Core i9-13980HX: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i9-13980HX was the flagship of Intel's 13th-generation mobile lineup — 24 cores of desktop silicon built into gaming laptops — and 22 matched models in the catalog carry it. Judged purely as a processor, it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 52 of the 69 games the catalog tracks. This guide covers where the chip ranks among laptop CPUs, what it delivers, and which machines were built around it.

Where the Core i9-13980HX sits in 2026

A catalog score of 69.17 places the chip 89th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the top twelve percent of the table. The neighborhood: the Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U (69.7), Core Ultra 7 251HX (69.6) and Ryzen 7 5825U (69.5) just above, the Ryzen 3 7440U (69), Core i7-9700K (68.9) and Core i5-11400H (68.7) just below. The company it keeps is instructive — it sits beside a desktop Core i7-9700K and a next-generation Ultra 7 HX, confirming the 13980HX as genuine desktop-class performance that still holds its tier three years on.

What the chip brings

Raptor Lake-HX at its peak: 24 cores and 32 threads, a 2.2 GHz base clock boosting to 5.5 GHz, and a 55 W envelope on a 7 nm-class process. Even in this tier the die keeps Iris Xe G7 graphics with 96 execution units as a fallback, though every serious machine here pairs it with discrete graphics. The PassMark overall score of 45,468 is far and away the strongest figure in this chip's neighborhood — raw throughput was never the question with the 13980HX; cooling it was.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured as a processor only, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 52 of 69 cataloged games — including Battlefield 5, Forza Horizon 5, Alan Wake 2, Counter-Strike 2, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Metro Exodus, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Returnal, Black Myth Wukong, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part 1, Dead Space Remake, Grand Theft Auto V and God of War. Fifteen titles sit at the minimum tier — Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Fortnite, Hogwarts Legacy, Call of Duty: Warzone, Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3 among them — and only Starfield and Helldivers 2 sit beyond its reach entirely. These verdicts are CPU-only: actual frame rates depend on the laptop's GPU and RAM, though this roster is built almost entirely around high-end discrete graphics.

Laptops that carry it

The 22-model roster is an ASUS-led gaming collection spanning 2023–2025. The 2023 ROG Strix G16, G18, SCAR 16 and SCAR 18 sit at $922, the 2024 generation — TUF Gaming F16, ROG Strix SCAR 16 and 18, MSI Vector 16 and 17 HX — clusters at $1,152, and the 2025 TUF Gaming F16 tops out at $1,440. Two outliers broaden the picture: the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 workstation at $1,126 and the VivoBook Pro 16X 3D OLED at $553. The laptops built around it typically show a median gaming index of 77 with a best GPU score of 84.46, photo and design at 94, a perfect office comfort score of 100, and performance of 80.29 — against mobility of 33 and portability of 16.7, the lowest-travel tier in the catalog.

Bottom line

The Core i9-13980HX remains a no-compromise processor: top-twelve-percent ranking, the biggest benchmark number in its neighborhood, and 52 of 69 games cleared at the recommended CPU tier inside machines with serious discrete graphics. What you buy into is a desktop replacement — portability medians under 17 mean these laptops live on a desk. For sustained multi-threaded work and modern gaming at $922–1,440, this chip is still a rational buy in 2026; for anything that needs to leave the house daily, the same money buys far lighter silicon.