You shouldn’t spend more money to get Intel’s best HX laptop CPU,
unless you’re one of the few with some very specific needs - here’s why.
The new 12900HX has two more Performance cores compared to the 12900H, which gives it 4
additional threads. Despite having more cores, HX mostly has the same clock speeds, however
the turbo boost speed of the Efficient cores are actually 200Mhz slower on the higher tier HX chip.
HX also has 25% more cache, and this is known to improve FPS in games, so we’ll check that too.
More cores means more performance right? Not always.
Think about it this way, more cores need more power to run. If both processors are limited
to the same 60 watt TDP then that means the same power budget needs to get spread across
more cores with HX. You might have more cores, but less power to go around means lower clock speeds.
In other words, HX can perform worse than the lower tier H series, unless
it’s got adequate power to get to work.
This power scaling graph sums things up well, give me a second to explain.
I’ve tested Cinebench R23 in 5 watt increments between 10 and 150 watts,
using Intel XTU software to control how much power the processor gets. The blue bars show
the 14 core 20 thread 12900H, while the red bars show the 16 core 24 thread 12900HX.
The 12900HX isn’t consistently winning until it’s getting 85 watts or higher. Below 85 watts or so,
the lower tier 12900H was actually performing better in this multi-core workload. HX only
really benefits when there’s more power. Those extra cores don’t just run on hopes and dreams.
Now this isn’t a problem for the HX processor in my GT77 laptop,
because it can run the processor at full power limit no problem.
But it poses an interesting question: will any companies use the HX processor in a laptop that’s
a little thinner? I can only imagine that we will see HX chips in other laptops that don’t quite
have as beefy cooling and thermal solutions as this. If any companies end up doing this and the
laptop’s CPU power limit to 80 watts so it doesn’t get too hot then we could end up in the situation
where a lower tier H chip would have been the better choice within the same power budget.
Now to be fair, HX does also offer extra features too. It’s not all just about raw performance.
HX chips are unlocked and can be overclocked or undervolted, though if you really want those
features you could also get a 12900HK, which is basically an unlocked 12900H.
HX also supports higher power limits than H series,
which as we’ve just seen is required to actually benefit from the extra cores.
Compared to H series, HX also allows for up to double the maximum memory, more M.2 slots and
other features, like PCIe Gen 5 for the first time in laptops which means faster SSD speeds.
PCIe Gen 5 in laptops doesn’t mean a whole lot today because there aren’t a whole lot
of Gen 5 SSDs that you can buy right now. But this will of course change over time,
so I suppose you could argue that that makes the HX series a bit better
in terms of “future proofing”, as much as I hate those words.
To do this testing I’ve got Intel’s Core i9-12900H in XMG’s Neo 15,
and the Core i9-12900HX in MSI’s Titan GT77. More info on both laptops can be found below the video.
Yeah I know, they’re not the same laptop chassis,
but with a bit of tuning I think I’ve still made this a pretty fair comparison.
For example, I’ve tested with the exact same 32 gig kit of DDR5-4800 memory installed in
both laptops. Both have the same RTX 3080 Ti graphics with the highest possible power limit.
I’ve done all testing with both laptops power limited to 3 different values
and this combined with using the liquid cooler on the Neo 15
and a cooling pad on the GT77 means that there wasn’t any thermal throttling taking
place. Sounds kind of unfair because the GT77 didn’t have liquid cooling,
but at the end of the day as long as there’s no thermal throttling it doesn’t really matter.
These are the clock speeds being reached by all P and E cores with
Cinebench running at the 3 different power levels,
45, 80 and 125 watts. The 12900HX was reaching lower clock speeds than the 12900H
at all three levels, because as mentioned the same power budget gets spread across more cores.
That said, interestingly the higher the TDP, the bigger the difference
in terms of total power drawn at the wall. The 12900HX system was always using less power,
though I am testing two completely different laptops,
so there could be some other differences at play here. It could also be that HX is binned better.
Likewise the temperature differences aren’t really fairly comparable
because the cooling solutions of both machines are so different.
Here’s how Cinebench actually performs with these different power levels.
At 45 watts the 12900H was actually ahead in multi core, they’re both about the same at 80 watts,
and then at 125 watts, which is as high as the 12900H could run, the HX chip was finally ahead.
Single core performance shouldn’t be limited by these power limits,
the fact that the H was ahead of the HX here is likely down to the silicon lottery. Basically I
wouldn’t be surprised to see the single core scores flipped with a larger sample size.
