Intel is expected to announce their Alder Lake mobile processors in Q1 2022 with rumors and leaks for several of these chips already surfacing. The i7-12700H has recently been spotted running Cinebench on what could possibly be an MSI GE76 Raider 12UH with the results showing impressive performance gains. The processor features six Golden Cove (P) cores and eight Gracemont (E) cores for a total of 14 cores and 20 threads.

The i7-12700H includes a configurable base TDP of 35 W - 45 W and this specific sample was running at a reported base frequency of 2.9 GHz during testing. The processor scored 689 points in Cinebench R20 single-core which places it 12% faster than the Core i9-11950H and 21% faster than AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5900HX. The processor widens this gap in Cinebench R20 multi-core with a score of 7158 points placing it 47% above the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 5900HX. We can also see that multi-core performance is 49% faster than the recently released Apple M1 Max in Cinebench R23. AMD is preparing their Ryzen 6000 processors for an early 2022 launch which will be competing with these Alder Lake chips but we have yet to see many performance leaks for them to compare with.

An alleged Intel Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake-S" sample is shown beating the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX HEDT processor at AMD's favorite benchmark, Cinebench R23, in its multi-threaded (nT) test. At this point it's not known whether the i9-12900K is overclocked, but the CPU-Z instance in the screenshot reads 5.30 GHz, which could very well be the processor's stock Thermal Velocity Boost frequency. The sample scored upward of 30000 points, putting it above the Threadripper 2990WX reference score in Cinebench.

The 2990WX is based on the "Zen+" microarchitecture, and released in 2018, but is a 32-core/64-thread chip that should have ripped through this rendering workload. The i9-12900K, on the other hand, has eight "Golden Cove" performance cores that have HyperThreading, in addition to 8 "Gracemont" efficiency cores that lack HTT. This benchmark was run on Windows 10, which lacks awareness of the Intel Thread Director, a hardware component that optimizes utilization of the two kinds of CPU cores. Windows 11 is known to feature better awareness of hybrid core architectures. The i9-12900K sample is possibly installed on a Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Ultra motherboard, and has 32 GB of DDR5-5200 memory (two modules, logically four 40-bit channels).

The recently leaked Windows 11 build appears to include certain optimizations for hybrid architecture processors. The developer preview provides a small improvement to Intel Lakefield processors and that boost will likely increase when Windows 11 officially launches. The Intel Lakefield processor family features a hybrid core design with 1 big core and 4 small cores, this is similar to the Apple M1 and similar hybrid designs are expected from AMD in the future. The Intel Lakefield Core i7-L16G7 CPU was tested by HotHardware and they measured performance improvements of 2% - 8% in various synthetic benchmarks including GeekBench 5, Cinebench R23, and PCMark 10. These performance improvements will benefit Intel's upcoming 12th generation Alder Lake processors and their Raptor Lake successors along with AMD's rumored Strix Point APUs.

AMD via its official YouTube channel shared a video of two of its Epyc chips destroying Cinebench's R23 benchmark, setting a new world record in the process. The record-setting feat was achieved with two off-the shelf Epyc 7763 CPUs - the ones with 64 physical CPUs and 128 threads of Zen 3 IPC. The system, which was built on top of a reference server motherboard and paired with server-grade aircooling, reached a grand total of 113,631 points - completing the benchmark run is around ten (10) measly seconds and soaring through the previous record-holder, a heavily overclocked Ryzen Threadripper 3990X (105,170 points).

The AMD system crushes the closest-priced Intel Xeon CPUs in performance - a dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8380 (Ice Lake-SP generation) configuration reached a comparably paltry 74,630 points - and AMD wins in the price-performance ratio again, with each of its Epyc 7763 CPUs costing $7,890 compared to $8,100 for each of the Intel Xeon platinum 8380. AMD's name of choice for their server-grade CPUs offering up a justification for its admittedly 15-year-old naming scheme. Catch the AMD video after the break.