Last week, at CES in Las Vegas, Intel announced the company’s power-packed 13th-generation Intel Core mobile processor range for laptops and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
The flagship of the range is the Intel Core i9-13980HX, which the company claims is the first 24-core processor in a laptop and the “world’s fastest mobile processor”. According to Intel, the new 13th Generation processor H range features:
- “Up to 5.6 GHz turbo frequency (up to 11% faster single-thread performance and 49% faster multitask performance over the previous generation)
- Up to 24 cores (8 Performance-cores, 16 Efficient-cores), 32 threads
- Support for up to 128GB either DDR4 or DDR5 RAM
- Wi-Fi6e
- Improved integrated graphics experience based on improved driver stack and key learnings from Intel’s work with discrete graphics
- Overclocking capabilities on all HX and HK SKUs.”
If the claims stack up to real-world performance, that’s some serious power. Compared to AMD’s recent processor announcement, the upcoming top-tier Ryzen 9 7945HX mobile processor reaches a peak boost speed of 5.4 GHz using 16 cores. Intel’s numbers even outpace some of AMD’s desktop CPUs. Either way, both companies are producing staggering results with their respective chips.
What else is in the new Intel mobile processor range?
There are also new P-Series and U-Series processors aimed at the thin-and-light end of the laptop market, with more of a focus on portability than power.
According to Intel, the P-Series and U-Series chips include these features:
- Up to 14 cores (6 Performance-cores, 8 Efficient-cores) and enhanced Intel Thread Director
- Broad memory support for DDR5 and DDR4 and LP variants
- Integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+)
- Up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports
Selected U, P and H chips will have the Intel Movidius Vision Procession Unit (VPU) on board. This was developed in a partnership with Microsoft to offload AI-heavy tasks to the VPU, to let the CPU and GPU focus on other stuff.
The HUP chips will range from medium fancy chips, to that Core i9-13980HX which is designed for professionals, gamers, and extremely impatient, fancy-chip-loving people.
The next step down in the range is the Intel Evo, which is designed to prioritise battery life and portability. Most of the features listed for the Evo chips were vague “it’s very good” kind of language, but the Intel Unison feature on select designs will allow for more seamless connection between Windows devices and both Android and iOS mobile devices, like taking calls on your laptop.
Second-to-last is the new K-series, for more mainstream PC users (most people who just work on their laptop and don’t need to run creative programs or power-hungry games). These K-series processors have:
- Up to 5.6 GHz, 24 cores/32 threads, including efficient cores.
- Full forward and backward compatibility with 600- and 700-series motherboards, as well as support for both DDR5 and DDR4 memory.
- Unspecified energy efficiency improvements.
Finally, rounding out the 13th generation is the new N-series, replacing the now-retired Pentium and Celeron branded entry-level processors. These are mostly aimed at students, and IoT applications. These chips feature:
- New Efficient-cores.
- Up to 28% better application performance and 64% better graphics performance over the Pentium Silver N6000
- Up to 10-hour HD video playback without recharging.
- New AV1 decode, high-resolution display engine and improved IPU and MIPI camera support.
- Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) and Bluetooth 5.2.
- Flexible memory (LPDDR5, DDR5/DDR4) and storage (UFS/SSD/eMMC) options.
Dozens of laptops have already been announced with these processors, including Asus’ powerful new ROG gaming devices, and they should be hitting Australian store shelves later in the year. More information about the new chips is available via the official announcement page.
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