Core i9-12900HK review: Intel ‘Alder Lake’ laptops crush the competition

Intel must be fans of Netflix’s Cobra Kai because it’s taken the mantra of “strike hard, strike first” to heart with its 12th-gen “Alder Lake H” laptop CPUs. And yes, there’s no mercy either, because the 12th-gen Core i9-12900HK leaves the floor covered with the bodies of both its direct predecessor and AMD’s rival Ryzen 9.

If this is a little too 1980s throwback for you, then maybe the simple math of “14 is more than 8” is more meaningful. As in, 14-cores in a Core i9-12900HK is simply almost always going to be more than the 8-cores in an 11th gen Core i9-11980HK or the 8-cores in a Ryzen 9 5900HX, even with Intel’s new chips using a mixture of high-performance and high-efficiency cores.

To see just how much 14 is more than 8, you’ll have to read on. But the bottom line? The Core i9-12900HK sets a new standard for high-performance laptops, whether you’re gaming or getting work done. After debuting in knock-out fashion on desktops, Intel’s Alder Lake simply crushes the competition—and its predecessor—in notebooks.

Intel’s Core i9-12900HK is the new high-performance laptop champion, and it’s not even close. How we tested

For this review, no thin and light laptops were allowed, and we solely focused on the platforms that are best paired with Intel and AMD’s most powerful CPUs. In other words, big beefy 17.3-inch gaming laptops paired with big beefy power bricks.

Asus ROG Strix SCAR G17 with an 8-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with 130 watt TGP, 32GB of DDR4/3200 and a 2TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD. The laptop’s screen is a 1080p panel with a 360Hz refresh rate.MSI GE76 Raider with an 11th-gen Intel 8-core Core i9-11980HK and GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with 165 watt TGP, 32GB of DDR4/3200 and a 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. The laptop’s screen is a 1080p panel with a 360Hz refresh rate.MSI GE76 Raider with a 12th-gen Intel 14-core Core i9-12900HK and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU with 175 watt TGP, 32GB of DDR5/4800 and two 2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The laptop’s screen is a 1080p panel with a 360Hz refresh rate.The latest version of Windows 11 was in place on all three laptops along with nearly the same GPU drivers. For the 11th-gen Intel and Ryzen 5000 laptops, we used Nvidia’s Game Ready 511.23 drivers, while the newest drivers we could access that supported the faster GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop was the 511.14 driver. For OS testing, we opted to run with the default of Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling enabled, but we opted to leave Virtual Based Security off on all three laptops. Nvidia’s performance-boosting PCIe Resizable BAR technology was enabled on all these laptops, too.

AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900HX isn’t the company’s fastest Ryzen 9 chip, but it’s pretty close and acts as a good stand in. The fastest is the Ryzen 9 5980HX, which has the same core count and TDP+ options, but clocks in at 200MHz higher than the Ryzen 9 5900HX’s boost clock of 4.6GHz. MSI’s GE76 Raider features Intel’s new 12th-gen Core i9-12900HK CPU and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU.MSI

GeForce RTX 3080 Ti vs GeForce RTX 3080

Although we have three GeForce GPUs in these laptops, they’re clearly different. Both the Asus and 11th-gen GE76 use GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPUs with the same memory bus, the same amount of memory, and the same amount of CUDA cores, Tensor cores, and ray tracing cores.

The key difference between those GPUs is the maximum wattage. The Ryzen laptop can draw 130 watts with Dynamic Boost 2.0 enabled, while the 11th-gen Raider pulls down 165 watts with DB2.0 active. That’s about 27 percent higher potential wattage between the two. In clock speeds, the higher wattage RTX 3080 can hit 1,710MHz with the RAM clocked at 1,750MHz. The 130 watt RTX 3080 in the Asus can boost to 1,645MHz and, with its RAM clocked a little faster at 1,788MHz, it actually has slightly more memory bandwidth than the hotter one in the 11th-gen frame.

Both those GPUs don’t hold a candle to the newer GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, though, which Nvidia said is aimed at 1440p gaming at 120 FPS+.

