Ahead of CES 2022, Intel unveiled its latest 12th Gen Alder Lake chip, which has the company’s new hybrid architecture and is led by the Core i9-12900HK, which Intel boldly claims is “the fastest mobile processor” ever.
One of Intel’s biggest achievements in recent years was its first wave of 12th Gen Alder Lake desktop chips last fall, allowing the company to deliver a CPU that could compete with AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X flagship in productivity and gaming.
And now, Intel is introducing the same revolutionary approach to chip design—with its Arm-esque performance and efficiency cores—to laptops, starting with its most powerful 45W H-series versions of CPUs.
That performance gain is significant. The 12th-generation i9-12900HK is up to 44 percent faster in PugetBench and up to 30 percent faster in Blender, according to Intel’s own data.
On both tests, the Intel CPU outperformed AMD’s Ryzen R9 5900HX and Apple’s M1 Max.
INTEL 12TH GEN ALDER LAKE H-SERIES CHIPS
| Model | Cores (performance / efficiency) | Threads | Max turbo frequency | L3 cache | Processor base power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i9-12900HK | 14 (6P / 8E) | 20 | 5.0GHz | 24MB | 45W |
| i9-12900H | 14 (6P / 8E) | 20 | 5.0GHz | 24MB | 45W |
| i7-12800H | 14 (6P / 8E) | 20 | 4.8GHz | 24MB | 45W |
| i7-12700H | 14 (6P / 8E) | 20 | 4.7GHz | 24MB | 45W |
| i7-12650H | 10 (6P / 4E) | 16 | 4.7GHz | 24MB | 45W |
| i5-12600H | 12 (4P / 8E) | 16 | 4.5GHz | 18MB | 45W |
| i5-12500H | 12 (4P / 8E) | 16 | 4.5GHz | 18MB | 45W |
| i5-12450H | 8 (4P / 4E) | 12 | 4.4GHz | 12MB | 45W |
Intel also announced the future 12th-gen CPUs that will come to thin and light laptops later in Q1. Two performance and eight efficiency cores will be added to U processors for thinner laptops, while up to six performance and eight efficiency cores will be added to the P line for more powerful thin-and-light laptops.
In Q1, Intel’s 12th-generation H laptop CPUs will be available in devices.
