First Tests: Intel’s 12th Gen ‘Alder Lake’ Core i9 Is the Laptop CPU to Beat

Just weeks after Intel announced its 12th Generation mobile chips at CES 2022, a laptop powered by the chip maker's flagship 12th Generation (“Alder Lake”) H-Series processor has made it to PC Labs. It's our first chance to test one of the CPUs and see how well the latest Intel offering stacks up against previous outings, as well as the competition from Apple and AMD.

In the past, a major part of Intel’s annual upgrade was the idea that more is better. More processor cores, more processing threads, and higher clock speeds have pretty much been the name of the game for the last several years. But there’s a new philosophy for 12th Generation CPUs, with a hybrid architecture that pairs high-powered cores and energy-sipping cores to enable better battery life along with beefier performance. Usually, one comes at the expense of the other.

We’ve been hearing about the new chips for months, and we found excellent performance in the desktop-class Alder Lake Core i9-12900K and Core i7-12700K. But this is the first time we’ve been able to test out the new CPU architecture where it will have the biggest impact: in a laptop.

Our Alder Lake-equipped MSI GE76 Raider, viewed from behind
(Photo: Brian Westover)

Specifically, Intel sent us the new MSI GE76 Raider gaming laptop, equipped with an Intel Core i9-12900HK processor and Nvidia’s brand-new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU. (We've got much more about that new laptop-grade GPU, also launching today alongside the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU, in its own analysis story.) When it comes to mobile processors, this is the current top dog of '22, offering the most power available for a consumer laptop oriented toward gaming and other processor-intensive tasks.

Before we get to our first tests and impressions of the Intel Core i9-12900HK, let’s take a more detailed look at the key differences between Alder Lake and previous laptop CPU generations.

New Architecture, New Features: What's New in 12th Gen Core Mobile

Almost every year, Intel rolls out a new processor generation, and the ensuing chip family brings a number of refinements as it ekes out more power and better efficiency from what typically are iterative annual updates. However, with the introduction of Alder Lake, Intel has made a much larger shift, introducing an entirely new chip architecture.

The crux of this change is the introduction of two classes of processor cores. For high-end performance, the new CPU relies on a set of Performance cores (P-cores), which in the case of our test laptop, offer the high-octane, multi-threaded processing you expect from a Core i9 CPU. But not all tasks require that sort of unbridled power. Some can be handled without the power-hungry muscle of the P-cores, and for these tasks, Intel uses Efficiency cores (E-cores), an additional group of single-thread processing cores that use significantly less power.

The shift from using a single class of processing cores to this tiered, hybrid approach not only promises to deliver higher maximum performance, but also better energy efficiency as the laptop shifts tasks to the optimal type of cores for the job. And in laptops, that can translate to longer battery life.

Our Core i9 Alder Lake-equipped MSI GE76 Raider, viewed from the front
(Photo: Brian Westover)

Managing all of these cores to balance performance and efficiency is Intel’s Thread Director. This hardware-based technology resides on the chip die and assigns tasks to P or E cores, adjusting the workload across the different cores to balance the different needs for processing power, energy use, and thermal management.

And all of this is made with the new Intel 7 production process, which is a rebranding of the 10nm Enhanced SuperFin manufacturing process. Intel is moving away from discussing the nanometer measurement as shorthand for its fabrication processes, in part because the new chip designs aren’t so simply explained with the measurement.

On top of this major architecture change, the new Intel H-series processors boast support for a bunch of new features. New standards like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 offer the latest standards for memory and interfaces (the former is used today, while the latter is a future-looking tech), while Gig+ Wi-Fi 6E support and high-speed 10-gigabit Ethernet pushes network connectivity to the limits of modern technology.

Here’s the entire H-Series family that Intel is releasing…

Our comparison system we'll be detailing below uses the Core i9-12900HK. The H series represents Intel’s enthusiast line, and as such, the top performance available in consumer laptops for gaming and media creation. But Intel is bringing the same hybrid designs to more mainstream categories, like the P-series and U-series chips coming to this year’s thin-and-light laptops. These processors won’t offer the same high-end power, but they will definitely make use of Intel’s newly enhanced power-efficiency tactics.

We've been hearing Intel's promises of more power and longer battery life for months now, but with the arrival of the Intel 12th Generation H series, we finally have high-powered Alder Lake CPUs for the laptop. So it's time to put these claims to the test.

