Hardware leaker momomo_us has tweeted (opens in new tab) the alleged leaked specifications of two of Intel’s upcoming Raptor Lake mobile processors – the Core i5-13500H and Core i7-13700H. The spec sheet did share CPU core counts, which aren’t going up. Core i5 and Core i7 models have the same core counts as their predecessors, with 12 and 14 cores, respectively.
It is a departure from Raptor Lake’s desktop counterparts, where core counts went up tremendously on the E-cores. For example, the previous generation Core i9-12900K had eight P-cores and eight E-cores, but the Core i9-3900K doubled the E-cores from ight to 16. The number of E cores also jumped similarly on Intel’s lower-end desktop parts, including the Core i7-13700K and Core i5-13600K.
The Core i7-12700H and Core i5-12500H each have eight E-cores, the same amount as the Core i7 13700K and Core i5-13600K desktop chips and double what the Alder Lake i7-12700K and i5-12600K had. So it seems that, for better or worse, Intel decided these mobile chips did not need more E-cores or P-cores, for that matter. We know this because the thread count and core count are the same on the Raptor Lake mobile parts as on their predecessors. (P-cores have HyperThreading, and the E-cores don’t.)
As a result, we shouldn’t expect these chips to have substantially better multi-threaded performance than Alder Lake, as the Raptor Lake desktop parts do. But, these parts will be getting higher-clocked Raptor Lake performance cores, with all the enhancements Intel made on the new architecture. In addition, the E-cores should also receive some upgrades, including a minor boost to clock speed, like what we see with Raptor Lake desktop chips. So there should be a significant improvement in more single-core focused applications, like gaming.
Thankfully, we won’t have to wait long for these chips to arrive on the market. Intel CEO Pat Geisinger has confirmed that Raptor Lake mobile will launch by the end of the year.