Are Intel’s i9 laptop processors a scam? No, not really, but that also doesn’t mean that they’re
a great product either. Here’s why you should just save some money and stick to the i7 instead.
This story starts when we look at the differences in specs between
Intel’s Core i7-12700H and i9-12900H processors,
or should I say similarities, because they’re not actually that different.
Both chips have the same core and thread counts, and that’s interesting because on the desktop side
the i9 at least has more efficient cores than the i7. Our laptop CPUs also have the same amounts of
cache and power. The major differences we care about is that the i9 is clocked a little higher.
This is kind of misleading though. Yeah technically the i9 can run at
higher clock speeds, but ultimately in a laptop it’s going to depend entirely
on the power limits of the laptop. Put simply, an i7 with a slightly
higher power limit compared to an i9 will end up performing better, as you’ll see.
To be fair, the i9 has other extra features, but these are more aimed
towards enterprise and business users rather than us gamers looking for a performance boost.
There’s also the i9-12900HK too. This is basically the same as the 12900H,
except the K on the end means that it’s unlocked and can be overclocked. But again in laptops,
you need high power levels to actually reach high clock speeds when under load anyway.
So unless you’ve got a good enthusiast grade machine with high CPU power limits,
overclocking probably isn’t going to be that useful.
The problem is, I frequently see the 12900HK in much thinner laptops,
and you’re really not going to get a benefit from overclocking these. It’s a bit of a waste.
So based on that I don’t think most people should even consider
a K series CPU. Now to be fair to those K chips,
you could also do some undervolting or memory overclocking, which might be a bit more useful.
So although the i9 processor with the K on the end is unlocked,
the regular 12900H I’ve got here isn’t. So it’s really only getting
that small clock speed boost compared to the i7-12700H. Let’s see how they perform!
To do this testing I’ve got Intel’s Core i7-12700H and i9-12900H
processors paired with the same powered RTX 3080 Ti graphics in the same laptop chassis,
the Neo 15 from XMG. Link below the video for more info on this laptop.
Both laptops have the exact same cooling solution, and both were tested with the same model of
SSD and the exact same 32 gig DDR5-4800 kit of memory installed for fairly comparable results.
Both laptops are also in the unique position of supporting liquid cooling,
so I’ve taken advantage of this to rule out thermal limits.
Right now, the XMG system with an i9 costs 145 euro more,
that’s about $150 USD, so about 6% more money when compared to the i7, though as a percentage that
would decrease if you upgrade other aspects like the graphics or add a liquid cooler.
Basically these laptops are identical,
with the only differences being that this one has an i7 while this one has an i9.
The most interesting thing I found was that the laptop with the i9 inside was constantly
running cooler in a heavy multicore workload. I’ve tested with either the CPUs limited to a 45 or 80
watt TDP, as I think this represents the power limits seen in many thin and thicker laptops.
Despite the i9 laptop running cooler, it’s also drawing a little more power at the wall.
This accounts for the whole laptop, but I made sure to make them as identical as possible,
so same screen brightness and RGB lighting off. It’s only a small difference in any case.
These are the clock speeds that were being reached during the same test.
I’ve got the P cores shown by the darker purple bars and the E cores in the lighter color.
Regardless of the power limit, the differences are small and well within the margin of error.
We’re talking about a 30MHz increase to the i9’s P cores at 80 watts which is basically nothing.
Now here’s how Cinebench was actually scoring. The i7 was ahead in the multi-core score at both
power limits, but again this is a super small difference and well within the margin of error.
This shows that in multi-core workloads, the differences between the i7 and i9 are basically
nothing. Check out the single core scores though, the i9 was around 100 points higher than the i7,
and this is because of the higher single core boost speeds. I mean we’re talking about less
than a 6% increase, but it’s definitely more measurable compared to the multicore difference.
We can see just how much the power limit difference matters here, give me a second
to explain what’s going on, it’s not that scary. The blue bars show the i7-12700H while the red
bars show the i9-12900H. We’re testing each CPU at 5 watt power increments between 10 and 125,
and we can see the Cinebench multicore score that this gives. Sometimes the i7 is a little ahead,
other times the i9 is, but in practice they’re basically identical. When running at the same
power level, the differences between the i7 and i9 are within the margin of error.
Say that we have an i9 in one laptop that runs at 60 watts, well an i7 in a thicker laptop running
at 90 watts, it’s almost scoring 18% higher, despite the fact that the i9 is meant to be
a higher tier product. So yeah, this shows that the power limits of the specific laptop
each chip is in really matter. The biggest difference seems to be right at the end,
at 125 watts. This is because the i9 finally has enough power to start making use of its
higher all core turbo boost speed, which is now being hit, but the simple fact is,
outside of extreme enthusiast tier laptops, CPU only power limits like this aren’t exactly common.
