Intel is slashing billions in costs amid falling sales, but the show must go on, so the x86 giant hopes it can reignite interest in the PC market with the first 24-core chips for laptops and desktop processors. more affordable.
At CES on Tuesday, the American chipmaker announcement a total of 32 laptop processors, 16 desktop processors, and a handful of entry-level parts that would have bored the Pentium and Celeron brands without the confusing rebranding last year which resulted in the vague name “Intel Processor”.
Like the first Core i9, i7 and i5 desktop silicon that debuted with the 13e generation last septemberIntel claims these are new processors, based on its Raptor Lake Microarchitecture, will provide a significant performance improvement over the previous generation. The previous 12e generation, based on the Alder Lake microarchitecture, introduced Intel’s latest hybrid approach that relies on so-called performance cores for applications and efficiency cores for background tasks.
For some laptops entering the market this year, Intel is also introducing new hardware and software features.
Select laptops with 13e-Gen Core processors will ship with a Movidius Vision Processing Unit (VPU), which will offload “AI-heavy” tasks for streaming and collaboration applications from the CPU and GPU, thanks to the joint engineering efforts of ‘Intel and Microsoft. If the name Movidius sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s used to be at the forefront of Intel’s computer vision efforts for embedded devices until the company largely stopped talking about VPUs in this market segment for the past few years.
Select models will also ship Intel Unison, new proprietary software that promises a “seamless multi-device experience” for sending, making phone calls, transferring text files and receiving phone notifications from Android and iOS devices. The software can apparently only run on laptops with Intel processors that meet the high-level specifications set out in the Intel Evo engineering program, but someone would have managed to run the system on an Arm-based laptop.
All this takes place in the context of a continued growth in PC sales that drove down the revenues of Intel and its rivals AMD and Nvidia. For Intel, the slowdown coincided with a major drop in server revenue, prompting the company to launch a multibillion-dollar cost-cutting initiative. lastoctober which will include a “significant number” of redundancies and some product cuts.
13eGen extends to a multitude of laptop types
The new 13th Gen Intel Core laptop chips will come in three different flavors. The first is the H-series, which consists of power-hungry chips for high-performance laptops aimed at gamers and content creators. This is where you’ll find the company’s fastest mobile chips on the market.
The other two laptop segments for the 13e generation focus on ultra-thin laptops. The P-series comes with more power thanks to a higher ratio of performance cores to efficiency units, while the U-series comes with a lower ratio of performance cores to system efficiency and therefore requires less energy.
At the top of the H-series stack is the Core i9-13980HX, which features the following:
- 8P/16E cores, 32 threads, with a maximum boost clock of 5.GHz, 36MB L3 cache, an integrated graphics frequency of 1.65GHz, and 32 graphics execution units.
Intel claimed that the i9-13980HX offers 11% faster single-threaded performance and 49% faster multitasking compared to the last generation i9-12900HX, making it the “fastest mobile processor as of December 2022”. As always, judgment is best reserved until independent reviews and test results are released.
There are eight other HX processors in the H-series, ranging from 24 to 10 total cores on the i9, i7 and i5 models. All HX chips support DDR5 and DDR4 memory and PCIe 5.0 connectivity, and they all have a base power of 55 watts and a maximum power of 157 watts if you want maximum performance.
The vanilla H-series chips, which range from 14 to eight cores in total and reach a maximum turbo frequency of 5.4 GHz for performance cores, are slightly lower in performance. These chips have slightly lower power requirements, with a base power of 45 watts for all vanilla H-series chips, a maximum of 115 watts for i9 and i7 chips, and a maximum of 95 watts for i5 chips from the battery.
For people who don’t need a gaming laptop, there are the P and U series. The top chips of the respective stacks have the following specs:
- Core i7-1370P: 6P/8E cores, 20 threads, with a maximum boost clock of 5.2 GHz, 24 MB L3 cache, an integrated graphics frequency of 1.5 GHz and 96 graphics executive units.
