Intel's 13th-gen Raptor Lake chips could break the 6 GHz barrier thanks to Efficient Thermal Velocity Boost technology

Tipster @OneRaichu recently claimed that Intel's Raptor Lake chips could sport massively high clockspeeds, with at least one SKU tipped to breach the 6 GHz barrier. If true, high-end Raptor Lake parts could compound IPC improvements and extremely high clocks to deliver tangible gains in gaming performance over current-gen silicon.

What's particularly interesting is that @OneRaichu claimed 6 GHz will be achievable only in EVTB mode and possibly with just a single Raptor Lake SKU. A few days after the tipster tweeted about Raptor Lake clocks and EVTB, Intel updated its XTU overclocking utility.

The changelog mentioned that "future platform" support for Efficient TVB (Thermal Velocity Boost) was added in. Put together, @OneRaichu's tweet and the XTU changelog strongly indicate that EVTB is an improvement over Intel's Thermal Velocity Boost tech, which opportunistically ups clocks when thermals allow for it.

The Alder Lake Core i9-12900KS leveraged standard TVB to boost as high as 5.5 GHz. Raptor Lake's ETVB tech could take things even further - when Intel's new lineup launches it'll be interesting to see if a commercial CPU finally manages to breach the 6 GHz barrier.

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