Intel Raptor Lake-H Core i7-13700H and Core i9-13900HK leak indicates minor gains in single-core and largely similar multi-core scores as Alder Lake-H

Intel is all set to launch the 13th gen Raptor Lake processors for the desktop, but the mobile variants are apparently already cooking in Intel's labs for release as early as end-2022. We are now seeing Geekbench entries for two Raptor Lake-H processors — the Core i7-13700H and the Core i9-13900HK. 

These Raptor Lake-H processors seem to be running in a pre-production "Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. 960XFH" laptop with 16 GB RAM. Both the Core i7-13700H and the Core i9-13900H are 14-core 20-thread processors. The entries indicate a 1.25 MB L2 cache, which could be an error since Raptor Lake has a 2 MB L2 cache per core.

That being said, it could also mean that Intel is simply reusing the Alder Lake architecture here. Alder Lake has a 1.25 MB L2 cache per P-core while the four E-cores share a 2 MB L2 cache for a total of 11.5 MB L2 cache in a 14-core processor.

According to Geekbench, the Core i7-13700H sports a base clock of 2.4 GHz and a boost of up to 3.69 GHz. However, probing the raw data from the benchmark reveals the processor boosting up to 4.95 GHz with well-sustained performance.

The benchmark reports a single-core score of 1,768 and a multi-core score of 10,796. Compared to the Core i7-12700H average, the Core i7-13700H seems to be similar to on a similar footing in single-core performance but multi-core seems to have taken a slight beating with an 8% decrease.

Coming to the Core i9-13900HK, Geekbench reports the processor to have a base clock of 2.6 GHz and a boost of up to 4.08 GHz. Once again, checking the raw dump from the benchmark reveals the Core i9-13900HK to actually have a nice sustained boost up to 5.3 GHz. 

The Core i9-13900HK seems to have scored 1,817 and 11,799 points in Geekbench 5.4 single-core and multi-core benchmarks, respectively. The single-core score is about 9.5% faster than a Core i9-12900HK average but multi-core performance is mostly on par. 

These preliminary scores seem to suggest that Raptor Lake-H is more of a refreshed Alder Lake-H with a focus on slight gains in single-core while retaining the same multi-core performance as before.

Though these Geekbench entries seem genuine, it's still early days so the results should be taken with a pinch of salt. We can also expect further optimizations in the run up to launch. Intel's plans with Raptor Lake-H should get clearer in the days to come as the company is planning to launch these processors by the end of this year.