Intel on Tuesday announced its most powerful mobile processors yet: the new 12th-generation Alder Lake Core HX series aimed directly at the enthusiast market.
Core i5, i7 and i9 HX series chips will be unlocked, meaning overclockers will be able to push a mobile chip even further than they could before; Intel promises desktop-grade performance in laptops and mobile workstations. It might seem like a tall order, but the new chips will feature up to 16 cores/24 threads, PCIe 5.0 x16, and up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM, along with 55W of base silicon power. So desktop performance is entirely possible, if not unlikely.
“With the new core architecture and higher power limits of 12th Gen Intel Core HX processors, we’re empowering content creators to tackle the most demanding workflows like never before,” said Chris Walker, vice president of Intel and general manager of Mobility Client Platforms. , said in a press release.
The new HX-series chips are marketed to both creative and technical professionals as well as PC gamers, all of whom will be able to take advantage of more and faster processing cores, next-generation memory and PCIe components. 5.0 like SSDs.
Announced at the Intel Vision 2022 event on Tuesday, there’s no word yet on pricing or availability, only that the new chips will be available later this year.
Analysis: Intel’s HX-series chips look powerful and power-hungry
The specs of the Intel Core HX-series mobile processors look really impressive, and given our experience with Intel’s Alder Lake mobile chips so far, we have no doubt that the HX-series will be more or less as powerful as so claims Intel.
But there’s more to the story: we’re very interested to see how these new chips handle the battery life issue. They are mobile chips, after all, and laptops cannot legally have batteries over 100Wh.
Intel’s Alder Lake chips prove to be much more power-hungry than their 11th-gen predecessors, and given the reality that gaming laptops and mobile workstations are already on the lower end of the lifespan spectrum of battery, HX-series chips may not help you reduce battery life even more.
If you’re going to be tethered to a wall outlet every time you use your Core HX series laptop, that really stretches the definition of what it means to be a “mobile” device. That said, we don’t see too many enthusiasts objecting to the compromise, so we expect the new HX series to be a hit when it lands later this year.