Intel Core i7-12700H vs Apple M1 vs Apple M2

Intel Core i7-12700H

The Intel Core i7-12700H is a high-end mobile CPU for laptops based on the Alder Lake architecture. It was announced in early 2022 and offers 6 performance cores (P-cores, Golden Cove architecture) and 8 efficiency cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). The P-cores support Hyper-Threading leading to 20 supported threads when combined with the E-cores. The clock rate ranges from 2.3 to 4.7 GHz on the performance cluster and 1.7 - 3.5 GHz on the efficient cluster. The performance of the E-cores should be similar to old Skylake cores (compare to the Core i7-6920HQ). All cores can use up to 24 MB L3 cache. Compared to the 12900H, the 12700H is lower clocked and offers only "Essentials" vPro features.

Performance

The average 12700H in our database wins a very important battle by being ever-so-slightly faster than the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX in multi-thread benchmarks while, perhaps even more importantly, nearly matching multi-thread benchmark scores of the more costly Core i9-12900H to be a great bang for the buck overall.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 101 W, the Legion 5 15IAH7H 82RB is among the fastest laptops built around the 12700H that we know of. It can be nearly 60% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Features

The integrated memory controller supports various memory types up to DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200, LPDDR5-5200, and LPDDR4x-4267. The Thread Director (in hardware) can support the operating system to decide which thread to use on the performance or efficient cores for the best performance. For AI tasks, the CPU also integrates GNA 3.0 and DL Boost (via AVX2). Quick Sync in version 8 is the same as in the Rocket Lake CPUs and supports MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1 decode, JPEG, VP8 decode, VP9, HEVC, and AV1 decode in hardware. The CPU only supports PCIe 4.0 (x8 for a GPU and two x4 for SSDs).

The integrated graphics adapter is based on the Xe architecture and offers 96 EUs (Execution Units) operating at up to 1.4 GHz.

Power consumption

This Core i7 series chip has a "minimum assured" power consumption of 35 W, with 45 W being its Base power consumption. The CPU's highest Intel-recommended Turbo power consumption sits at 115 W.

The i7-12700H is built with Intel's 4th generation 10 nm process marketed as Intel 7 for average, as of early 2023, energy efficiency.

Apple M1

The Apple M1 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2020 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and Mac Mini. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 12 MB shared L2 cache. According to Apple the performance of these cores should be better than anything on the market (in late 2020). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3204 MHz.

The M1 is available in two TDP variants, a passive cooled 10 Watt variant for the MacBook Air and an active cooled faster variant for the MacBook Pro 13 and Mac Mini. Those should offer a better-sustained performance according to Apple.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 offers 8 cores (7 cores in the entry MacBook Air) and a peak performance of 2.6 teraflops. Apple claims that it is faster than any other iGPU at the time of announcement.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 11 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M1 includes 16 billion transistors (up from the 10 billion of the A12Z Bionic and therefore double the amount of a Tiger Lake-U chip like the i7-1185G7) and is manufactured in 5nm at TSMC.

Apple M2

The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with  up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.

The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.

According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.

The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.