I saw bigger gains in other tests like Adobe Photoshop though. HX was always ahead
of the H chip in this test. The difference was extremely small with both limited to 45 watts,
but at higher levels HX had a larger boost.
Generally I find this test to benefit from single core performance, so based on those
Cinebench scores I wasn’t expecting HX to win. Perhaps the extra cache with HX is helping here.
Adobe Premiere had even bigger boosts with HX at all power levels. This test does like having
more cores, so perhaps the higher core and thread count with HX is still beneficial for
this workload even if they’re clocking lower compared to H within the same power budget.
DaVinci Resolve on the other hand is usually more GPU heavy, and given both laptops have
the same 3080 Ti GPU running at the same power limits it’s not too surprising to
see the scores closer together. HX was still claiming victory at higher power limits though.
7-Zip tested compression and decompression speed, and HX was only ahead at the highest
power limit I tested. Even with 80 watts the lower tier H chip was performing slightly better,
so this is another test where HX really needs more power to stretch its legs.
And don’t forget more power will equal more heat and need a bigger laptop.
I tested Linux kernel compilation under Ubuntu,
all the other tests were done with Windows 11. Lower times are better here,
so again HX was only able to pull off a win at the highest power limit tested.
LLVM was also compiled on Linux, and again, HX was only faster with the higher power
level. Both were basically tied with only a 2 second difference which is within the margin
of error range at 80 watts, while the lower tier H chip had a clear lead at 45 watts.
Lower times are better in Handbrake too, as this is how long it took to export a video.
HX was slightly ahead of H at 80 watts here,
but it’s only a minor difference. The gap gets larger at the higher power limit though,
but again at lower levels HX can’t compete in this multithreaded workload.
Rendering workloads like V-Ray can make good use of all cores and threads.
At the highest power limit HX was scoring 10% higher than H, despite HX having 14% more cores
or 20% more threads. Similar deal with the Corona renderer too.
Higher scores are better in blender, and this was another where HX was only able to win with higher
power. 80 watts is honestly already quite a fair amount for most traditional laptops to
use in a CPU only workload, and going to 125 for H series in a sustained manner like this
is next level. Most laptops with a 12900H likely can’t even achieve this.
I don’t really like Geekbench, but it’s one of the few tests that also has a single core
component. For multicore the story we’ve already seen repeats. HX loses at 45 watts, it’s about
even at 80 watts, then HX takes the lead at 125 watts, though it’s only a 6% higher score.
On average out of all of these applications tested, the 12900HX ended up being about
3% slower than the 12900H when both were running at 45 watts in these specific tests.
This is the base power for the 12900H while the HX has 55 watts,
but that extra 10 watts wouldn’t stop the lower tier H winning.
With both running at 80 watts, which is about what you’d expect to see a H chip run
at in a CPU only workload in a decent gaming laptop, on average HX was almost 1% faster.
That’s definitely being held up by the Adobe Premiere result which
is a bit of an outlier in favor of HX. If we ignore Premiere then HX ends up being around
a percent slower in the rest of the tests, but as you can see it varies by workload.
With both running at 125 watts HX was almost 9% faster on average in these specific tests now.
H was only ahead in a couple of single core tests,
but the results are within the margin of error range and like I said before,
ultimately a result of silicon lottery as some i9’s will do better than others.
To be fair to HX, don’t forget that it maxes out at 157 watts, so it can perform even better than H
with more power. My goal here was to compare both CPUs at the same power levels in a fair manner.
In a sustained multicore workload, the 12900HX in the GT77 could peak at 160 watts initially,
but even with the fans maxed out in longer workloads thermal throttling could see it drop
down to around 135 watts. And this laptop already has some pretty beefy cooling with four fans.
Alright let’s check out 10 games at 1080p and 1440p resolutions!
Again both laptops have Nvidia’s RTX 3080 Ti graphics, and with dynamic boost I confirmed that
both could go up to 175 watts. But with the CPU also active both maxed out at around 170 watts.
The Neo 15 is a bit thinner and couldn’t get the CPU above 60 watts with the GPU maxed out,
while the GT77 could get the CPU to 75 watts when the GPU was loaded. So just to keep things
fair for this comparison, for all the games both CPUs were power limited to 60 watts.
And unless you’re playing a really CPU heavy game the extra 15 watts that the
HX chip is capable of in this laptop shouldn’t really matter.
