Intel Raptor Lake mobile CPUs leaked – could these be the future of laptops?

(Image credit: Future)

Intel’s upcoming Raptor Lake laptop CPUs have been leaked, and the line-up looks pretty enticing, indeed.

This comes from regular hardware leaker Raichu on Twitter (as flagged up by Wccftech (opens in new tab)), who provided full specs for the range of HX chips, starting with the Core i9-13900HX with 8 performance cores, 16 efficiency cores, and a boost of up to 5.4GHz (the base clock is 3.9GHz).

Next up, we have the Core i7-13700HX – remember, take all these with a fistful of seasoning, as ever with the rumor mill – which supposedly runs with 8 performance plus 8 efficiency cores, and boosts up to 5GHz (3.7GHz base clock).

A slight step down from that is the Core i7-13650HX processor which drops to 6 performance cores (keeping 8 efficiency ones), with boost of up to 4.9GHz (and a 3.6GHz base clock).

Then there’s the Core i5-13500HX which keeps the same core count as the 13650HX but drops that boost to 4.7GHz (3.5GHz base). And finally, Raichu tells us that there’s a Core i5-13450HX with 6 performance cores plus 4 efficiency cores, and a boost of up to 4.6GHz (and a base clock of 3.4GHz).

Analysis: Raptor ready to pounce

That Raptor Lake HX flagship looks something quite special, with no fewer than 24-cores (8 performance cores) and being capable of boost of up to 5.4GHz. It’s a big step up from Alder Lake laptop chips and, along with those extra cores and faster clock speeds, you can also count on bigger cache sizes for the Raptor Lake silicon. On top of that, better overclocking is promised with 13th-gen laptop chips, so it’s fair to say they’re waiting in the wings to make quite an impact.

When can we expect Team Blue to launch these mobile processors? Intel has said we’ll witness their appearance before 2022 is out but, realistically, these chips will be in more laptops come early 2023 (doubtless with some potent pairings alongside RTX 40 series laptop GPUs).

Perhaps the worry here is not performance, which appears to be present in abundance, but rather how these HX chips may hit battery longevity. That’s where AMD could score a key victory in terms of better efficiency with Zen 4 laptop silicon when it arrives – but exactly when that’ll be, we’re not sure. But we do know Raptor Lake mobile chips will be out in full force before AMD comes to market, and as mentioned, 13th-gen laptop silicon is not far away now. Exciting times, indeed.