Intel unveils Alder Lake laptop chips — with power to rival Apple M1 Max

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel unveiled its first batch of Alder Lake mobile CPUs at CES 2022 this calendar week, and the visitor claims at to the lowest degree one of them tin can evangelize performance to rival Apple's M1 Max fleck.

That's a meaning claim because Intel's long reign as acme domestic dog of the CPU market place (fiercely contested past AMD) was undercut last year by the remarkable performance and efficiency of Apple's bespoke silicon. The M1 Max (and its smaller sibling the M1 Pro) helped Apple's 2021 MacBook Pro outperform the king of beasts'due south share of Windows laptops we've tested, near of which were packing Intel's 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs.

Intel released a handful of Alder Lake CPUs late last twelvemonth, but they were desktop chips; we've had to wait until now to become an idea of the power Alder Lake mobile CPUs will deliver when they start showing up in laptops this yr.

These chips are especially exciting because they're built on a hybrid architecture. That ways they have a set of loftier-powered performance cores and a grouping of weaker, loftier-efficiency cores on each chip, governed by a new embedded microcontroller called the Intel Thread Director which aims to intelligently manage workflows across all cores for optimal performance.

Apple silicon like the M1 Pro and M1 Max rely on a similar hybrid architecture of loftier-operation and high-efficiency CPU cores on a single chip. In fact, Apple takes things a step further past putting a multi-core GPU on the same chip, and letting both CPU and GPU admission the same shared unified retentivity pool.

Intel Alder Lake laptop CPU specs
Processor	Cores	Threads	L3 Cache	Max Intel Turbo Heave clock speed (all cores)	Base Power
Core i9-12900HK	14 (6P + 8E)	20	24MB	5.0 GHz	45W
Core i9-12900H	fourteen (6P + 8E)	20	24MB	v.0 GHz	45W
Core i7-12800H	14 (6P + 8E)	twenty	24MB	four.8 GHz	45W
Core i7-12700H	xiv (6P + 8E)	20	24MB	4.vii GHz	45W
Core i7-12650K	10 (6P + 4E)	sixteen	24MB	4.seven GHz	45W
Core i5-12600H	12 (4P + 8E)	16	18MB	iv.5 GHz	45W
Core i5-12500H	12 (4P + 8E)	16	18MB	4.5 GHz	45W
Core i5-12450H	viii (4P + 4E)	12	12MB	4.4 GHz	45W

The star of Intel'south showing today is the Core i9-12900HK CPU. With 14 cores (6 functioning and 8 efficiency) capable of achieving max clock speeds of 5.0 GHz, information technology's the most performant laptop chip in the Alder Lake lineup. According to Intel it delivers up to 28% better gaming performance and upwardly to xl% faster speeds overall than its Tiger Lake predecessor, the Intel Core i9-11980HK.

Intel also makes the more provocative claim that the Core i9-12900HK is faster than Apple'southward M1 Max, the current top canis familiaris in the earth of Apple silicon. The company is basing that on both Apple's public statements and internal functioning benchmarks conducted using a xvi-inch 2021 MacBook Pro sporting an M1 Max scrap and 64GB of RAM, though it'due south unclear which model of M1 Max (and therefore, how many cores it has) was tested.

Chart showing Intel Alder Lake performance vs other chips — (Paradigm credit: Intel)

If that merits proves true, it volition hateful Intel is really back in the fight to exist superlative domestic dog of the laptop CPU market after existence shown up by the functioning of Apple silicon in 2021. When we tested the 2021 MacBook Pros packing M1 Pro and M1 Max fries we were diddled away by their speed and battery efficiency, and then these new Intel Alder Lake laptop CPUs have some stiff contest.

Of form, we'll accept to expect until nosotros get some Alder Lake Windows laptops in for testing before we tin can say whether Intel delivers on its merits. We won't accept to wait long: the first Alder Lake laptops are slated to first hitting the market next month (Feb 2022) from companies like Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo. And so go along an eye out for our reviews of those products, and stay tuned to our CES 2022 live web log for all the nearly important news out of this year's show!

Alex Wawro is a lifelong tech and games enthusiast with more a decade of experience covering both for outlets like Game Programmer, Black Hat, and PC World magazine. He currently serves as a senior editor at Tom's Guide covering all things computing, from laptops and desktops to keyboards and mice.