Intel Claims New i9 Chip Is Faster Than Apple’s M1 Max

While Apple has long claimed that its very own M1 chip is faster than Intel’s processors, it looks like things are about to change.

Image Credit: Intel Corporation

This week at CES, Intel announced the all-new 12th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors, including the Intel Core i9-12900HK.

According to Intel itself, this is the fastest mobile processor ever created, and the company specifically compares it to the Apple M1.

“The performance extends for unparalleled gaming experiences across top gaming titles and content creation tools,” Intel says. “The new 12th Gen Intel Core H-series is the world’s best mobile gaming platform, delivering up to 28% faster gaming than the previous mobile gaming leader in the market: the Intel Core i9-11980HK. 12th Gen Intel Core H-series is more than up to the task for content creators. For example, users may see up to 43% higher performance in 3D rendering gen-over-gen.”

Intel says it based its Apple M1 Max performance on a public statement made by Apple on October 18, 2021, and measurements on an Apple M1 Max 16″ MacBook Pro with 64GB RAM (Model A2485).

It appears the benchmark used was SPEC CPU2017 from the SPEC consortium. Intel also claims that the i9-12900HK outperforms the M1 Max and M1 Pro in Photoshop, Lightroom, Autocad, Revit, Blender, and CrossMark benchmarks.

If we take these statements as entirely factual, the results are undeniably impressive. What we can see is that while Apple’s M1 Max works better at low wattages, the Intel Core i9-12900HK has a better performance-per-watt than its competitor.

“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,” said an Intel spokesperson to MacRumors.

Below are the full specs of Intel’s new 12th generation processors:

  • Up to 5 GHz frequencies, 14 cores (6 P-cores and 8 E-cores) and 20 threads that give the 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900HK the crown as the fastest mobile processor. It delivers performance leadership over Intel’s previous generation and the competition.
  • The performance extends for unparalleled gaming experiences across top gaming titles and content creation tools. The new 12th Gen Intel Core H-series is the world’s best mobile gaming platform, delivering up to 28% faster gaming than the previous mobile gaming leader in the market: the Intel Core i9-11980HK. 12th Gen Intel Core H-series is more than up to the task for content creators. For example, users may see up to 43% higher performance in 3D rendering gen-over-gen.
  • Broad memory support for DDR5/LPDDR5 and DDR4/LPDDR4 modules up to 4800 MT/s – a first in the industry for H-series mobile processors.
  • Nearly three times faster connectivity4 on exclusive high-speed channels without legacy Wi-Fi interference. Using integrated Intel® Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+)5 gives users the freedom to work and learn from home and relax with smooth, high-quality streaming.
  • Thunderbolt™ 4 support that delivers transfer speeds up to 40Gbps and PC connectivity to multiple 4K monitors and accessories.

The company says that the new chips will be featured in laptops as soon as next month.

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