Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake Is Markedly Faster With DDR5 In Benchmark Leak
We may have just seen a key benchmark result for the upcoming 13th gen Intel Core processor family, code named Raptor Lake. A direct comparison appears to have emerged, pitting an Intel Core i7-13700K system with DDR5 against a previous seemingly otherwise identical result on a system featuring DDR4. Yes, it could be the very same Geekbench tester, trying out various system configurations to tune performance.
We reported on the Intel Core i7-13700K with 32GB DDR4 on Saturday. The same Twitter source alerted us of the Intel Core i7-13700K with 32GB DDR5 configuration in quick succession. Like we said in the intro, these two Geekbench results appear to be from almost identical machines. Thanks to Geekbench's online result browser enabling the setting of a baseline, we can easily see how much better the newly tested DDR5 configuration is.
The newer score (the blue bars in the chart) was achieved using 32GB of DDR5-5200 memory, while the older score (gray bars) was from a system running with 32GB of DDR4-3200. Single-threaded benchmarks in Geekbench were very similar, and you could say the difference was within the margin of error, which would typically be seen by retesting an identical system on a separate occasion.
In multithreaded Geekbench tests, the new DDR5 configuration was markedly faster. Looking deeper into the Geekbench results, it seems like the following tests benefited greatly from the newer RAM technology; AES encryption, web browser navigation, test rendering, speech recognition, and machine learning. As a side note, nothing—within the margin of error—ran better on the DDR4 system.
So, these are very interesting test differentials, with the almost identical Raptor Lake DDR5 system, spotted by Benchleaks, being nearly 20% faster on average in multithreaded tests. We must remember, though, that these are synthetic tests, and don't always correlate to real world app and game performance.
The current 12th gen Intel Core processors, code named Alder Lake, also offer PC DIYers the choice of DDR4 or DDR5 systems. Benefits of DDR5 on Alder Lake have been mostly underwhelming until now, but Intel's new architecture and new 700 series motherboards could do better. Thankfully, DDR5 is cheaper than ever as the Raptor Lake launch nears (rumored for October), and AMD Zen 4 processors are just around the corner.