The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU essentially bumps up core counts 21 percent across the board. It has 7,424 CUDA cores vs. the non-TI’s 6,144 as well as 232 Tensor cores vs the plain GPU’s 192. You also get a bonus in ray tracing cores, which goes from the standard 3080’s 48 up to 58 in the RTX 3080 Ti. Clock speeds, however, actually fall somewhat, with the maximum boost clock hitting 1,590MHz for the RTX 3080 Ti versus the plain 3080’s 1,710 boost clock. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU also ups RAM to 2,000MHz, which gives it a nice 512GBps of memory bandwidth versus the 448GBps of the GPU in the 11th-gen GE76 notebook, and 458GBps for the GPU in Asus’s Ryzen laptop.

3D rendering performance

We’ll kick this off where we usually do: Maxon’s Cinebench R23. This is a popular 3D modelling benchmark based on the company’s rendering engine, sold in its Cinema4D application. It’s sold as a stand-alone app and also integrated into Adobe After Effects.

Like most 3D modelling, Cinebench simply loves CPU cores and threads. The default benchmark runs about 10 minutes and is intended as mild stress test. CPU’s that rely on short-term boost clocks tend to shed performance more than ones that can run cooler or are kept cooler.

The results in a multi-threaded test shouldn’t surprise anyone as we see the 14-core Core i9-12900HK outpace the 8-core Ryzen 9 5900HX by almost 17 percent. Considering how shockingly fast the Ryzen 9 5900HX felt last year, that says a lot. The 8-core 11th-gen Core i9-11980HK is burned even more, with the 12th-gen chip outpacing it by 27 percent in Cinebench R23. Remember folks, Intel’s Alder Lake H mixes performance cores with efficiency cores. In this case, its six performance cores and eight efficiency cores adds up to what we expect to be leadership performance in all things multi-threaded. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

The world doesn’t really run on multi-threaded performance, though. Yes, we all wish it did so we could justify having a 16-core or 32-core CPU, but you’re more likely to run applications that only use a single CPU core.

To get a feel for how the Core i9-12900HK handles that task, we run Cinebench R23 using a single-threaded load. Its performance against Ryzen 9 is even more impressive as we see the performance gap open up to nearly 27 percent for the 12th-gen Core i9. Intel’s previous 11th-gen chip was no slouch in single-threaded performance, though, as it also outperforms Ryzen 9. Still, the newest performance cores in the Core i9-12900HK outpace the 11th-gen Core i9 by a very respectable 17 percent. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image.IDG

Up next is Chaos Group’s V-Ray 5 benchmark, which is notable for receiving an Academy Award. More importantly, V-Ray contributes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has seen service in Dr. Strange and Deadpool (yeah, we know that’s Fox, but it’s part of the MCU now folks.)

The benchmark lets you measure CPU performance as well as the GPU’s CUDA and RTX performance. On the CPU side, we see the new Alder Lake H laptop sprint past the Ryzen 9 to the tune of 23 percent. Against its winded 11th gen sibling, it cruises to a 30 percent advantage.

On the GPU front, the 175 Watt TGP GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop chip outpaces the 165 watt TGP GeForce RTX 3089 Laptop by a respectible 9 percent in CUDA performance and 7.6 percent in RTX performance. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to view original image.IDG

Up next is the open-source Blender 3.0 rendering and modelling application. It’s popular in the indie movie front because of its price, but it’s also pretty good. We measure the CPU performance by using the Barbershop Interior benchmark scene and the Cycles renderer. On desktops, the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X actually outpaces the 16-core Core i9-12900K thanks to it packing 16 high performance cores versus the Alder Lake’s eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores. On the laptop though, it’s not quite a fair fight, as we again see the value of the six performance cores and eight efficiency cores giving the new Intel Core i9 a 9.8 percent bump over the Ryzen 9. It’s even larger against the 8-core 11th-gen chip, with an advantage of 23 percent for the newer Intel CPU.

