CES is always an important time for Intel and the announcements have to be up to the task, especially when we come after AMD and Nvidia. This year, the founder is betting on new laptop products, since we were treated to the presentation of Alder Lake “mobile” processors, the 12th generation “H” series. No less than 8 models have been unveiled, ranging from the Core i5-12450H to the Core i9-12900HK.
The interest here is to take advantage of Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture on a low consumption chip. The TDPs of all these CPUs are indeed announced at 45W, but the power should be there. The Core i9-12900HK thus peaks at 5 GHz in “Turbo” frequency, a first for a mobile CPU. Intel thus joins AMD in the race for speed, since the latter announced yesterday the Ryzen 6000 for laptops, which can also go up to 5 GHz.
Still on the Core i9-12900HK, there are 14 cores divided into two categories: 6 “performance” cores and 8 “efficiency” cores. We remind you that one of the novelties of Alder Lake is to offer a hybrid operation, with high performance cores and low power cores, all on the same chip. Each type of heart will thus be dedicated to specific tasks according to their delicacies. The “performance” cores will thus be used more on a video game, while the “efficiency” cores will be more suited to simple office automation.
If the Core i9-12900HK is the star of this line-up of Intel processors, the other models are not left out. The entry level, embodied by the Core i5-12450H, still offers 8 cores (4 “performance” and 4 “efficient”) as well as a frequency of up to 4.4 GHz.
Intel seems in any case very sure of the efficiency of its new range of processors, especially for video games. According to the company, it is indeed the “best mobile gaming platform”. The founder thus compares the performance with a Ryzen 9 5900HK, with a performance gap of up to 28%. Of course, the comparison with a Ryzen 6000 remains to be made and will prove to be much more interesting.
The first laptop models equipped with these 12th generation Intel processors are expected to arrive during the first quarter. Acer for example presented yesterday the Triton 500 SE, a monster equipped with a Core i9 and a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.
Announced several years ago, the first 100% Intel dedicated graphics card should arrive during the first quarter of 2024. The “Alchemist” model is in fact being delivered to partner manufacturers (Asus, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, HP, MSI …) So that they can integrate it into their next machines. Alchemist will therefore not be sold to the general public for the moment. The company does not yet give all the details, and is careful not to communicate on performance, but this first model should be placed on a “mid-range” niche and compete with models like the RTX 3060 from Nvidia or the Radeon RX. 6700 at AMD.
Intel specifies that we will be entitled to “hardware accelerated ray-tracing” as well as to “Xe Super Sampling” technology. The latter, like Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR, will use artificial intelligence algorithms to upscale and thus offer a rendering in 4K from an image calculated in a lower definition. . The goal is, of course, to drastically boost the number of FPS in play.
The year 2024 promises to be busy for Intel, which will have to try to impose itself on a market held by Nvidia and AMD, while continuing to convince with its new range of processors.
