The Core i9-12900HK is the notebook version of Intel’s new architecture and will be the flagship of the series. On the other hand, the M1 Max is Apple’s most powerful chip for the MacBook Pro.
i9-12900HK proves to be faster than Apple’s M1 Max
While Apple has done a good job with its M1 chips, Intel will likely take the performance crown in the notebook segment with the Intel Core i9 12900HK, at least until AMD can strike back with the Ryzen 6000 series next year.
In some leaked Geekbench benchmarks, you can see the excellent performance of the Intel Core i9 12900HK, which not only outperforms Apple’s M1 Max but also AMD’s Ryzen 9 5980HX and always places us in the notebook segment.
Alder Lake’s P-Core cores score 1851 in the single-thread performance test. Apple’s M1 Max chip scores 1785, which makes Intel’s option 4% more powerful in single-thread performance. Compared to the previous generation, the i9-12900HK is 14% more powerful than the i9-11980HK.
In the multi-thread tests, the Alder Lake variant surprises with a score of 13,256 points, followed by the Apple M1 Max’s 12,753 points. Again, the difference is 4%.
Most surprising is the 45% performance increase over the previous generation with the 11980HK, an increase achieved with almost no increase in TDP, which is a spectacular technical achievement for Intel.
Intel’s M1 Max will likely still be superior in terms of power efficiency, but probably not as powerful as Apple had hoped.
We’ll have to wait for the launch of Alder Lake and the first high-end notebooks to see how true these results are.