First public Intel Alder Lake-P Core i9-12900HK leak surprises with 50% dip in multi-core scores compared to Apple M1 Max, 96-EU Xe iGPU on the anvil

Now that Intel Alder Lake-S desktop parts are widely available, the focus turns towards Alder Lake mobile offerings that are due early next year. We have seen the Core i9-12900HK feature in a closed Geekbench leak earlier. Now, we are getting to see a public benchmark of the same processor in a Lenovo laptop.

The current leak is the first public appearance of the Core i9-12900HK, thereby confirming its existence. This Geekbench test was run on a Lenovo 82S9 laptop, which is probably an upcoming Legion gaming notebook. According to the benchmark, the Core i9-12900HK scores 1,751 points in single-core and 6,438 points in multi-core.

These scores are actually worse than the original leak we had seen before. In the previous leak, the Core i9-12900HK happened to have scored 1,851 and 13,256 points in single and multi-core tests, respectively. We are not sure what could have caused the reduction in scores, especially in multi-core where we see a 51% decrease. For perspective, an Apple M1 Max scores about 1,785 and 12,753 points while an AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX manages about 1,523 and 8,469 points in single and multi-core tests, respectively.

Scores apart, the new leak provides us with some useful information. The benchmark confirms that the Core i9-12900HK sports 14 cores and 20 threads. The K moniker indicates that the processor is unlocked and can be overclocked. The boost clock is shown to be 4,969 MHz, which indicates that this CPU is rated for a 5 GHz boost. 

We also get to see that the Core i9-12900HK sports an Xe Graphics iGPU with 96 execution units (EUs) at 1.3 GHz. Interestingly, even the Core i9-11980HK offers only a 32-EU iGPU, so it could be that Alder Lake-P will up the iGPU shader count. The OpenCL performance in the benchmark shows the Core i9-12900HK scoring 11,480 points.

While these scores do indicate strong single-core performance, the multi-core score disparity means that we will have to watch out for a few other test results before coming to any conclusion. We advise taking this information with a pinch of salt for now.

Buy the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED with Core i9-11980HK and RTX 3080 on Amazon