Huge Swath Of Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake Laptop CPUs Detailed In Geekbench Listings
Intel's 12th-generation Core processors, codenamed "Alder Lake," have already been out for about a month—at least, if you're an enthusiast or power user. If you're looking for a small-form-factor NUC, laptop, or ultra-mobile PC, you'll have to be content with a last-generation CPU (or perhaps an AMD processor) until Intel releases the rest of its Alder Lake lineup.
Of course, those processors won't be showing up on store shelves. The CPUs started shipping to laptop manufacturers late last month, and those vendors are likely itching to hawk their new models to customers. They'll have to wait for Intel's official release announcement, though.
As we understand so far, Intel intends to release six segments of Alder Lake, three of which are mobile processors. The M-SKUs are ultra-mobile chips (think Core M, not the old -M suffix of yore). The P-SKUs are the performance mobile processors and then there will be a limited run of S-SKUs—dice normally intended for mainstream desktop processors—in BGA form. This slide lays it out:
That slide seems likely to be real at this point, but it's old news. Thanks to stress-testing by the aforementioned laptop manufacturers, and a sharp-eyed Twitter bot called @BenchLeaks, we have some data on the specific CPU models. That data comes from Geekbench listings for a significant portion of the upcoming laptop CPUs from Intel, ranging from the Core i9-12900HK on down to the midrange Core i5-1240P. Check out the models here:
This chart details the model name, core configuration, and known clock speeds of the Alder Lake laptop CPUs as they're recorded in the Geekbench. Some of the boost clocks aren't known because Geekbench 5 doesn't read them correctly, giving hilarious responses like "28.3 GHz" for "Maximum Frequency." Look carefully at the details of the processors, particularly the core configurations; some of the models may have the same overall number of threads with quite different core configurations.
We also didn't reproduce the Geekbench scores for the parts because for the most part, they don't really make sense; we suspect that either Geekbench isn't playing nice with Alder Lake's hybrid design, or it's down to the pre-release nature of the systems being tested. In any case, the scores are pretty unlikely to be representative of anything.
This information confirms earlier rumors that the top-end mobile CPUs would come with 14 cores, adding up the mix of Golden Cove P-cores and Gracemont E-cores. Where that information seemed to suggest that we'd see the first Alder Lake laptops before the year's end, we find that pretty unlikely at this point—as we did then. We don't have any particular inside knowledge on the point, but all evidence is pointing to a start-of-the-year launch at CES 2022, which begins on January 5th.
If you'd like to check out the Geekbench results for yourself, here's a dump of the relevant links: a Lenovo with a Core i9-12900HK - an Aorus with a Core i7-12800H - a Quanta bearing a Core i7-12700H - Xiaomi TiMi laptop with a Core i7-12650H - another Quanta, this time with a Core i5-12500H - a second TiMi with a Core i5-12450H - a Fujitsu laptop and a Core i7-1280P - a second Lenovo with a Core i7-1260P - an LG with a Core i5-1240P.
