Skip to main content

Leak reveals Intel’s new Alder Lake-HX chips with 16 cores

Intel has a new set of laptop CPUs coming out. Though the processors haven’t been officially announced, Chinese news outlet ITHome has uncovered the specifications for the new chips.

The new processors will be beefed-up versions of Intel’s regular mobile Alder Lake lineup, with up to 16 cores and 24 threads. The new mobile processors (called Alder Lake-HX), are meant to compete with AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 processors. Intel’s chips will have up to twice as many cores, but we will have to see how their individual performance actually holds up.

Recommended Videos

We also have a solid idea of what the base and boosted clock speeds are on the chips.  These clock speeds are still unconfirmed, but you can see the full breakdown of the leaked specs in a handy table over at Tom’s Hardware.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

The Alder Lake-HX models are expected to receive a 10-watt power boost.

The Core i9-12900HX will be the most powerful option, with 16 cores, 24 threads, a 2.3GHz base clock speed, and boosted clock speed of 5.0 GHz. As Tom’s Hardware notes, though, only eight of those will be performance cores. The i9-12950HX has the same cores and clock speeds, but also comes with Intel vPro, which is designed for business users and offers boosted performance and battery life.

Battery life will be important on these devices, too. As Tom’s Hardware reports in the same article, the Alder Lake-HX chips are expected to have a hefty power draw. The current Alder Lake-H chips have a 45-watt processor power base (PBP) draw. But the Alder Lake-HX models are expected to receive a 10W boost, making the PBP 55W. We don’t know what the max turbo power of the HX processors will be, but the Alder Lake-H chips top out at 115W.

Intel has not officially announced these chips yet, so some details may change as they are rolled out. Asus recently announced its “Pinnacle of Performance” event for May 9, and there sis speculation that the Alder Lake-HX chips will be unveiled there.

Caleb Clark
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Caleb Clark is a full-time writer that primarily covers consumer tech and gaming. He also writes frequently on Medium about…
Qualcomm Snapdragon X vs. Intel Core Ultra Series 2: the better laptop chip?
A photo of the Snapdragon X Plus CPU in the die

This was a turbulent year in the world of Windows laptops. The introduction of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips completely changed the game -- and I don't say that lightly.

They entered the market in such a forceful way that both AMD and Intel were forced to respond quickly with their own more power-efficient chips that could compete. Intel's Core Ultra Series 2, otherwise known as Lunar Lake, attempted to beat Qualcomm at its own game, boasting a dramatic improvement in battery life.

Read more
Intel Arrow Lake gets a surprise 33% gaming boost — with one caveat
The Core Ultra 9 285K socketed into a motherboard.

Intel Arrow Lake has struggled to compete against some of the best processors from both AMD and Intel itself, but improvements are on the way. In fact, a completely unexpected update just gave the CPUs a major boost. Unfortunately, there's a caveat: That boost only applies to one game.

The update in question was just announced by CDProjektRed, which has dropped a surprise patch for Cyberpunk 2077. The game studio now promises to improve in-game performance on Arrow Lake CPUs by up to 33%, which is a tune-up that gamers badly need, considering that the CPUs generally failed to impress in gaming scenarios.

Read more
Intel admits defeat on Arrow Lake — but it’s not down for the count
intel core ultra 5 245k review 4

Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs aren't off to a great start. As you can read in our Core Ultra 9 285K review and Core Ultra 5 245K review, Intel's latest CPUs miss the mark across productivity and gaming apps, and they're miles away from some of the best processors you can buy right now. According to Intel, there are several issues with the new platform that it plans to address within a matter of weeks.

In an interview with HotHardware, Intel's Robert Hallock was blunt about the release of Arrow Lake CPUs: "The launch didn't go as planned ... we have a number of things we got to go fix." Hallock, formerly of AMD, is near the top of Intel's technical marketing division. Although he didn't address exactly what's wrong with Arrow Lake, Hallock promised that Intel is working on updates that could significantly improve performance, and that they'll arrive in a matter of weeks.

Read more