[Hardware] Intel Launches 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX CPUs: The Fastest Laptop Chips Yet With Up To 16 Cores, 5 GHz, 16 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes, Full-Range Overclocking

[Clayboy™]

Intel has officially launched its 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX CPUs for enthusiast workstations & gaming laptops. The company terms them as the fastest chips for laptops released to date, offering insane amounts of performance and the highest core count yet to come on the laptop segment.

 

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX GPU Lineup Launched: Designed For High-End Workstation & Gaming Laptops With Up To 16 Cores, 5 GHz Clocks, & PCIe 5.0

The 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake-HX CPUs are simply put, Alder Lake-S 'Desktop' repurposed for the laptop segment. The new chips may not look vastly different than the desktop lineup but they do bring some cool changes over the existing Alder Lake-H (45W) SKUs. Intel has specifically designed these CPUs for mobile workstation platforms, targetting Engineers, Scientists, and Enthusiasts. To make this possible, the existing Intel Alder Lake-S 'Desktop' die had to be thinned out to integrate on such size-constrained devices.

 

 

For this purpose, Intel has thinned out the die height of their 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX to 2.0mm (vs 4.4mm). That's a 2.2x reduction in height while the rest of the package measures the same at 45 x 37.5mm. The die also comes in a BGA form factor versus the LGA form factor that the desktop line utilizes.

 

 

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX CPUs: The Most Feature-Rich Laptop Platform Ever!

In terms of capabilities, there's a lot going on. Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake-HX Mobility CPUs have been equipped to support both DDR5-4800 and DDR4-3200 memory. Some laptops will even allow users to equip ECC (Error Correcting Code) memory. As for capacities, workstation platforms need lots of system memory and as such, the CPUs allow up to 128 GB capacities in four DIMMs with a 2 DIMM per channel layout

 

 

Another key upgrade over Alder Lake-H is that Alder Lake-HX has wider IO support which is made possible thanks to its extended PCIe capabilities. The CPUs offer 16 Gen 5.0 and 4 Gen 4.0 lanes. In addition to these, the PCH offers 16 Gen 4 lanes and 12 Gen 3 lanes. Combined, you are getting 16 Gen 5 lanes, 20 Gen 4 lanes, and 12 Gen 3 lanes which are disruptive for the laptop platform. This allows for a discrete GPU, up to 4 SSDs, and up to 2 discrete Thunderbolt controllers to be utilized on a high-end laptop powered by these chips.