Intel Raptor Lake processors' tentative release date revealed by new leak ^↺

Multiple leaks have pegged the tentative Raptor Lake release date as September/October of this year, right around the same time AMD and Nvidia are expected to launch their next generation of hardware. While Intel is yet to confirm (or even hint at) a definitive release date, Enthusiast Citizen over on Bilibili (via Wccftech) seems to have a decent idea about the company's plans. The information comes shortly after three Raptor Lake SKUs leaked on different benchmarking platforms.

The next generation of Raptor Lake compatible motherboards (Z790) and the actual processors will be announced on September 28 at Intel's Innovation Event. Much like every release, the first three CPUs to be launched will be the Intel Core i5-13600K, Core i7-13700K, Core i9-13900K and their "KF" variants. They will be purchasable on October 17. The leaker adds that the current generation of Alder Lake motherboards will be able to run Raptor Lake processors with a BIOS update.

Those on the lookout for affordable H760 and B760 series of boards may have to wait until CES 2023 (January 5). The non-K Raptor Lake processors are also expected to make their debut on the same day. All of the aforementioned boards will support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Lastly, the leak also details some of the new Z790 features, including 20 PCIe Gen 4 lanes, 8 PCIe Gen 3 lanes, and bumping up DDR5 memory to 5600 JEDEC specifications.

Buy the Intel Core i5-12600K on Amazon