Intel just announced its top-of-the-line 12th generation mobile processors and proudly proclaimed it the world's fastest, beating Apple's best, the M1 Max, as well as AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX. This is quite an achievement and follows closely on the heels of the introduction of Apple's newest chips and proves that Intel is pushing forward at a rapid pace.
Intel posted impressive results with its Core i9-12900K in October of 2021, easily defeating Apple's best laptop chips. While this is a comparison of a laptop and desktop processor, Apple has so far been using the same chips in its desktops. Intel also blasted past AMD's desktop-class processor. Only Intel's Xeon and AMD's Threadripper chips, which are workstation-level processors with a massive number of cores, can top Intel's Core i9-12900K in multi-core tests. However, for single-core speeds, it sits at the top.
Intel's latest flagship mobile processor, the Core i9-12900HK, scores another win for the largest chip manufacturer in the U.S., beating both AMD's and Apple's laptop processors in several benchmarks. Excellent performance is no surprise given the use of 14 cores (20 threads), six for performance, and eight for efficiency. A SPECrate integer benchmark yielded results showing Intel's latest laptop chip outperforming Apple's M1 Max, AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX, and the previous-generation Intel Core i9-11980HK by a significant margin. This is a very specific test of the CPU only. However, that's still an impressive result. The newest processor benefits from Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity as well, making this more future-proof than competing chips.
Intel Graphics & Gaming
Intel also claims to have the world's best mobile gaming platform powered by its Core i9-12900HK and paired with Nvidia's RTX 3080. Intel's Arc graphics is expected to arrive later this year and should provide the first real-world testing against competitors. Using the same GPU offers a head-to-head challenge between Intel's new laptop chip, AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX, and Intel's Core i9-11980HK, each with the same Nvidia GPU. Intel's latest chip posted up to 28-percent faster gaming at 1080p using high settings across 19 popular games.
Intel's top mobile processor does draw more power than Apple's best chip and even more than AMD's speediest laptop chip. However, when the goal is to blast through challenges as quickly as possible, that might not matter. A top gaming system will always run a little hotter and use more battery power. Intel also posted results showing chart-topping performance for Adobe Creative Cloud, Autodesk, and Blender rendering, suggesting that the gains for its Corei9-11980HK will be seen across the board, not only in gaming.
Source: Intel