Intel Core i9-12900HK performance and power efficiency comparison: Significant gains with potential to put even upcoming AMD offerings at a disadvantage

One giant leap for chip kind. Our first Alder Lake-H performance numbers are in, and enthusiasts seem to be in for a treat. We pit the Core i9-12900HK in the MSI GE76 Raider against Tiger Lake-H, AMD Cezanne Zen 3, and Apple M1 Max SoCs to see what kind of improvements one can expect with Intel's latest mobile offering. From what we see so far, Intel has finally been able to thwart both AMD and Apple in their tracks but at some expense of power.

The first laptops with Alder Lake-H CPUs will be available from today. A noteworthy contender among those is the brand new MSI GE76 Raider powered by the Intel Core i9-12900HK and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU along with 32 GB of DDR5-4800 memory., which we had a chance to review.

In this article, we take a look at the Core i9-12900HK's performance from the GE76 Raider and see how much of Intel's claims during its keynote presentation have come true.

About the Intel Core i9-12900HK
The Core i9-12900HK is based on the new Intel 7 process, which is essentially the 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin architecture. The Core i9-12900HK offers a combination of performance (P) Golden Cove cores and efficient (E) Gracemont cores. Unlike the P-cores, the E-cores do not support hyperthreading. Therefore, we get a total of 14 cores (6P+8E) and 20 threads. Given this unique hybrid core architecture, Windows 11 incorporates improvements to thread scheduling to appropriately designate tasks for each core type in combination with Intel Thread Director.

The Core i9-12900HK offers 24 MB L3 cache and is rated at a 45 W base TDP. Our MSI GE76 Raider test sample enables a sustained PL1 of 110 W and a burst PL2 of 135 W. MSI's use of new cooling solutions such as the phase-change liquid metal pad also plays its part in enabling longer sustained performance. Consequently, the scores below were taken in the Extreme Performance mode offered by the MSI Center app to allow the Core i9-12900HK flex its muscles fully.

Single-core performance: Core i9-12900HK convincingly beats the desktop Core i9-11900K and M1 Max
Intel is no strange to single-core chart leads, and Alder Lake-H has further upped the ante. Right off the bat, the Core i9-12900HK is tangibly faster than even the desktop Core i9-11900K by about 7% in Cinebench R15 and trails the new Core i9-12900K by only 4%.

A similar trend can be seen with Cinebench R20 as well wherein the Core i9-12900HK leads the Tiger Lake mainstream desktop flagship by 15% while being well-within striking distance of the Core i9-12900K. A 24% performance boost can be observed in comparison with the Core i9-11980HK in this test.

Perhaps, the biggest gains in single-core can be seen in comparison with AMD Cezanne Zen 3 APUs. While AMD did a commendable job in shattering conventional wisdom and almost matching Tiger Lake-H's single-core prowess, Intel has just extended the finish line a bit longer with Alder Lake-H. The Core i9-12900HK turns out to be 28% faster than the Ryzen 9 5900HX in Cinebench R20 single.

While AMD's upcoming Rembrandt APUs such as the Ryzen 9 6900HX can be expected to perform better than Cezanne, they may not be able to fully match up to the Core i9-12900HK in single-core performance, at least if early leaked benchmark scores are anything to go by.

Even in M1-native benchmarks such as Cinebench R23 and Geekbench, the Core i9-12900HK holds its turf with 25% and 8% leads, respectively against the Apple M1 Max.