The Core i9 ‘Alder Lake,' Bench-Tested vs. the Field

To get the clearest picture of what Intel’s new Core i9-12900HK processor can really do, we ran it through our usual assortment of laptop tests, providing a set of results that can be directly compared against top performers from last year. As mentioned, the Core i9-12900HK was incorporated into the latest version of the MSI GE76 Raider, a full-fat gaming laptop that we tested twice last year with different component loadouts.

Most of these comparison systems rely on Intel’s top 11th Generation CPU, the Intel Core i9-11980HK, a 3.3GHz processor that boasts eight processor cores and 16 processing threads, or step-down (or previous-generation) versions of that Core i9. But with the change in architecture, simple comparisons of clock speeds and core counts aren’t as relevant as they have been in the past, leading us to rely even more on our test data. Core counts may be confusing, but better performance is better performance.

We also looked at Intel’s Alder Lake Core i9 in the context of what its biggest competitors, Apple and AMD, have to offer. Apple has not only pivoted from Intel hardware to CPUs designed in house, it also embraced a heterogeneous approach to chip design, relying on ARM technology, with its own approach to high performance and high efficiency through different processing hardware. But we’ll dig into those specifics more later.

The main question, regardless of manufacturer or chip design, is how much better performance Alder Lake has to offer. And—spoiler alert—the Core i9-12900HK brings better performance in almost every test we ran against its competitors, whose specs you can see in the chart below…

Test Results: Productivity and Content Creation

Okay, let's take a look at our first batch of test results with most of the systems above factored in. (The AMD Ryzen 9-based Lenovo, we'll compare separately later.)

We'll analyze each of these tests in turn, below, but the TL;DR? The results we saw from the Core i9-12900K are very promising for Alder Lake.

PCMark 10

In UL’s PCMark 10 productivity suite, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance, the Alder Lake CPU pumped out an impressive 7,585 points. That's a massive jump from the eight-core Core i9-11980HK results we got from the previous MSI Raider, which scored 6,995 points, a respectable-enough score. But last year’s Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 6—and our current recommendation for peak performance in a gaming laptop—had a best-in-class score of 7,850, offering better overall performance than the lot here.

It is worth paying attention to the better score of last year’s top performer, and we could speculate about the causes of the discrepancy, whether it’s simply a matter of system settings and power management, or whether it’s attributable to the new architecture, which prioritizes energy efficiency as much as it does raw power. Ultimately, when it comes to laptop CPU performance, small variations are expected, even between different laptops that use the same processor. And considering that even the most capable systems we’ve tested struggle to break the 7,000-point threshold, the Alder Lake H-Series score of 7,585 points still makes it a clear leader over most of the systems we saw last year.

It’s also important to put that into context—of all the processor-focused tests we ran on the Alder Lake Core i9, it’s the only one that it didn’t win. In every other CPU test, the new CPU leads the pack, sometimes by a sizable margin.

Cinebench R23

For a clearer view of the sheer power Alder Lake brings to the table, we look to Maxon’s Cinebench R23. Using a CPU-driven rendering process, this test maxes out the capabilities of a multi-core processor over many minutes. It favors processors with more cores and threads, and the final number is a good measure of total processor capability. And here, the 12th Generation Core i9-12900HK handily wins.

With a score of 16,259 points, the 12th Generation-equipped MSI scored the best by a wide margin, a full 16% improvement over the previous leader, the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 6 (13,735 points). And that margin widens compared to other similarly configured 11th Generation gaming laptops, like the late-2021 model of the GE76 Raider (12,122 points), or the Alienware m17 R4 (10,760 points).

It’s an even bigger leap forward compared with non-gaming systems like the HP ZBook Fury 15 G8 workstation (11,341 points) or the media-making MSI Creator 17 (9,503 points), which pack an Intel Core i9-11950H and Core i9-11900H, respectively.

Geekbench 5.4.1 Pro

Another processor-heavy test we use is Primate Labs’ Geekbench Pro, which simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. In the Geekbech multi-core test, the MSI’s Core i9-12900HK notched a stellar 13,506 points, thousands of points ahead of any 11th-Gen-equipped model. The Lenovo Legion 7i came closest, with a score of 9,745 points.