We could continue to run more multi-threaded modelling benchmarks, which might see the 11th gen and Ryzen 9 get closer—or further away—but we think most would agree it’s going to be hard for 8-cores to beat 14-cores so let’s just move on. The Core i9-12900HK doesn’t need to show off anymore here. Lower times are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

AI performance

Our next test uses Nero’s free Score benchmark that looks at both AI performance as well as H.264 encode and decode performance. The AI is built around Intel’s OpenVINO platform, so it’s a home field advantage. That gives the Core i9-12900HK a massive 39 percent advantage against the Ryzen 9. Intel’s 11th-gen Core i9 fairs far better, only falling behind the new chip by 7 percent. Why so close? As we said, it’s a home field advantage for newer Intel CPUs in AI performance built around OpenVINO. AMD fans may boo the results but Intel’s massive investment in AI acceleration is starting to pay off. The huge H.264 encode and decode win, however, isn’t about OpenVINO performance, but likely the core-count advantage for the 12th-gen Alder Lake H CPU. That results in a massive 43 percent advantage over the Ryzen 9 and 39 percent over the 11th-gen Core i9. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

Content creation performance

3D modelling and AI is important, but likely a tiny sliver compared to what most people do in content creation: photo and video editing. In that field, Adobe is the ruler of all it can see, and truly the one application suite no platform can exist without. Yes, it’s the last of the Killer Apps so tighten up your belt—we’re going to be in Adobe land for a while.

Our first test uses Puget System’s PugetBench to look at Adobe Photoshop performance. Puget System’s test was originally built so the company could gauge what is actually fast before telling its customers what to buy. The company graciously released it to the world and scripts Photoshop through several tasks, spitting out scores for General Use, Filter Performance, and GPU Performance.

Intel’s 12th-gen performance cores were said to offer major improvements in efficiency over previous designs and we see that pay off directly here, where the Core i9-12900HK has a 24 percent advantage over Ryzen 9. That breaks down to 20 percent in GPU, 13.4 percent in general use, and a huge 31.5 percent in the filter score. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image.IDG

Before you start to scream, we know that there’s a disparity in GPU performance between the laptops and trying to judge a CPU when the GPUs are different is problematic even if it is Photoshop rather than say, gaming. To address that we also ran PugetBench for Photoshop with the discrete GPUs disabled for all three laptops. That means each CPU’s internal graphics chip takes over all the duties required by Photoshop.

The result doesn’t change all that much though, with the Core i9-12900HK acing the Ryzen 9 by 22 percent overall, 23.9 percent for the GPU score, 14.9 percent for general performance score, and 27.3 percent for the filter score. Losing its GeForce RTX 3080 is actually worse for the 11th-gen Intel system, which loses to the 12th-gen CPU by 22 percent. In GPU disparities, PugetBench gives the nod to the Iris Xe by a massive 39 percent, with the general score also increasing to 20.5 percent and and filter score also gapped by 24 percent. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

Photoshop tends to get all the glory but the unsung hero for working photographers is Adobe Lightroom Classic, which lets you quickly process the thousands of photos after a shoot. PugetBench has a test for Lightroom that breaks it down into Active Performance, where you are moving between modules and developing images, and a Passive Score that speaks to how long it takes to export images in bulk.

We also performed this test with the GeForce GPU on and off, but Lightroom Classic is less reliant on GPU performance so the results are nearly the same. That means we’ll go with just the GPU active scores.

It’s a pretty solid win for the Core i9-12900HK again, with it outpacing Ryzen 9 by 32.2 percent overall and 9.4 percent in active performance. It really opens up a can of whup-ass in the passive score with a batch export. The batch exports tends to favor more cores and Core i9-12900HK eats the Ryzen 9 5900HX up to the tune of 56.7 percent.

The older 11th-gen Core i9 also loses but not quite as badly, with the 12th gen Core i9 11.4 percent faster overall, basically dead even in the active score at 1.9 percent, and the passive score ahead by 19.5 percent. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

We said Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic are important and we mean it. One problem with such huge suites is that performance depends very much on what you’re doing. For our second option, we use UL Procyon’s Photo Editing benchmark. Like PugetBench, it scripts Photoshop and Lightroom Classic with various tasks to give you a performance score.

But unlike PugetBench, the GPU has a little more sway in moving the numbers in Procyon, so we run it with the GeForce GPUs both on and off. With the GeForce 3080’s enabled, the Core i9-12900HK outpaces the Ryzen 9 by 16 percent overall and is pretty much dead even in Image Retouch actions. But it crushes the Ryzen 9 in the batch processing score. The 11th-gen Core i9 actually fares better, with the 12th-gen chip only beating it by 6 percent overall, again dead even in Image Retouch, and beating the older Intel CPU by 12 percent in the batch processing work.