So the difference between the i7 and i9 is pretty much only seen in single core. Now
let’s see what this means for different applications and then games afterwards.
Adobe Photoshop is a test that I’ve found to depend on single core performance. We’re
seeing a 4% higher score from the i9 with both power limited to 45 watts, and then a
3% lead on the i9 at the higher 80 watt limit. Not exactly amazing stuff, but hey the i9 was better.
The differences were much smaller in Adobe Premiere. We’re talking about a 1% gain to
the i9 with both running at 80 watts, and honestly just based on my experience running these tests,
margin of error could easily flip these results.
DaVinci Resolve tends to care more about GPU performance, and with the same RTX 3080 Ti running
up to 150 watts in both laptops we’re not really seeing any difference between the i7 and i9.
I’m not really a fan of Geekbench,
but it’s one of the few tests that also covers single core performance,
and we can see that that’s the only time where the i9 had any sort of improvement compared to the i7.
Exporting a video in handbrake was completing a few seconds faster on the i7 at both power limits,
again margin of error stuff.
There’s an even more ridiculous difference between the two when compiling the Linux
kernel in Ubuntu 22.04. Both laptops were taking the same amount of time to complete the task,
and this was also seen when compiling LLVM as well, again under Ubuntu.
Compression and Decompression were about the same in 7-Zip as well,
no major differences one way or the other.
Rendering workloads like V-Ray, Corona and Blender
were all basically the same too. These are all multicore workloads,
so this makes sense based on what we saw earlier from the Cinebench power scaling results.
Here’s how all applications tested compare. The results at the top of
the graph that are doing the best on the i9 are all single core tests. Outside of those,
everything else was within the margin of error range with 1% differences in either direction.
Cool, so unless your application is single
threaded, the i9 doesn’t really matter, but what about games?
I’ve only tested CS:GO just to illustrate this point further. Both processors had a little FPS
boost increasing from 45 to 80 watts, but that can’t compare to the differences seen between the
i7 and i9. The i9 was reaching a 10% higher average FPS here, quite a large difference.
I’ve also tested Rainbow Six Siege as another eSports style game. The i7
and i9 were reaching about the same average FPS when limited to 45 watts,
but the i9 was able to give us a higher 1% low, so less dips in performance. Again both
laptops get an FPS boost when stepping up to the higher 80 watt power limit compared to 45 watts,
but the i9 has a larger increase. That said, the i9 was only reaching 3% higher average FPS here.
We’re still seeing higher FPS with the i9 in a more GPU heavy game like
Cyberpunk 2077. I mean again it’s only like a 3% boost to average FPS,
which is kind of nothing. If you played this game on both laptops
I seriously doubt you’d be able to tell which was the i7 and which was the i9 - I couldn’t.
God of War also had a small difference, just another 2-3 FPS gain with the i9,
and only a slight boost increasing from 45 to 80 watts. This also shows
that some games don’t benefit as much from having high CPU power limits.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was about the same with both CPUs at 45 watts, then a little more
of a gap at 80 watts, but again, 2 FPS isn’t a change most people would notice or want to
spend more money on. In most games you’d get a better FPS boost by upgrading the GPU instead.
So then are Intel’s i9 processors a scam? Not really, they are technically better
compared to the i7, but as we’ve seen for multicore work it really depends on
the power limit of the specific laptop that the chip is in. If the power limits are the
same then the i7 and i9 perform about the same in multithreaded workloads.
With 2 different laptops it’s absolutely possible that you could have an i7
beating the i9, it just depends on the power limits defined by the OEM.
Assuming that both processors do have the same power limits,
well the i9 still has the edge when it comes to single core performance. So unless you really
care about that, the i7 is objectively just offering better value for the money.
Unless you seriously need higher single threaded performance or you run eSports
games competitively, just stick to the i7. If your goal is to boost gaming performance
then you’d be better off putting the money towards a better GPU, because in most cases
that’s going to affect games more than the differences between i7 and i9 in most games.
That said, by the time you spec out XMG’s Neo 15 to RTX 3080 Ti with liquid cooler like I tested
here, at that point the extra money to get the i9 is only 4% more, would you even care?
Now if you’re like me, you’re probably also wondering how
Intel’s laptop CPUs compare against AMD’s CPUs this year. Last year they were quite close,
but this year it’s a bit of a different story. Make sure you watch this video next so you don’t
make a mistake when buying your next laptop! I’ve compared Intel’s 12th gen against AMD’s Ryzen 6000
as fairly as possible in that video, so I’ll see you over in that one next!