News

Intel Announces Its Range Of 13th Gen Core Processors

Intel’s 13th Gen processors have landed, offering support for DDR5 and DDR4 memory, with the same LGA1700 sockets used by the outgoing generation.

Published

4 years ago

September 28, 2022

Nour Nasir

Intel

At the Intel Innovation event on September 27th, the processor giant revealed its latest 13th Generation Core processor family. The chips are powered by Intel’s performance hybrid architecture and come in six new unlocked variants for desktop applications.

The new lineup is headed by the monstrous Core i9-13900K and Core i9-13900KF, which utilize 24 cores for a total of 20 threads. The “E” cores sport a base frequency of 2.2Ghz, while the “P” cores max out at 3.0Ghz — though the turbo frequency can push those numbers to 4.3Ghz and 5.8Ghz, respectively. In terms of power draw, both top-of-the-line processors are rated at 125W, with max power topping out at 253W.

intel 13th gen core processors

The range is codenamed “Raptor Lake“, and Intel claims that the entire family of processors will offer users up to a 15% increase in single-threaded performance and up to a 41% increase in multi-threaded performance compared to the outgoing 12th generation.

Speaking of the rest of the Raptor Lake family, two i7 and two i5 processors will also feature in the lineup, with K and KF variants of each, with the latter not supporting integrated graphics.

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There’s also some good news for system builders and serial upgraders: Although limited to a max speed of 5600Mhz, DDR4 RAM will still be supported by the new processors, which also use the same LGA1700 socket configuration — meaning Z690 and Z790 motherboard owners can sample the power of Raptor Lake without the need for a complete system refresh.

As for laptop users, Intel has confirmed that the new 13th Gen processors will be finding their way into portable PCs in the near future, sticking to the familiar naming convention of U, P, H, and HX. The new 13th Gen Raptor Lake range will hit stores from October 20th, though there’s no word on availability levels as yet.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.