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Intel Says New Core i9 Processor for Laptops is Faster Than Apple's M1 Max Chip
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Lol, "pressure on Apple." What? Apple is leading the way in power/performance and has been doing so for the past decade without any "pressure" from Intel, and without any competition whatsoever. In fact, Intel has been pressuring against efficiency, and kept holding Apple back for years!
OMFG, I really wish people would quit it with this "comp'tishun gud" propaganda nonsense.
Apple is the antithesis of competitive markets as they own and fully control their entire vertical stack. And their grip gets tighter every day with their centrally controlled integration. This is precisely why Apple is dominating and why Intel is crapping themselves, barely able to keep up, while using more CPU power.
Apple is proof that modern, strong central control + balance is vastly superior to traditional, "free" capitalist market + boundless shareholder greed. And it's a welcome change for once.
I think most of us mac users are in the middle. We just use the Mac because we find the OS
superior to everything else, regardless of the processor.
We don't go to other sites to hate. we just love our Macs.
Enjoy!
Too bad AMD just announced the 6000 series Mobile that's faster than Intel.
And isn't this thing in a lab? Interesting to see what happens once it leaves the petrie dish.
I’m as skeptical as the rest of you about the performance numbers posted by Intel, but that Intel graph is showing performance against wattage. The claim here seems to be that at the same wattage (and presumably similar temperatures) the Core i9-12900HK beats the M1 Max. The cited 115 watt maximum doesn’t necessarily mean that any Intel laptop based on this chip is going to run hot as a the devil’s kitchen; the chip could be throttled to keep it within reasonable temperature and battery ranges (competitive with the M1, perhaps). For critical investigation, we should be focused on exactly what is being claimed rather than making straw man attacks on claims Intel has not made.
However, who knows if these benchmarks are accurate and WHAT exactly they’re measuring. I’d love to know what is included in what Intel is simply calling “performance,” especially with regard to integrated GPU performance. The M1 integrated GPU is mind-bogglingly good (especially considering power and heat properties). Consider that the performance of the 32-core M1 Max GPU is similar to the performance of the GeForce RTX 2080, and the 2080 absolutely stomps the integrated GPU in the Ryzen 9 5900HX (the AMD chip in the above graph). I.e., that Intel graph probably isn’t considering integrated graphics performance at all, which suggests that the total system power usage of an Intel-based laptop utilizing the i9-12900HK and competitive with the M1 in all aspects (including graphics acceleration) might use considerably more power than the M1.
If Intel can match the M1 CPU AND GPU performance per watt in an SOC, then we’ll have an interesting competition!
Overlay of Intel's performance curves on top of Apple's performance curves.
I’d welcome competition but this i9 isn't it. It’s a power hungry thermal nightmare.
So not based on actual measurements and completely made up. Got it!
And it included an 18000 BTU window AC evaporator coil attached directly to the CPU. Very cool!
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Kind of. Many of the new Intel-based laptops will be Evo certified, which means they must at a minimum have 9 hours battery life with realistic workloads. The days were most Windows laptops only had a couple hours battery life are long gone.
What is Intel's definition of "realistic workloads"? And the Evo certified means that the Intel CPU can run at maximum performance on battery alone?
It's listed in the small print below the graph: integer SPECrate, which is a throughput metric. It's purely a compute benchmark and not affected by the GPU.
Yup, from all the leaks this is another failure from Intel. They'll sell whatever they make as there's a general shortage of chips but they are not going to win any perf/watt or perf/$ or multicore tests with these chips. Pat Gelsinger was just in Taiwan speaking with TSMC about having them fab Intel chips which tells you how little confidence Intel has in their own manufacturing road map. Intel has been riding huge demand wave for chips which keeps the books healthy, if there was a chip glut Intel would be in serious trouble.
Zen 4 on TSMC's N5P process is going to absolutely steamroll these. Their 5000X3D chips should hold their own as well as smash Intel in terms of efficiency.
Also the logic of using efficiency cores on x86 is flawed at best, stupid at worst. They would be far better off dedicating that transistor budget to bigger, wider cores and more of them. You're essentially paying for 8 efficiency cores that will almost never get used due to the way Windows OS scheduler and the software that runs on it works. Apple controls the entire stack which makes it a completely different proposition and even there they reduced the number of efficiency cores on their new MacBooks.
Colossally stupid is what springs to mind with Alder Lake, the only part I like about them is PCI-e 5.0 support which is coming with AMD this year.
Except they don't. It's pure BS. These chips run hot and use a huge amount of power.
Show me an Intel laptop that can run at full performance on battery as it does while plugged in, all while maintaining 12+ hours of battery life.
Only then I will believe that they have reached the M1 tier of superiority.
Only then I will believe that they have reached the M1 tier of superiority.
The new Core i9 mobile CPU needs supposedly 115 watts of power to run a full performance--not including the separate GPU chipset, which may add another (in my estimation!) 50-70 watts or so. Meanwhile, the M1 Max uses 90 , watts max running at full performance. I'm not impressed, Intel. 
It will be hot, your fans will kick in constantly, your battery will be shortened. You won't require a vasectomy. Good luck Intel
Intel today unveiled new 12th-generation Core processors suitable for laptops, and as part of the announcement, it claimed that the new Core i9 is not only faster than Apple's M1 Max chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but is the fastest mobile processor ever.
The new Core i9 features a 14-core CPU with six performance cores and eight efficiency cores, while the 10-core M1 Max chip has eight performance cores and two efficiency cores. The high-end Intel chip has a max Turbo Boost frequency of 5.0GHz, but power draw can reach up to 115 watts, which is significantly more power than the M1 Max chip ever uses and not ideal for the thermal envelope of devices like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
Intel shared a very basic performance vs. power chart as part of its marketing, with fine print indicating that performance was measured based on compiling binaries with the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark suite. Interestingly, the chart claims that the new Core i9 achieved faster performance-per-watt than the M1 Max chip, but overall the M1 Max can still operate at much lower wattages than Intel's top-of-the-line mobile offering.
"Specrate 2017 integer n-copy data is a good benchmark that we use to gauge client multi-threaded performance, and our data indicates that the Core i9-12900HK is faster performance-per-watt than the M1 Max processor in this test," an Intel spokesperson told MacRumors, when asked for comment about the results.
Of course, we'll have to wait to see how the 12th-generation Core processors perform in real-world testing for a true comparison with the M1 Max chip.
Intel's new chips are certainly fast, but Apple likely has no regrets with switching to its own custom silicon given the power efficiency of its chips, which deliver impressive performance without running hot in thin and light systems like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. And we're likely just months away from Apple unveiling its next-generation M2 chip that should take another leap forward in performance-per-watt.
Intel's 12th-generation mobile Core processor lineup includes 28 chips, including mid-range and low-end Core i7 and Core i5 options. The chips have entered final production and devices powered by them are expected to launch this year.
Article Link: Intel Says New Core i9 Processor for Laptops is Faster Than Apple's M1 Max Chip
It's a standardized workflow of ~200 tasks that was developed based on telemetry collected from real users. It includes things like web browsing, Youtube, Zoom meetings, GSuite, office apps etc., along with specified operating conditions such as a minimum screen brightness and established Wifi connection. There is also a requirement that Evo laptops must be able of at least 16 hours of local video playback.
There is a performance requirement when on battery, but I don't remember the details (you can probably find it if you google for "Project Athena").