Intel Core i5-12500H

The Intel Core i5-12500H was introduced at the beginning of 2022 and is based on the Alder Lake-P architecture, which is manufactured in the Intel 7 process. It is the successor to the Intel Core i5-11500H The Alder Lake architecture is characterized by the fact that it offers performance cores and efficiency cores, similar to the big.LITTLE architecture from smartphones. This can significantly reduce power consumption, as the performance cores only work when they are needed and the efficiency cores can take over background processes.

The Intel Core i5-12500H has 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores and therefore 16 threads, as the performance cores support hyperthreading. The performance cores clock at frequencies from 2.5 GHz to 4.5 GHz and the efficiency cores from 1.8 GHz to 3.3 GHz.

As with the previous generation, WiFi 6E and Thunderbolt 4 are partially integrated and, of course, DDR5 and LPDDR5 are also supported. Essentials vPro, a slightly slimmed-down vPro variant, is also on board.

The TDP has been specified by Intel at 45 watts. Under load, the power consumption can rise to up to 95 watts. Power consumption should be significantly lower, especially under low load, thanks to the efficiency cores.

Clearest leap in performance for years
As the Intel Core i5-12500H is suitable for power-hungry tasks, it is offered with dedicated graphics cards. Currently with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, both graphics cards support ray tracing and DLSS. The performance reserves are somewhat greater with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. Full HD gaming should not be a problem with either graphics card.

The integrated graphics card is an Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80 EUs. This is particularly suitable for everyday tasks such as office work, writing emails, surfing the web and watching videos. Older and less graphically demanding games, such as League of Legends, will not fail either. Just as little as with simple Photoshop and a little video editing. However, performance miracles are not to be expected with this graphics card.

Intel has made a significant leap forward with the Alder Lake architecture. The processors have become much more powerful and also much more efficient under low load.