Yesterday Romanian tech review site Lab 501 (opens in new tab) put up one of the world's first reviews of Intel's new mobile Core i9-12900HK (Alder Lake) processor. Packing Intel's all-new hybrid core microarchitecture, the CPU has managed to beat AMD's desktop Ryzen Threadripper 1950X in Cinebench R20.
The Core i9-12900HK will be Intel's new flagship mobile part for the 12th Generation Core series. With specs including six P-cores and eight E-cores, 24MB of L3 cache, and a maximum frequency of 5 GHz, it's a serious upgrade from Intel's 11th Generation mobile parts on paper.
In practice, the chip performs every bit and what the specs say. Thanks to the extra core count of the E-cores, and the enhanced IPC of the Golden Cove cores, the Core i9-12900HK puts up an impressive Cinebench R20 score of 6,741 points -- higher than any mobile CPU we've seen to date and equal to that of Intel's desktop Core i5-12600K.
For reference, Intel's previous mobile flagship, the Core i9-11980HK, is nearly 1,000 points behind the new Alder Lake part, with a score of 5,772 points. Even further back is one of AMD's top-tier mobile processors, the Ryzen 9 5900HX, with a score of 5,229 points.
But most impressively, the Core i9-12900HK is the first mobile CPU to out-right beat Cinebench R20's reference Ryzen Threadripper 1950X score of 6,670 points (which you can find by installing the app for yourself). An impressive result, considering the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is a 180W behemoth with 16 core Zen cores designed for desktops.