Simply two processor generations in the past, typical recommendation about laptop computer buying nonetheless held up. You would moderately counsel individuals lower your expenses by shopping for one gen again. A efficiency distinction existed, however by no means so large that you simply’d stress about being penny-wise however pound-foolish.
Intel’s Twelfth-generation Alder Lake CPUs upended that line of pondering, nevertheless—and Workforce Blue’s launch of its shiny new flagship laptop computer processor, the Core i9-13980HX, solely reinforces the brand new world order. With 24 cores, 32 threads, and a max turbo pace of 5.6GHz, it’s an absolute monster of a chip. Like its desktop counterparts, it’s able to unbelievable efficiency. You may purchase an Alder Lake pocket book, however you’d be foregoing the present finest chip for heavy workloads whereas on the go.
You’ll be able to catch the nitty-gritty deep dive into the benchmark ends in our YouTube video, however for the main takeaways about Intel’s new top-end cell half, examined on a monstrous MSI Titan GT77 with the Core i9-13980HX and an Nvidia RTX 4090, learn on.
Multithreaded work will get an enormous enhance
The sooner you’ll be able to rip via renders, encodes, and different heavy workloads, the sooner you’ll be able to transfer on to your subsequent job. And the Core i9-13980HX chews via its queue like no different cell chip proper now.
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Raptor Lake’s features over Alder Lake in laptops run virtually parallel to these on desktops, with comparable heavy efficiency features. No civilized wins right here; Thirteenth-gen’s lead over Twelfth-gen is substantial. In our Cinebench R23, Blender, and V-Ray rendering exams, we noticed between a 32 and 40 p.c enchancment, with the best leap in Cinebench R23’s multithreaded take a look at.
The story’s comparable (although not as dramatic) in Handbrake, the place we feed a big 4K mov file into this system and crunch it down right into a extra compact H.265 file. With the Core i9-13980HK, the encode finishes about 25 p.c sooner.
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
The efficiency boosts apply pretty evenly as you scale up in thread depend use, too, as illustrated by this take a look at of thread scaling efficiency in Cinebench R23. Frivolously threaded work sees decrease double-digit will increase, which remodel into far better jumps as you enter closely threaded territory.
The one lingering query concerning the 13980HK is the way it’ll fare towards the looming specter of the Ryzen 9 7945HX: AMD’s finest on cell is ready to launch quickly as effectively, and it too must be a bruising chip. Count on some drama within the coming showdown between the 2 flagship cell components.
Not all manufacturing work advantages, although
After we turned an eye fixed to other forms of content material creation duties—particularly these achieved in Adobe’s Premiere Professional, Photoshop, and Lightroom purposes—our expertise with the 13980HX veered off into puzzling territory.
On desktop, our benchmark outcomes confirmed Raptor Lake with a transparent lead over Alder Lake, with modest however tangible features starting from 8 to 17 p.c. However on the time of our testing, this new Thirteenth-gen laptop computer half’s take a look at outcomes technically got here in beneath that of the 12900HX.
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
If we have been to take this at face worth, the cheap characterization of those outcomes is that they fall inside margin of error—that’s, you get the identical efficiency in Adobe apps on Thirteenth-gen as Twelfth-gen. However that’s nonetheless an odd consequence.
Complicating issues is that our exams simulated common use, in that the GPU was lively as effectively. You would say that these benchmarks don’t present a transparent, remoted image of the 13980HX’s efficiency in comparison with the 12900HX, and that wouldn’t be flawed to say. Nonetheless in the actual world, most individuals don’t lean solely on the CPU, and these outcomes presumably spotlight a potential situation {that a} content material creator may run into throughout these early days.
Did we make a mistake in our testing? Is there a driver challenge? Or is the software program simply not but optimized? The reply is unclear, and we’ll must do some follow-up investigation.
Video games get an uplift too
Not like desktops, getting a precise learn on the laptop computer CPU efficiency in video games is slightly tough. You’ll not often discover two notebooks with completely different era processors however the identical GPU—a lot much less from the identical maker and product line.
Such was the case with the laptops we had for benchmarking. They have been comparable, however not the identical. One was a last-generation MSI Titan GT77 laptop computer with a Twelfth-gen Core i9-12900HX and an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti. The opposite? A present MSI Titan GT77 with the Core i9-13980HX and an Nvidia RTX 4090.
Given these apples-to-oranges configurations, our gaming benchmarks largely mirror the efficiency features of the Nvidia RTX 4090 over the RTX 3080 Ti. But we did have one title amongst our benchmark exams that supplied a clue concerning the 13980HX’s affect on CPU-bound video games: Counter-Strike World Offensive.
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Whilst you can’t financial institution on CSGO’s 23 p.c in all conditions with a CPU-bound recreation, this take a look at outcome at the least provides some concept of the 13980HX’s affect on gaming efficiency—a helpful tidbit for folk that care about such particulars, particularly when choosing a laptop computer configuration.
Don’t purchase this chip for on a regular basis duties
When you comply with processor information and launches repeatedly, you in all probability already know {that a} CPU just like the 13980HX is overkill for applications like Microsoft Workplace apps and net looking. Ridiculous overkill, truly, for the overwhelming majority of individuals.
Longer bars point out higher efficiency. Proper-click on desktop (or long-press on cell) to view picture full-size in one other window.
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
Sure, workplace energy customers do exist—like of us who crunch intense spreadsheets. And usually, extra cores equal extra energy for them. However that’s not the workload mirrored within the sort of Workplace benchmarks we’re at present in a position to run. (Our particular Excel eSports benchmark created for us by competitor Jason Moore is sadly nonetheless damaged.) Procyon zeros in on extra typical productiveness work, and whereas the Core i9-13980HX outperforms its predecessor, a 14 p.c total enchancment isn’t actual justification for a CPU with a advisable value of $668. (You’d by no means pay for a laptop computer chip independently after all, however that determine provides an concept of its relative worth.)
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld
The identical story goes for net looking. Yep, there’s an enchancment. However once more, you’re not shopping for this chip for a 25 p.c enchancment in net app efficiency. It’s a bonus, not a function. We suggest buying accordingly.
Count on to see extra Thirteenth-gen laptops hitting the streets very quickly. Keep tuned to PCWorld’s roundup of one of the best laptops for a sensible information to the highest present choices accessible.
