Intel is about to launch its Raptor Lake-S desktop platform later this year, but according to a tip from @RuthlesslyFunny on a Baidu post, the chip giant revealed a number of feature details during a conference in the Shenzhen area. First, since the consumer market is still slowly transitioning to DDR5, the new product will continue to retain the DDR4-3200 memory controller like the 12th generation Alder Lake.
(Image from @relentlessly funny / intel bar)
Unlike the previous generation, the 13th generation of Raptor Lake-S desktop CPUs will increase the DDR5 memory controller (IMC) rate from 4800 to 5600 MT/s.
Second, the slide notes that the NVMe storage slot directly connected to the CPU is still PCIe 4.0 spec — even though AMD is planning to offer PCIe 5.0 support on the new generation of AM5 consumer platforms.
While motherboard manufacturers can manage to get 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the 700 series chipsets, the PCIe 5.0 graphics slots will also shrink from x16 to x8 when split between PCIe 5.0 NVMe storage devices.
TechPowerUp tests show that this will only have a single-digit (percentage point) impact on GPU performance. If you really don’t want to compromise, you might want to consider a competing AM5 platform with more bandwidth.