- Core i7-1365U: 2P/8E cores, 12 threads, with a maximum boost clock of 5.2 GHz, 12 MB L3 cache, an integrated graphics frequency of 1.3 GHz and 96 graphics execution units.
The P-series chips, which include another i7 and two i5s, have a base power of 28 watts and a maximum turbo power of 64 watts. The U-Series has a base power of 15 watts and a maximum turbo power of 55 watts. U-series chips range from i7 to i3, and they also include an entry-level part with the generic name of Intel Processor U300, the newest for chips previously called Pentium and Celeron.
While the P-series and U-series don’t have as much horsepower as the H-series chips, Intel claimed they still have good gaming faith thanks to their use of Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, which include the socket in charge of the company’s XeSS. great upsampling technology that can increase frame rates in games. The chips support DDR5 and DDR4 memory as well as their low-power variants.
Intel fills 13eGen desktop stack
Intel launched on the 13e-The Gen Core family last September with just three desktop processors: the i9-13900K, i7-13700K, and i5-13600K, which have a recommended retail price of $589, $409, and $319, respectively. Now it fills out the rest of the pile with more affordable options at all performance levels.
For example, those who want to spend a little less on an i9 can now choose to go with an i9-13900 which, unlike the i9-13900K, is not unlocked for overclocking and therefore has a lower price of $549. . A slightly cheaper option is the i9-13900F, which, in addition to lacking overclocking, has integrated graphics disabled and costs $524.
This is a recurring theme throughout the rest of the 13eGen desktop line: processors that cannot be overclocked and do not have integrated graphics enabled. That means you’ll also get i7s and i5s that are cheaper than their unlocked counterparts with integrated GPUs. The stack also has an i3 with and without integrated graphics enabled, ranging from $109 to $134.
All of these processors have a mix of performance cores and efficiency cores, except for the two i3 chips in the stack, which each have only four performance cores. They all support DDR5 and DDR4 memory.
In terms of power requirements, all chips except the i3 have a base power of 65 watts, and the maximum turbo power goes from 148 watts for an i5 to 219 watts for the two new i9s. Both i3s only draw up to 89 watts. With integrated graphics, the i3 requires at least 60 watts; without, it’s 58 watts.
Intel’s latest desktop push includes T-series variants of the latest chips that require less power in exchange for slower clock speeds on the i3, i5, i7 and i9 tiers.
Intel introduces first “Intel Processor” chips, causes more confusion
The real quirk of Intel’s CES announcement is the company’s new entry-level chips, half of which go by the name “Intel processor.”
Some of these chips had the Pentium and Celeron names in previous generations, but last September Intel announced that it was ditching the brands and moving to Intel’s processor naming convention to “heighten” its focus on its Core flagships. and vPro.
We’ve already called the Intel Processor U300 mobile chip, part of the U-series for ultrathin laptops, just below the i3 in performance.
Other entry-level processors are considered N-series and are intended for both laptops and desktops. They consist of Intel Core i3-N305 processor, Intel Core i3-N300 processor, Intel N200 processor and Intel N100 processor.
What separates the Intel U300 processor from the N-series chips are power requirements, performance, and the fact that only the latter uses both performance and efficiency cores.
While the Intel U300 processor has one performance core and four efficiency cores, the N-series chips only use efficiency cores – the Intel processors each have four cores while the two N-series i3s each have eight cores. The use of efficiency cores means that N-series chips have lower clock speeds as well as lower power requirements, which range from 6 to 15 watts. By comparison, the Intel U300 processor has a base power of 15 watts and a maximum turbo power of 55 watts.
All of this creates even more potential confusion for entry-level laptop buyers. Do you want an i3 laptop? Well, you can opt for a P-series, U-series, or N-series i3, depending on how fast and efficient you need it. Need something lighter?
You can opt for the Intel U300 processor, which is part of the U series. Or you can use an Intel N200 or N100 processor for very low power requirements. Yes, the i3 is an Intel processor but not an Intel processor. Make sense ?
Having a wide range of processor options can help users find the right products that meet their specific needs, so Intel better hopes the dizzying array of processor names won’t dampen efforts to revive PC sales. ®
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