According to Tom’s Hardware, one of Intel’s future 13th-generation CPUs will have the ability to operate at 6GHz out of the box. Onstage at Intel’s Technology Tour 2022, the information was revealed on a slide, which also revealed that it will be able to reach 8GHz when overclocked. Performance gains of 15% in single-threaded operations and 41% in multi-threaded operations are among the further enhancements promised for this next generation, which goes by the moniker Raptor Lake.
That AMD’s next flagship 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X would be able to turbo up to 5.7GHz was recently announced, Intel’s 6GHz claim is a shot across the bow at AMD. In terms of performance, raw clock rates are hardly the end-all be-all, but for Intel, which has been competing with a resurgent AMD in the CPU market in recent years, breaching the 6GHz barrier would be a significant marketing victory.
It is unknown whether or how many Raptor Lake processors will be capable of hitting these types of clock speeds as the generation’s lineup has not yet been formally revealed. Given that Intel’s 12900KS can operate at 5.5GHz (up 300MHz from the i9-12900standard K’s maximum speed of 5.2GHz), Intel’s 6GHz CPU may very well be a KS-branded variant of its impending 13900K processor. However, Intel plans to provide further information at its Innovation event on September 27 in San Jose, California. Official price and a release date have not yet been made public. This coincides with the day AMD releases their Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which is highly unlikely to be a coincidence.