With the discrete GPUs turned off it gets closer, with the Core i9-12900HK beating the Ryzen 9 by 9 percent overall, slightly slower or basically dead even with the AMD CPU in the image retouch portion, and beating team red by nearly 22 percent in batch processing. The 11th-gen laptop again does worse with its discrete GPU turned off and loses by 15 percent overall, 12 percent in image retouch, and 18.6 percent in the batch processing. The upshot is the 12th-gen wins, but it’s a closer contest than PugetBench. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

Of all these applications, Premiere Pro typically gets the biggest boost from a GPU, so we again run PugetBench for Premiere Pro with the discrete GPU on and off. Between the 12th-gen Core i9 and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, it’s a slaughter against the lower core-count CPUs and somewhat less powerful GPUs. The Core i9-12900HK comes out 62 percent head overall against the Ryzen 9. That breaks down to 26 percent for the video export, a massive 133 percent for the Live Playback score, 15.6 percent for the Effects Score, and 10 percent for the GPU score.

The 11th-gen Core i9 fares better, losing to the 12th-gen CPU by 34 percent overall, 26 percent for the export, and “only” 46 percent for the Live Playback score. It’s also 17.5 percent slower in the Effects Score and 15 percent slower in the GPU score. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

Yes, you’re saying this really isn’t fair. Unfortunately, there’s no way to equalize the GPUs between the laptops so we again just switch them off, which forces Premiere Pro to rely on the integrated graphics performance. Unfortunately for Ryzen 9 that doesn’t make it better, with the Core i9-12900HK now crushing it by 103 percent overall. That works out to 58 percent for the Export Score, 270 percent for the Live Playback Score, 33 percent for the Effects score, and 50 percent for the GPU score.

We know from our testing that AMD’s integrated Radeon graphics is a decent GPU, but when it comes to Adobe (as Apple can tell you), optimization is everything. It’s clear that in Premiere, having an Intel CPU’s Iris Xe graphics is going to net you better performance than AMD’s integrated Radeon graphics. Of course, that means you need a better Intel IGP. You don’t see a score for the 11th-gen Tiger Lake H laptop because Premiere Pro simply hung up and failed to complete the run. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image.IDG

Our last result for the Adobe suite comes from UL’s Procyon Video Benchmark, which, like PugetBench, tasks Premiere with exporting several files while applying filters and other video adjustments. We’ll combine both the discrete on and off into the same chart but no matter how you cut it, the Core i9-12900HK wins.

With the discrete GPU on, the Core i9-12900HK comes in 28.6 percent faster than the Ryzen 9 and 12.4 percent faster than the 11th-gen Core i9. With the GeForced disabled, the 12th-gen Core i9’s Iris Xe helps it beat the Ryzen 9 by 42.2 percent. And, once again, the 11th-gen laptop fails to complete the run at all. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

Productivity performance

We all wished we sat around editing photos of our trip to Borneo or cutting videos for the last commercial we shot in Dubai, but the reality is 99 percent of the globe sits in front of Microsoft Office programs. If life has dealt you that hand, you might as well do it faster. For that, you’ll want a 12th-gen Core i9 over a Ryzen 9. The Core i9-12900HK outpaces the Ryzen 9 by 11.6 percent and the 11th gen by 6.7 percent using UL Procyon’s Office test.

Looking at the sub scores, PowerPoint is unimpressive. Word, however, is about 9 percent faster with the Core i9-12900HK. Excel gives the additional cores of the 12th-gen chip a nice 19 percent boost over Ryzen 9 and 16.9 percent over the 11th gen. The last surprise is Outlook, which appears to let you delete junk mail faster by about 19 percent over the Ryzen 9 and 10 percent over the 11th-gen Core i9. Higher scores are better. Right mouse click on image and select “open in new tab” to see original image. IDG

Esports Excel performance

If you’re a practical parent, you’re likely encouraging your child to be a professional video game player—at least not u