Let’s start out with Microsoft Flight Simulator, because this is a game that
seems to benefit from the CPU having more cache. At least that was the case when
comparing the Ryzen 7 5800X with the newer 5800X3D, and it seems to apply here too. At
1080p the HX system was reaching a 9% higher average FPS, and then 12% higher at 1440p.
It’s not all big gains for HX though. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a little
behind on the HX system. Along with this result, I’ve seen other cases where more
cores and threads start offering lower performance in this test. Regardless,
the performance difference is so small you wouldn’t notice it while actually playing anyway.
CS:GO is an eSports game that generally does better on better CPUs,
and that was the case here. The HX CPU was around 6% higher in average frame rate at
both resolutions. Not a massive difference, but one of the biggest out of the 10 games tested.
Rainbow Six Siege had an even larger difference. The HX chip was reaching a 12% higher average FPS
at 1080p, and 8% higher at 1440p. The 1% lows in particular seem to have a nice improvement,
so fewer dips with HX. I doubt the gains we’re seeing are from the extra cores and
threads. I’d put my money on it being that HX offers 30 megabytes of cache while H has 24.
Again this doesn’t seem to matter in some games like Forza Horizon 5,
where we’re only seeing a 1-2 FPS difference between the two processors. This is within
the margin of error range and absolutely not a change anyone would notice when playing.
Fortnite is another eSports title,
but unlike CS:GO and Rainbow Six I didn’t find the difference here to be as big.
Likewise Call of Duty Warzone had basically no difference in average FPS,
though the 1080p 1% lows had a little boost with HX.
There’s no real difference in Cyberpunk 2077 either. Strangely a little more of
a gap at the higher 1440p resolution, which I wasn’t expecting given CPU
differences usually matter more at lower resolutions, but we’re talking about 4 FPS.
Far Cry 6 also had a slightly bigger gap at 1440p compared to 1080p,
but this time the lower tier H chip was ahead, but again it’s like 3 FPS, whatever, let’s move on.
There’s no practical difference in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla either.
On average over all 10 games, the 12900HX was 3% faster compared to the 12900H, though as we can
see it really depends on the specific game. Only CS:GO, Flight Simulator and Rainbow Six Siege
had clear gains with HX, while the others only had relatively small differences one way or the other.
The average difference between the two gets smaller at the higher 1440p resolution,
which is what you’d expect as the GPU should take over more of the work here
and the difference between CPUs should start to matter less. I’d expect the
difference to be even smaller at 4K, so I didn’t bother testing it.
So is Intel’s 12900HX worth spending more money on compared to the 12900H?
Honestly for most people, probably not.
The biggest thing is, well, probably the laptop itself. HX needs more power
to actually perform better, which means a physically larger laptop.
In games, outside of a few titles, the differences are minor. With the GPU also active
most laptops don’t send a whole lot of power to the CPU anyway,
and let’s face it, 14 cores 20 threads isn’t exactly going to be a limit in games today.
So the boosts that we are seeing with HX is probably due to that extra cache.
Outside of gaming, HX wasn’t actually that much better unless your workload is actually able
to smash all 16 cores and hit high power limits. The simple fact is, 14 cores 20
threads is just plenty for most people, and I can’t really see that changing for some time.
If time is money and you do a lot of rendering then something like HX could be beneficial. Or
if you need extra storage and more memory, then HX can offer that. But again that will increase
the size of the laptop because these things take up more room. That’s just the tradeoff,
but at the same time this is obviously still far more portable compared to a full blown desktop PC.
Unfortunately it’s difficult to account for price right now because the GT77 is still on
pre-order and I can’t find a whole lot of pricing details for it. Right now though I can see it on
HID Evolution for around $4300 USD. Meanwhile the Neo 15 ends up being less than $4000 USD once you
convert the currency, and that’s assuming that you do get it with a liquid cooler like I’ve tested.
So based on these two laptops that I’ve tested with, the HX machine is probably around 10-15%
more money. Though it is also quite a bit larger, but you do also get those extra benefits like more
memory and more storage space. Honestly I think those are more important to most people because
the performance difference wasn’t really that much, but at the same time when you’re spending
this much money on either of these machines maybe you don’t really care and HX is fine for you.
Alright, so if H series is the better value option for most people,
then the next question is should you go for the i9 or i7? Because both the i9 and i7 have the
same core and thread count and same cache, but the i9 costs more money. You can find out all
the differences and see if i9 is a scam in this video over here next, so I’ll see you in that one.