27 AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX PCs vs. the Core i9-12900H: Intel comes out on top, but there's a catch

It's no secret that the mobile AMD Zen series caught Intel by surprise. While early Zen+ H-series options like the Ryzen 5 3550H or Ryzen 7 3750H were only comparable to lower-end Core i5 H-series CPUs at the time of launch, later Zen 2 and Zen 3 options like the Ryzen 7 4800H or Ryzen 7 5800H would propel AMD to outperform even the fastest 11th gen mobile Core i7 or Core i9 CPUs that Intel had available. A lot was riding on the 12th gen Core series to show what Intel had up its sleeve against AMD.

Now that these Alder Lake-H retail units are finally available, we can compare our own in-house Core i9-12900H laptop provided by Schenker and Uniwill Technology against the 27 AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX laptops and mini PCs we've tested thus far. We chose the Ryzen 9 5900HX as it is currently AMD's fastest mobile Zen 3 CPU available on the market.

Our chart below shows the Core i9-12900H outperforming the average Ryzen 9 5900HX in our database for both single-threaded and multi-threaded operations by about 30 percent each. The fastest Ryzen 9 5900HX laptop available appears to be the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551QS which falls behind our Core i9 by about 10 to 15 percent in multi-threaded workloads.

The one catch, however, is that the higher performance of the Intel comes at the cost of higher power consumption. Our in-house 12th gen Core i9 model would draw about 145 W when running Prime95 on an external monitor to be higher than the next most power-hungry Ryzen 9 5900HX laptop by about 20 to 25 W. Even the Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 GX703HSD with the older Core i9-11900H would be less demanding than our Core i9-12900H laptop when under similar conditions. In other words, the performance-per-watt of the 12th gen 10 nm Core i9 isn't as high as Intel might have hoped when compared to AMD's 7 nm Ryzen 9.

AMD is set to launch its next generation Zen 3+ Ryzen 9 6900HX in the coming weeks to supplant the Zen 3 Ryzen 9 5900HX. The inevitable gen-to-gen raw performance boost might be high enough to edge out the new Core i9-12900H if just barely. Razer will be one of the first to offer the Ryzen 9 6900HX via the refreshed Blade 14.