200 | 2.090 | 16,542 |
The results show that DDR5 is not very effective against the Core i7-13700K in terms of single core performance. DDR5 systems were 1% slower than DDR4 systems, but within the margin of error. However, DDR5 systems have achieved up to 20% higher multi-core performance. This is a pretty significant performance difference.
The price of DDR5 has improved. The price difference between DDR5 and DDR4 will eventually decrease over time, but it is unlikely that DDR5 will cost the same as DDR4. The former is much more expensive to manufacture and features a more complex design with additional components such as power management integrated circuits (PMICs) and VRMs.
DDR5 memory can improve the overall performance of Alder Lake, depending on your workload. However, unlike Alder Lake, which uses the Golden Cove core, Raptor Lake uses the Raptor Cove core. This can behave differently than the memory speed. Preliminary results for DDR5 look promising, but thorough testing is required to pass the determination of whether DDR5 is better than high-performance DDR4.