Handbrake 1.4

For a less-theoretical measure of processing capability, we use Handbrake 1.4 and the Blender Foundation movie Tears of Steel. Because transcoding is so CPU-intensive, it’s a great way to see how well a system can handle a real, challenging workload, encoding that 12-minute 4K H.264 video file down to 1080p.

And here, the 12th Generation CPU really showed its chops, rocketing past pretty much every competitor, completing the transcoding task in 4 minutes and 42 seconds. Even the vaunted Lenovo Legion 7i took longer (5:37), but most systems fell several minutes behind.

Test Results: Adobe Creative Suite

Next up, here is what we saw from some benchmark work in a couple of Adobe's seminal applications, with the help of a handy testing extension…

Adobe Photoshop 22 CC

That extension is PugetBench for Photoshop, from workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses version 22 of Adobe's popular image editor to put a PC through its paces in typical Photoshop activities. Like Handbrake, it’s much more of a real-world test, in that it uses a real productivity tool and measures how quickly the system can handle demanding tasks, like applying masks and gradient fills, or filtering field blur. Anyone that’s used Photoshop for any reasonably complex editing has first-hand experience with watching even the most powerful machines chug uphill when faced with these sorts of tasks. However, it also uses the full scope of a PC’s components, including the memory, storage and GPU, so it’s not as purely processor-focused as most of the tests we’ve discussed thus far.

Nonetheless, the Alder Lake-equipped MSI Raider pegged a best-ever score of 1,192 points, topping the previous leader, the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 6 (1,083) and the closely-following 2021 MSI Raider (1,059).

Adobe Premiere Pro 15 CC

We use another version of PugetBench with Adobe's Premiere Pro video editor, pitting the system against a similarly challenging sequence of video manipulation, to really push the limits of what the laptop can do. Like the Photoshop test, this is more of a holistic test, since it draws on storage and graphics power, as well as pure processing, but the capability of the CPU will factor heavily into how well it performs. And the MSI Raider’s 12th Generation Core i9 definitely performed well.

We don’t run this test on every machine we review, reserving it primarily for content creation laptops and workstations, but it seemed appropriate for the new Intel CPU to get run through the test, since content creation has become a major focus of Intel’s high-end processing hardware, and the need for video editing has become more mainstream with more people than ever putting videos up on YouTube and streaming through sites like Twitch.

Again, the MSI GE76 Raider, with its Core i9-12900HK processor, led the pack, scoring 771 points, the best we’ve ever seen in a laptop. The only other comparison unit in our test set on which we had run this specific test is the MSI Creator 17, which uses the older 11th Generation Intel Core i9-11900H, and scored a still-impressive 622 points. The specific numbers don’t mean a whole lot with such a limited sample size, but the overarching conclusion is important—the 12th Gen CPU and new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU combine to make the MSI GE76 Raider a seriously capable machine for media creation.

Intel Takes on Apple: Core i9 vs. M1 Max

But Alder Lake is competing against more than just last year’s Intel model. Apple has spent the last two years phasing out Intel-based Macs, replacing them with updated designs that feature Apple’s own ARM-based processors, called Apple Silicon.

Intel’s switch to the new mixed-core Hybrid Performance architecture borrows heavily from ARM’s own mixed-core approach, called big.LITTLE, which also pairs high-performance cores and high-efficiency cores to deliver better power and battery life.

That’s been a trend in phone processors for about a decade now, but the hybrid approach showed up in Macs with the introduction of Apple’s ARM-based M1 processor, and again as the more-powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max debuted last year in the new 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro.

The M1 Max-based 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro
(Photo: Molly Flores)

So, how well does the new 12th Generation Intel Core i9-12900HK compare with Apple’s similar M1 Max processor? While we don’t have the exact same lineup of test results for Apple’s latest hardware (some of our tests are Windows-only), we have enough to make some clear comparisons…

In the Handbrake 1.4 video transcode test, it was a close race, but the Intel Core i9 edged ahead, completing the task in 4 minutes and 42 seconds, compared with the Apple M1 Max at 4:49. The processor-heavy Cinebench R23 test wasn’t so close, with the Intel-equipped MSI scoring 16,259 points, contrasted against the MacBook Pro’s 12,395 points. And Geekbench 5.4 was a tighter competition, but the Intel Core i9 still leads, scoring 13,506 to the Apple Silicon’s 12,759.

