It sounds like in order to compete with AMD's upcoming Zen 4 CPUs, Intel is taking out all the stops and unlocking all the potential performance in its upcoming Raptor Lake designs. These new chips will reportedly have an unlocked power mode which will push the high-end chips to the absolute extremes. In the case of the 13900K, it will reportedly be able to push itself to a 350W power limit, potentially unlocking frequencies that push close to 6GHz.
The upcoming CPU battle between AMD's Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 processors, and Intel's 13th-generation Raptor Lake chips could be big. AMD is moving to a new socket, and a new architecture, and may well incorporate its 3D VCache for improved gaming performance. There's a new process too, and AMD is expected to finally crest well past 5GHz, maybe even reaching 5.8Ghz.
Intel, on the other hand, is doing more of the same. It's doubling up efficiency cores across the board, making Raptor Lake likely multi-tasking monsters. It's also raising clock speeds and power limits. Where the 12th-generation topped out at 245W at the top end, this new-generation will reportedly be able to unlock to as much as 350W of power. Combine that with a big and powerful next-gen GPU and you're looking at close to 1KW of power for a top spec gaming PC with Intel's new CPUs.
Still, all that extra power will give it some serious headroom. Frequencies are said to reach as high as 5.8GHz and there are some overclocked results that go north of 6GHz when sub-ambient cooling is applied.
While that's more heat and power than I would want to deal with in my gaming PC, it shows that the next gen CPUs are set to be very exciting indeed.
