Intel has finally taken the wraps off its brand new 13th gen Raptor Lake Mobile CPUs. These new laptop processors spot up to 24 cores and incorporate PCIe 5.0 for faster operations. From the low-power U-series to the flagship HX-series, the Raptor Lake Mobile CPUs promise significant improvements over their predecessors.
Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake Line-up
Intel has kept a similar approach to last year’s Alder Lake line-up with a low-power U-series, followed by the P-series which has proven to be the most popular of the bunch, the H-series which also includes the HK line of processors, and lastly, the HX series is the flagship with the highest TDP and the most performance.
Here’s a list of all the Raptor Lake Mobile CPUs that were released during CES 2023,
HX-series: i9-13980HX, i9-13950HX, i9-13900HX, i7-13850HX, i7-13700HX, i7-13650HX, i5-13600HX, i5-13500HX, i5-13450HX
H-series: i9-13900HK, i9-13905H, i9-13900H, i7-13800H, i7-13705H11, i7-13700H, i7-13620H, i5-13600H, i5-13505H, i5-13500H, i5-13420H
P-series: i7-1370P, i7-1360P, i5-1350P, i5-1340P
U-series: i7-1365U, i7-1355U, i5-1345U, i5-1335U, i5-1334U, i3-1315U, i3-1305U, Intel U300
Everything new in Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs for Mobile
Firstly there are a handful of changes and improvements in the 13th generation compared to the 12th gen processors. The HX series maxes out at 24 cores (32 threads) for the i9 variants and 20 cores (28 threads) for the top-of-the-line i7 (13850HX). The regular H series and the P-series max out at 14 cores (20 threads). The new chips are also more power efficient, especially if you go with an Intel Evo certified laptop.
For clock speeds, the i9-13980HX can now boost up to 5.6 GHz while the i9-13950HX and the i9-13900HX max out at 5.5 GHz and 5.4 GHz respectively. These are the ones I’m expecting to be the real upgrades this year as the rest seem fairly similar to their last-gen counterparts. However, I’ll have to test out these CPUs myself to see the real-world results.
These new processors now also come with a total of sixteen PCIe Gen5 lanes for the integrated graphics while the four storage PCIe lanes are still Gen 4. However, unlike Qualcomm, Intel has skipped Wi-Fi 7 support for this generation and went with the last-gen Wi-Fi 6E. That seems unfair as the new standard is already available.
We also didn’t get 5th Gen Thunderbolt support and that’s even more surprising considering Intel themselves announced it back in October. Instead, the company went with the old Thunderbolt 4 which misses out on the upgraded USB 4 v2, the 80 Gbps bandwidth, and DisplayPort 2.1 support.
While the real-life performance is something yet to be experienced, I want to see these new Intel 13th Gen (for mobile) chips working better with Windows 11, as the 12th gen chips were a hot mess in that area. I am also curious about how the Iris Xe integrated graphics will do for Raptor Lake Mobile as that again didn’t get an upgrade this year.