Our PugetBench Adobe Photoshop 22 CC test isn’t a pure processor test, and it doesn’t run natively on Apple’s hardware, but the comparison does show the differences in a real-world use that many content creators might turn to a MacBook to perform. Running the PugetBench test in the Rosetta 2 emulation layer, the 16-inch MacBook Pro scored a still capable 876 points. But here, the Intel-equipped MSI pulls way out in front, with a score of 1,192 points. Some of that is due to the benefits of running the software natively, but the difference is still stark, especially considering how many programs still require Rosetta 2 to run on Mac.

Finally, our last Intel-versus-Apple trial is a rendering test in Blender, an open-source 3D content creation suite for modeling, animation, simulation, and compositing. Using only the CPU to render a photo-realistic image of a BMW, the Intel Core i9-12900HK finished the job in 3 minutes flat. The Apple MacBook Pro came in a half-step behind, at 3:21.

While that selection of tests isn’t as full or complete as we would like, due to the nature of the two platforms and a lack of meaningful cross-platform tests, it does make one thing very, very clear. Apple may have brought hybrid processing to laptops first, and to great fanfare, but for all the impressive strides Apple has made with its own processor designs, Intel isn’t sitting on its hands.

Intel vs. AMD: Core i9 and Ryzen 9 compared

Apple’s not the only competitor that’s been taking on Intel of late, of course, in mobile chips. AMD’s re-emergence as a serious player in the processor space has been shaking things up for the last several years, with AMD’s Ryzen CPUs finding a home in more in and more high-end systems. Intel has held its majority position largely through sheer inertia, but AMD’s been gaining ground rapidly since the first Ryzen chips launched in 2017.

So how does the new Intel Alder Lake fare against the current AMD competitor, the Ryzen 9 5900HX? (The recently announced Ryzen 6000 series isn’t out yet, but we’ll likely compare the two when it launches.)

(Photo: Molly Flores)

For this, we look at the Lenovo Legion 7 Gen 6 (AMD), the AMD-equipped variant of the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 6 we referenced earlier in our comparisons. Armed with the 3.3GHz Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, 32GB of RAM, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics, it’s the closest comparison we’ve tested to the new 12th Generation Intel MSI GE76 Raider. Here's what we saw…

As you can see, the similarity between the machines doesn’t extend very far, with the Alder Lake CPU trouncing the Ryzen chip in every test.

In PCMark 10, the Intel carries a triple-digit lead, scoring 7,585 points to the AMD-equipped Lenovo’s 6,981. In Cinebench R23, the 12th Generation MSI scored 16,259 points in multi-core performance. The AMD Ryzen 9 scored 12,470. And the Geekbench scores were even more stark. The Core i9-12900HK scored an impressive 13,506 points. The Lenovo’s AMD processor scored 8,386—closer to what we’ve seen on more pedestrian Core i7 systems.

But the real clinchers are our Photoshop and Handbrake tests, which are closer to what you’ll see in real-world use. Here, the Intel 12th Generation MSI scored 1,192 points in our Photoshop benchmark, compared with the AMD system’s 944 points.

In Handbrake, the gap can be more easily quantified. The Alder Lake processor finished the transcoding task in 4 minutes and 42 seconds. The AMD Ryzen 9 took 6:01 to complete the same task—falling more than a full minute behind.

That’s not to say that AMD Ryzen CPUs aren’t still a killer option for gaming on a budget, and we have yet to see the upcoming Ryzen 6000 series in action, which makes the above comparison heavily tilted in Alder Lake's favor. But for the moment, Intel has snatched the performance crown pretty decisively.

Verdict: Intel’s Playing to Win

The simple bottom line here is that Intel’s new Core i9-12900HK offers the best performance we’ve seen from a laptop processor, and that bodes very, very well for any Intel-based laptop coming out this year with the newest hardware. Between the enhanced power and improved energy and thermal management, we should see better machines in every category, from powerful gaming machines to thin-and-light laptops.

The bigger picture is even more encouraging. The last few years have brought Intel fiercer competition from AMD than it’s faced in perhaps a decade, and Apple’s ARM-based processors shook things up in a major way, proving that category-leading performance wasn’t an Intel monopoly.

But Intel’s response with the 12th Generation processor design proves that a little competition can be great, pushing established players to continue innovating and adopting new technologies. If this new crop of chips is anything to go by, it’s forced Intel to get back into fighting shape to take on that competition, and from my perch by the test bench, that’s the most exciting news yet.