At their CES 2022 conference, Intel announced new models of its 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs, including the first laptop chips with the new design. Leading the line is the Core i9-12900HK, which intel claims is the ‘fastest mobile processor ever’.
Intel had launched the first wave of 12th Gen Alder Lake chips last year, with a handful of desktop CPUs, but they were primarily aimed at the high end desktop market.
Intel has now expanded the lineup with over 40 new chipset models in the Alder Lake lineup. The flagship here is the Core i9-12900HK, with a 5.0GHz boosted clock speed. Intel claims this chipset can outclass both the AMD Ryzen 5900HX, and the top-line Apple M1 Max in terms of performance, for both gaming and productivity tasks.
Intel claims 28% faster gaming performance over its predecessor, the Core i9-11980HK, and a 44% boost in Premiere Pro tasks.
Intel’s new hybrid architecture has also come to laptops, featuring both ‘performance’ cores for processing power, and ‘efficient’ cores for background tasks. The top-line Core i9 model has 14 cores and 20 threads, while the base Core i5 model has 8 cores and 12 threads.
The 12th Gen Alder Lake chips also come with support for Wi-Fi 6E, Thunderbolt 4, PCIe 4.0, and support for the latest memory standards.
Intel also talked about it’s P-series and U-series chips, meant for thinner and lighter laptops, which are coming later this year.
Also Read: CES 2022: Sony confirms PlayStation VR2, shows off Horizon exclusive
Intel’s ‘Arc’ dedicated GPUs are highly awaited, as the dedicated graphics market is undergoing the worst shortage ever seen, with cards selling for many times their MSRP.
Although Intel Arc GPUs are not yet available to purchase for gamers, Intel has announced that first-generation ‘Alchemist’ GPUs have started shipping to OEM customers, to be included in their systems. Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, Dell, Haier, Clevo, Samsung, Lenovo, HP, NEC and MSI are among the brands that will be using Arc GPUs.
There is currently no timeline on when the first computers equipped with Arc GPUs will make it on to the market, or when gamers will be able to purchase a discrete unit.