Intel announced the 12th generation Core HX-series processors just yesterday. The laptops that incorporate these chips have already reached the hands of analysts, to put them to the test in realistic tests and in benchmarks and stress tests. The first HX chip tested was the Core i7-12800HX, which, based on the review, seems a Core i7-12700H with better multicore performance.
The author of the first review is the Golden Pig Upgrade Pack team. They have also shared a few photos of the BGA package itself. You can see that it looks almost the same as the LGA Alder Lake-S package of desktop CPUs.
Return of HX Demonstrates Better Multicore Capability
The laptops used for the analysis were two Lenovo Y900s. One has a Core i7-12800HX and the other has an i7-12700H. Additionally, each laptop carried an RTX 3070 Ti mobile GPU and 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory. Thus, both teams are the same and the comparison is fair, so the critic can isolate the performance of the CPU, which will not be affected by disparity between graphics cards or RAM.
Single-core performance between the two chips under synthetic workloads was roughly the same, with a difference of 0,59%. A barely perceptible percentage and nothing significant. However, the HX chip was clearly the winner in the multicore tests. It outperformed the i7-12700H by more than 15%, which is already a significant percentage. The tester also tested both systems in build and production workloads, and the HX was slightly faster than the other i7 CPU.
Overall, the HX-based system didn't impress in games. It performed about as well as the notebook with the 12700H in online gaming. Only 2,5% faster improvement was noted in AAA games, which is not a big difference for gamers, even in the most CPU intensive games. It's a difference those who need a mobile workstation will appreciate.
But being such a small difference, it would not be strange that before a considerable price reduction, they prefer the i7-12700H over the i7-12800HX. It's a nice comeback for Intel's X-series CPUs, and we'll have to see how they fare in a desktop system with more powerful components like a DDR5 memory.
