Core i5-13500H: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-13500H was the workhorse of Raptor Lake-H gaming and performance laptops in 2023. The catalog matches it to 68 models, and it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 47 of the 69 games the site tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings to a portable, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i5-13500H sits in 2026

A catalog score of 55.1 places the chip 209th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the upper third of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood spans three Intel generations and one AMD rival: the Core i7-8557U (56.2), Ryzen 5 8645HS (56.1) and Core Ultra 5 135H (56) just above, the Core Ultra 7 365 (55.1) alongside, and the Core i5-12600H (54.8) and Core Ultra 7 355 (54.7) just below. Outscoring its own predecessor and edging two Core Ultra 7-branded successors while sitting half a point under the newer Core Ultra 5 135H is the honest summary — this is a previous-generation i5 that still trades blows with the current lineup.

What the chip brings

Raptor Lake-H is a 12-core, 16-thread design on a 7 nm-class process, rated at 45 W in its H-class configuration: a 2.6 GHz base clock and up to 4.7 GHz boost. The integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 with 80 execution units handles display duties on machines without a discrete GPU. Memory support and cache details were not captured for this chip, so the table above sticks to what the catalog verifiably holds: a PassMark overall score of 20,969.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 47 of 69 cataloged games — Metro Exodus, PUBG, Returnal, Black Myth Wukong, Ghost of Tsushima, Dead Space Remake and Dying Light 2 among them. Another 20 sit at the minimum tier: Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Fortnite, Alan Wake 2 and Counter-Strike 2 all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. Only Starfield and Helldivers 2 ask for more processor than this. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and that is where the machines carrying this chip vary most.

Laptops that carry it

The 68-model roster leans gaming and performance for 2023–2024. HP's OMEN 16 runs $1,280 to $1,424, the Legion 5 16IRX9 sits at $1,400 and the Inspiron 7630 at $1,212, while the XPS 15 9530 at $1,027 and Gigabyte G5 at $650 cover the price band below; the business side shows up in the ExpertBook P1 at $1,007, ThinkBook 16 G6 at $466 and Vivobook 16 at $650. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: office comfort at a perfect 100, a gaming index of 76.5 and a median best-GPU score of 75.91 reflect the discrete-graphics majority, while mobility at 38 and portability at 26.8 say these are substantial machines rather than ultrabooks.

Bottom line

The Core i5-13500H suits a buyer who wants gaming-grade processor headroom without paying for a flagship CPU: recommended-tier CPU readiness for 47 of 69 tracked games, and a roster that runs from a $466 ThinkBook to $1,400-class gaming rigs. Judge gaming value by the specific GPU in each listing, not the CPU badge — but on the processor side, this chip rarely limits the laptops that carry it.