Intel Raptor Lake processors for laptops have been spotted in some benchmark leaks, giving us a potential view of their performance – and at first glance this seems seriously disappointing, but there’s more to it than meets the eye as we’ll cover it shortly .
First, let’s look at the benchmarks themselves, which come from the mobile processors running in a Samsung laptop. Namely the powerful Core i9-13900HK and Core i7-13700H that appeared in Geekbench 5, as emphasized by Benchleaks in couple (opens in a new tab) With tweets (opens in a new tab) (by Wccftech (opens in a new tab)). Treat all of this with extreme caution, as you would with any spilled benchmarks.
[GB5 CPU] Unknown CPUCPU: Intel CoreT i9-13900HK (14C 20T) Min / Max / Average: 4730/5372/5273 MHz Codename: Raptor LakeCPUID: B06A2 (GenuineIntel) Results, vs AMD 5800XSingle: 1817, + 5.2% Multi: 11799 , + 9.8% https://t.co/8C8aHv1Y7nSeptember 27, 2022
The 13900HK pre-order sample, which has 14 cores and 20 threads (meaning 6 performance cores and 8 performance cores), recorded a score of 1,817 for single thread and 11,799 for multi-thread.
The Core i9-13900HK hit almost 5.4GHz to get the maximum gain in benchmarking, averaging just a tad below 5.3GHz.
As for the Core i7-13700H, this laptop processor has the same core configuration as the Core i9 above and scored 1768 for single-threaded performance and 10796 for multi-threaded performance.
This 13700H coped with a top boost speed of almost 5 GHz in benchmarking and averaged at 4.9 GHz.
Analysis: Big Growth, But Poor Performance? And the secret “T”
The 5.4GHz gain – still relatively early stage – for the Core i9-13900HK is pretty impressive, as if you would remember, the 12900HK goes up to 5GHz so it’s a massive step up. That said, the Geekbench results are disappointing at first sight, as these laptop processors are slower than their Alder Lake counterparts. However, this is still an early sample of the CPU, and apparently there is still a lot of work to do – we can expect much faster results as mobile Raptor Lake gets closer to launch.
Moreover, there is a noticeable peculiarity here, as will be noticed by the more eagle-eyed, namely that Intel processors in these tests disclosed are labeled “CoreT” and not just Core. Is this a new brand of mobile chips? After all, Intel just announced a future rebranding of its Celeron and Pentium parts for laptops, as you may remember, after these names have been phased out – so this has prompted some to speculate about what’s going on here.
Well, we highly doubt any change is going on here. CoreT is a clunky-looking name, and besides, Intel has made it clear throughout the Celeron renaming that the Core family (and vPro) will remain exactly as they are, with no changes. Additionally, Intel already has the T-series, which are less powerful (slower clocked) chips, so that would be deceptively confusing (the “T” in these processors is at the end of the CPU name, not after the core, too).
As Wccftech points out, most likely what is happening here was supposed to mean “TM” – as in the trademark – on Geekbench, and the “M” was omitted. In any case, this is some kind of bug, and it could even indicate that the benchmarks are fake (it is always possible).
Plus, there’s a bit more confusion here: the specific cache sizes are the same as for Alder Lake, not Raptor Lake, which slightly improves the situation on this front. This might indicate that Raptor Lake Mobile is a simple and straightforward Alder Lake refresh, which would again be disappointing – but we believe it’s too early to draw that conclusion.
Or, as Wccftech theorize, there could be CoreT parts as a simple refresh, plus actual Raptor Lake mobile processors (with larger cache sizes). But we don’t buy it for all the reasons we just covered, and of course it would make things very complicated for consumers.
We should see more leaks on the laptop CPU front for Raptor Lake in the near future, which will no doubt help clear up some of the more sketchy points that have been raised by these tests. However, we’re pretty sure the CoreT is a red herring, and we’re sure these mobile processors will be much faster when the launch arrives. They just have to be.