Intel has launched its mobile version of the Raptor Lake Refresh processors for laptops at CES 2024. These new chips, led by the Core i9-14900HX, are powerful enough to provide desktop speeds within a gaming laptop. Alongside the Core Ultra chips are offered in laptops, the new Raptor Lake Refresh powers Intel’s 14th-gen desktop series. Although the HX processors are similar to the 13th-gen, owners of a 13th-gen Core laptop may pause before making the upgrade. These new chips deliver much sharper performance improvements compared to the Core Ultra for 14th-gen Core HX laptop owners. Approximately sixty HX-based notebooks are expected to ship this year. The Core Ultra chips are designed for all-day productivity laptops, while the new 14th-gen mobile Core HX series is aimed at fast gaming laptops.
The Core Ultra processors feature six performance cores and eight efficiency cores, while the 14th-gen mobile Core i9-14900HX boasts eight performance cores and sixteen efficiency cores. The 14th-gen chips share some features with the Core Ultra, such as DDR5 memory, Bluetooth 5.4/5.3, and integrated Wi-Fi 6E. Additionally, the 14th-gen offers support for Thunderbolt 5, enabling up to 80 to 120Gbps connections, multiple high-resolution displays, and external GPUs.
Intel, along with its partners, plans to ship over 750 designs this year. The series includes five 14th-gen mobile Core HX processors, all operating at 55W and supporting turbo mode up to 157W. Notably, the new 14th-gen HX processors offer significant performance improvements over the Meteor Lake chips.
In terms of I/O infrastructure, the new 14th-gen Core HX-series chips feature DDR5-5600 memory and more lanes of PCIe Gen 5. Thunderbolt 5 and WiFi 7 will also be available on select models. However, when it comes to display I/O, the 14th-gen HX tech supports HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4, which falls short of the display capabilities of Meteor Lake. Nevertheless, the 14th-gen HX platform includes support for High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3), Thunderbolt 4, and a variety of USB connections.
In terms of performance, the new 14th-gen HX processors are comparing favorably to older AMD Ryzen CPUs. While direct comparisons to the 13th-gen mobile Core chips have not been made, it’s possible that we’ll see a mild gen-over-gen performance improvement. All of the new 14th-gen HX platforms are overclockable and support Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility for tuning.
