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Intel is preparing to launch a beastly new 16-core CPU

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The specifications of the upcoming Intel Alder Lake-HX mobile processors leaked ahead of their release, granting some insight as to what kind of performance we can expect from the new CPUs.

Intel Alder Lake-HX will be the first laptop platform with 16 cores, and it will soon start appearing in some of the best laptops on the market.

Intel Alder Lake-HX specifications.
VideoCardz

Intel is expected to introduce Alder Lake-HX at its upcoming Intel Vision event, taking place from May 10 to May 11. The leaked specifications show a total of seven processors: Two Core i9, three Core i7, and two Core i5. All of these, but especially the top of the lineup, will find their way into enthusiast laptops and workstations.

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The Core i9-12950HX is the crown jewel of the lineup, with a whopping 16 cores and 24 threads; eight of the cores are P-cores (performance), and the remaining eight — E-cores (efficiency). We’ve actually seen it benchmarked as early as March 2022, but of course, these tests may not be accurate upon release.

As mentioned, Alder Lake-HX is the first mobile platform to offer 16 cores. According to the leak, the processor also sports clock speeds of 2.3GHz (base) and 5.0 GHz (boost) on its performance cores, as well as 30MB of L3 cache. The processor base power is 55 watts, but the max turbo power goes all the way up to 157 watts.

The above processor is followed by the Core i9-12900HX, which has near-identical specifications, but the Core i9-12950HX is Intel vPro eligible, while the Core i9-12900HX is not. Intel vPro is Intel’s remote management technology, so this just boils down to the fact that these CPUs are likely aimed at mobile workstations.

The 55-watt power from the Intel Core i9-12950HX is not unusual, as the entire lineup has the same processor base power and max turbo power. Compared to Intel’s previous mobility platform, Intel Alder Lake-H, that’s a 42-watt increase in boost power.

Alder Lake-HX also adds more PCIe lanes across the board and is going to be the first mobile platform to support PCIe Gen 5.0. The increase in lanes is fairly substantial, adding up to a total of 48 PCIe lanes: 16 Gen 5 lanes, 20 Gen 4 lanes, and 12 Gen 3 lanes versus the 28 (16 Gen 4, 12 Gen 3) offered by Intel Alder Lake-H.

Intel Alder Lake mobility chip.
Intel

Alongside PCIe Gen 5, Alder Lake-HX supports DDR5 memory with Intel XMP 3.0 profiles for overclocking purposes. It also comes with a feature called Dynamic Memory Boost. It’s expected that these CPUs should offer outstanding overclocking capabilities, including efficiency-core overclocking. Intel Speed Optimizer will also receive an update, and the CPU will also come with Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility technology. Intel says that this will apply to all the HX processors, meaning that all of them will be overclock-friendly.

According to VideoCardz, which is where today’s leak comes from, Intel is going to put the full Alder Lake silicon on a BGA package, and the package will be the same size as its LGA desktop counterpart (45 x 37.5 mm). However, it’s going to be slimmed down considerably in height, going from 4.4mm to 2.0mm in order to comfortably fit inside a much smaller space.

This actually isn’t the first glimpse of Alder Lake-HX specs we’ve had so far — we covered the initial leak in April. Seeing as the numbers align, there is now a very high chance that the specifications we’re seeing here are the real thing, and all that remains is to have an official confirmation from Intel — which should be right around the corner.

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Monica J. White
Monica J. White
Computing Writer
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
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