13th Gen Intel laptop CPUs provide up to 24 cores

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Intel is powering down its 13th generation desktop CPUs to laptops – all 24 cores worth. At CES today, Intel unveiled the Core i9-13980HX, the top of its mobile lineup. It features 24 cores (a combination of 8 performance cores and 16 efficient cores) and a boost speed of up to 5.6GHz. It’s a continuation of Intel’s high-performance HX line, which debuted last year as a way to bring more power to larger laptops. The company claims the new Core i9 CPU is 11 percent faster than last year’s top-of-the-line 12900HK when it comes to single-threaded tasks, and it’s 49 percent faster for multi-threaded work (intensive tasks like video encoding and 3D rendering).

The 13th Gen Intel HX range scales down to the Core i5-13450HX, which offers 10 cores (6P, 4E) and boost speeds up to 4.5GHz. Basically, if you crave more performance and don’t mind more battery life, an HX chip should be in your budget. The rest of Intel’s 13th generation lineup is also noteworthy. The P-series chips, intended for high-performance devices, will have up to 14 cores, while the lower-powered U CPUs top out at 10 cores (2P, 8E) with the i7-1365U.

Intel

We weren’t too impressed with Intel’s previous P-series CPUs on laptops like the XPS 13 Plus—performance gains seemed negligible on most tasks, while battery life was huge. Hopefully, Intel has made some improvements with its new lineup. The company also claims that select 13th-generation chipsets will introduce an AI VPU (Vision Processing Unit), which can help offload tasks like background blurring during video calls. The lack of a central processing unit (VPU) was a major downside to the Intel-equipped Surface Pro 9 (and the Arm model’s only major advantage), so it would be nice to see some kind of AI acceleration this year.

Another pleasant surprise: new, low-quality chips. Intel quietly killed off its Pentium and Celeron brands last year — we now know that they’ve been replaced by new N-series chips, simply called Intel Processor and Intel Core i3. These chips are primarily focused on education and other entry-level computing markets, and thus are only equipped with E-cores. Intel says its quad-core N200 chip delivers 28 percent better application performance and 64 percent faster graphics than the previous-generation Pentium Silver N6000. Bouncing back the 8-core i3 N-305 processor adds an additional 42 percent in application performance and 56 percent faster graphics. Sure, we all want a 24-core laptop, but lower-end, better-quality chips have the potential to help kids and other users who don’t need as much power.

Apart from laptops, Intel also brought out its line of 13th generation desktop CPUs at CES. They’ll still go up to 24 cores like the enthusiast-level K-series chips, but they’ll “only” go up to 5.6GHz to boost speeds, instead of 5.8GHz. The company says it’s 11 percent faster in single-threaded performance and up to 34 percent faster when it comes to multi-threaded tasks. The 13th Gen desktop chips will also be compatible with 600 and 700 series motherboards, and will run with either DDR5 or DDR4 memory, making them convenient upgrades for recent Intel systems.

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