Intel's 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs Gain Support On These Current MSI Motherboards
MSI is the latest motherboard maker to start rolling out BIOS updates to support Intel's next-gen Raptor Lake CPUs on existing 600-series hardware. All told, there are now over 100 motherboard models from at least three manufacturers that already support Intel's 13th Gen Core processors ahead of their official launch sometime later this year.
ASUS and ASRock are the other two. As we wrote about at the end of June, ASRock is offering BIOS updates for its Z690, H670, B660, and H610 motherboards in preparation for Raptor Lake, while ASUS so far has focused on updating its Z690 motherboards, including ROG, ROG Strix, ProArt, Prime, and TUF Gaming models. By our count, ASUS and ASRock have collectively pushed out BIOS updates for 69 motherboards.
MSI just added a whole bunch more to the pile. In a post on Reddit, MSI announced it has released BIOS updates to support "next-gen Intel CPUs" on several Z690, B660, and H610 models. Here's a look...
We count 37 models in all, which brings the collective total between ASUS, ASRock, and MSI to 106 motherboard models. The reason this can be done is because Raptor Lake is drop-in compatible with Alder Lake platforms. That's to say, it leverages the same LGA 1700 socket design.
That other implication there is that Raptor Lake will offer support for both DDR5 and DDR4 memory. This is all great news for anyone who has built or bought and Alder Lake setup and might be interested in upgrading to a Raptor Lake CPU sometime down the line.
The caveat is that Intel will introduce additional features and goodies with its upcoming 700-series chipsets, but on the bright side, Intel's 600-series chipsets are fairly feature-rich already.
Intel is promising Raptor Lake will deliver up to a double-digit performance boost over Alder Lake. The 13th Gen lineup will be offered in up to 24 cores and 32 threads, with Intel doubling the number of E-cores at the top end for the next round. Intel has also referenced enhanced overclocking features, though it's not clear what it means by that and whether or not they will be exclusive to next-gen platforms.
Raptor Lake is on track to release in the coming months.
