When Intel disclosed a new suite of details about its Alder Lake family of processors at Intel Architecture Day, everyone was left wondering how the new hybrid core setup works in the real world. Finally, signs are starting to emerge. Today we have a UserBenchmark submission from an Alder Lake-P chip, the Alder chips destined for laptops, running inside the upcoming Asus VivoBook laptop.
Intel's Alder Lake-P is a 12th generation lineup of processors designed for the high-performance laptop segment, set to compete with AMD's Ryzen 5000 series of mobile processors. With up to six P-cores (performance) and eight E-cores (efficiency) in total, the Alder Lake-P generation will offer up to 14 cores in the mobile segment with up to 20 virtual threads.
UserBenchmark isn't a go-to benchmark for most enthusiasts, but we can learn a few details from this test submission. First, the test chip has eight cores and 12 threads, which we assume to be four P-cores with 8 threads and four E-cores with four threads, totaling the 12 threads listed in the submission. The processor was spotted running at 1.0 GHz base speed and 2.9 GHz average boost, which means that some cores could be boosting to higher clocks, while some cores, like the efficiency cores, could have a much lower base frequency than we're accustomed to.
| Userbenchmark Score | Alder Lake-P (4 P-Core + 4 E-Core) | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H |
| One Core | 150 | 150 |
| Two Cores | 291 | 296 |
| Three Cores | 499 | 567 |
| Four Cores | 660 | 1,020 |
As far as performance, the Alder Lake CPU punched out 150 points in the single-core test, while two cores produced 291 points, four cores landed at 499 points, and eight cores produced 660 points.
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor produces 150 points in single-core scenarios, 296 points in two-core workloads, 567 points in four-core workloads, and 1,020 points in eight-core loads. That means the difference between these two is rather small up to four-core loads, where the AMD Ryzen processor starts to take over. However, as the AMD CPU only runs on normal, big cores, it is indeed more powerful in multi-core scenarios.
However, not everything is bad for Intel. For example, the specific SKU found inside Asus's upcoming VivoBook X1603ZA laptop was probably an engineering sample, and the final Alder Lake-P SKU for retail will probably feature higher clock speeds, which would allow it to compete against more serious competition from AMD. In addition to that, the UserBenchmark software reported some background CPU tasks running and up to 90% CPU throttling, meaning the Adler chip could have been dealing with a subpar cooling solution.
Intel has yet to divulge the official specs for its laptop-oriented Alder Lake-P chips, but we expect to learn more in the coming weeks.
