Intel presented the latest additions to its mobile processor line-up at its Vision 2022 event in Grapevine, Texas, aimed firmly at the high-performance mobile workstation and extreme gaming laptop categories. Intel’s new 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX processors improve on the company’s current mobile lineup by adding more cores and features that should boost performance significantly, particularly for the type of demanding multi-threaded workloads that today’s content creators, enthusiasts, scientists, and professionals in the visual arts, rendering, and animation fields encounter.
The Core i9-12950HX is the hive’s queen, and the world’s first mobile processor with 16 cores split between performance and efficiency. It has 24 threads and can turbo boost to 5.0 GHz, with the efficiency cores running at 1.7 GHz. The Core i9-12900HX, which has similar specs but doesn’t enable vPro for remote management, is a step down (a feature used in commercial settings).
The Alder Lake-HX is the first laptop platform to enable PCIe Gen 5, with 48 PCIe lanes (Gen 5 x 16, Gen 4 x 20, Gen 3 x 12), up from 28 PCIe Gen 4 lanes. Four 4TB SSDs provide a total storage capacity of 16TB.
These “enthusiast” chips come with up to 128GB of LPDDR5 memory (up to 4800MHz/5200MHz), XMP 3.0 and error-correcting code, and two independent Thunderbolt 4 controllers, and a novel memory overclocking capability called Dynamic Memory Boost.
These chips are expected to deliver considerable performance improvements, according to Intel. The Core i9-12900HX demolished its H-series equivalent by 81 percent in a 3D rendering benchmark using Blender—the same tool we use in our reviews—and it won by 33 percent in the CrossMark benchmark for creative apps.
These processors are designed for professional activities such as AutoCAD, where the Core i9-12900HX outperformed the Core i9-12900HK by 12%. In the Autodesk Revit (28) and Autodesk Inventor (21%) benchmarks, it had an even bigger lead. Take these performance numbers with a grain of salt until we have the opportunity to undertake our own tests.
Regardless, that kind of performance isn’t cheap. Each of these processors starts at 55 watts and goes up to 157 watts in turbo mode. For instance, Intel’s H-series processors start at 45W and go up to 115W, a 42-watt boost in these beefier processors.
Given these power requirements, laptops with Alder Lake-HX CPUs will require severe thermals, which will almost certainly necessitate a bigger chassis. Then there’s the issue of battery life, even though these systems aren’t designed to be the most portable.
Overclocking support is another noteworthy feature. Despite the fact that overclocking in mobile platforms is typically limited due to the more stringent thermal constraints of laptop and notebook form factors, the 12th Gen Core Alder Lake-HX series offers full memory overclocking, as well as limited or complete core overclocking depending on the model.
Intel has also claimed some astounding performance from Alder Lake-HX
According to Intel, the Core i9-12900HX is the fastest mobile processor ever created, with huge double-digit performance gains over Intel’s previous-gen platform and higher performance than AMD’s current flagship Ryzen 9 in a variety of content creation, rendering, and CAD applications.
The gaming performance of the 12th Gen Core Alder Lake-HX processors is likewise impressive. Intel’s testing reveals triple-digit framerates in several titles when paired with NVIDIA’s current top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which will be excellent for pushing the high-refresh-rate LCD panels that are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in today’s premium gaming notebooks.
With demanding feature sets and support for all of the latest IO and connection technologies, Intel’s 12th Gen Core Alder Lake-HX processors will push the performance of high-end gaming notebooks and mobile workstations to newfound levels, competing with many desktop systems. Of course, pushing enormous core counts and high clocks will result in higher power needs, but that’s to be expected with this kind of machine.
These new Alder Lake-HX CPUs will be used in ten computers, including business notebooks and gaming rigs. With these chips, Asus plans to update the ROG Strix Scar 17 SE, a strong gaming laptop, and the ExpertBook B6, a surprisingly portable machine.
Lenovo is bringing HX to its Legion 7i, and Dell is working on two Precision versions (7670/7770). The GT77 Titan and GE77/67 Raider are two MSI gaming laptops, as are the Gigabyte Aorus 17X/15X and HP Omen 17.
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