Indian Gadget Awards: 12th Generation Intel Core i5 12500HL (Mainstream) and Apple M2 (Premium) Are the Best Laptop CPUs of 2022 – MySmartPrice

Update: The IGA Jury has now announced the winners of the two segments in the Laptop CPUs that were nominated. The Best Laptop CPU of 2022 – Mainstream segment winner is the 12th Generation Intel Core i5 12500HL while the Best Laptop CPU of 2022 – Premium segment was won by the Apple M2.

Winner – Best Laptop CPU of 2022 – Mainstream: 12th Generation Intel Core i5 12500HL

The AMD Ryzen 5 6600U is the cream of the crop when it comes to mid ranged CPUs from AMD and truly in the segment itself. As such the jury at IGA has decided that it topples the competition in this segment to take the crown as the best budget CPU for laptops.

Original story follows…

The resurgence of the importance of laptops in the last couple of years boosted production and CPUs being the core saw some exciting releases and performance comparisons. The PC processor market has been dominated by Intel and AMD. And while in the past we saw either AMD or Intel dominating the market alternately, things seem to have balanced out in the last couple of years with only brief periods when one of the two companies would take the performance lead.

Apple on its part has been doing the best it can to keep up with AMD and Intel, but it has always been limited in terms of releases compared to the other two companies. Both Intel and AMD have had multiple processor releases each year, which are part of the different segments of the market that it is targeted at, like the budget segment being targeted by Intel with its i3 and i5 processors and the top-of-the-line i9 processors for the super high-end PCs and laptops. And here are the Indian Gadget Awards 2022 nominations for the top CPUs for both the mainstream and the premium segments.

Best Laptop CPU of 2022 (Mainstream) – Indian Gadget Awards Nominees

• 12th Generation Intel Core i3
• 12th Generation Intel Core i5 1240P
• 12th Generation Intel Core i5 12500HL
• AMD Ryzen 5 6600U
• 12th Generation Intel Core i5 12450HX

12th Generation Intel Core i3

The 12th Generation Intel Core i3 series of processors from Intel features 12 different variants which begin from 4 core processors up to 10 core processors. But the general crux of this series of chip from this lineup is featured on super budget segment laptops that are strictly work and somewhat media oriented. These chips have a max turbo frequency of 4.4GHz and the three top of the line chips featuring a base processor frequency of up to 2.0GHz and up to 12MB Intel Smart Cache.

12th Generation Intel Core i5 1240P

This mid-level Alder Lake CPU features a Max Turbo Frequency of 4.40GHz and has a total of 12 cores with 16 threads. It has 4 performance cores and 8 efficient cores along with 12MB Intel Smart Cache. This is a brilliant mid-level processor that supports gaming and can handle some performance tasks. It has a base power requirement of 28W and max power consumption of 64W which makes it a rather efficient processor. It supports RAM up to LPDDR5 5200 MT/s.

12th Generation Intel Core i5 12500HL

While the 12th Generation Intel Core i5 12500HL is part of the same series of CPU as the 12th Generation Intel Core i5 1240P, it is almost Rs 6,000 cheaper. And it is less power efficient and supports only older frequencies of RAM. It has Max Turbo Frequency of 4.50GHz and has a total of 12 cores with 16 threads. It also has 4 performance cores and 8 efficient cores along with 18MB Intel Smart Cache. It has a base power requirement of 45W and max power consumption of 65W and supports up to DDR5 4800 MT/s RAM.

AMD Ryzen 5 6600U

The AMD Ryzen 5 6600U is part of the middling CPU in the Ryzen lineup with it sitting between the Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 7 CPUs. It features only 6 cores with 12 threads and a Maximum Boost Clock speed of up to 4.5GHz. It features a 16MB L3 cache and is rather power efficient with a base power requirement of 15W up to 28W. It has been manufactured using TSMC 6nm FinFET technology, and it is not unlocked for overclocking. This is optimum for mid-level laptops that can play some basic games with some media capability.

12th Generation Intel Core i5 12450HX

Another entrant from the 12th Generation Intel Core i5 series of processors the 12450HX has been benchmarked as one of the fastest mid-ranged mobile laptop CPUs. It has 8 cores with Max Turbo Frequency of 4.40GHz and has a total of 8 cores with 12 threads. It has 4 performance cores and 4 efficient cores along with 12MB Intel Smart Cache. It may not be the most power efficient CPU in this series but it has some of the best single core gaming performance. It has a base power requirement of 55W and max power consumption of 157W which makes it a power hungry processor. It supports RAM up to LPDDR5 4800 MT/s and has a max memory bandwidth of 76.8GB/s.

Winner – Best Laptop CPU of 2022: Premium – Apple M2

And the best of the best laptop CPU this year has been awarded to the Apple M2 by the prestigious jury at the IGA. This improved chipset from Apple shows significant improvements over the previous generation and takes on the top CPUs to launch in 2022.

Best Laptop CPU of 2022 (Premium) – Indian Gadget Awards Nominees

• 12th Generation Intel Core i9 12900HX
• Apple M2
• AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX

12th Generation Intel Core i9 12900HX

The 12th Generation Intel Core i9 12900HX is the most ridiculously costly and hyper mode beast of a processor from Intel in the last generation. This processor is the king of all benchmarks in 2022 except maybe in terms of power consumption. This high-end mobile CPU for laptops is based on the Alder Lake architecture and has 16 total cores with 8 performance cores (P-cores, Golden Cove architecture) and 8 efficient cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). P-cores support Hyper-Threading with 24 supported threads when combined with the E-cores. This 10nm processor has a Max Turbo Frequency of 5.0GHz with a base frequency of 1.7GHz and has a base power consumption of 55W. It is one of the best mobile processors for laptops in 2022 without a doubt.

Apple M2

The Apple M2 SoC was introduced in 2022 with the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 13. It comes with 8 cores of which there are 4 performance cores and 4 power-efficiency cores. The efficiency cores clock at up to 2.4 GHz, while the performance cores clock in at up to 3.5 GHz. The M2 SoC features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 with bandwidths of up to 100GB/s. According to Apple, the M2 SoC has a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1 SoC.

AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX​

Moving on to the best mobile processor AMD had to offer in 2022, the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX​ is also a beast in its own right. It has been featured in some of the top of the line gaming laptops of 2022 and it comes with 8 cores all of which are based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. These cores have a guaranteed base clock speed of 3.3GHz to Turbo Clock Speeds of up to 4.9GHz along with support for 16 thread SMT / Hyperthreading. It has been manufactured by TSMC using 6nm process. It has support for features like USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode. It has a base power requirement of 45W which makes it an efficient processor for such high performance.