Intel’s 5 Biggest Announcements At CES 2022

Intel came to CES 2022 with several announcements for new laptop CPUs, desktop CPUs, gaming GPUs and a significant expansion of its vPro business platform.

New CPUs For Desktops And Laptops — Plus New Gaming GPUs

Intel used CES 2022 to announce a significant expansion of its 12th-generation Core processor family and mark the beginning of the chipmaker’s discrete GPU efforts for the gaming market.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company packed a lot of announcements within its CES press conference at Las Vegas: new H-series CPUs for gaming laptops, new P-series CPUs for thin-and-light laptops, new U-series CPUs for thin-and-light laptops with innovative form factors, several new desktop CPUs and a major expansion of the chipmaker’s vPro business platform.

Intel also announced that it has begun shipping its much-anticipated Arc discrete GPUs to OEMs for both gaming laptops and desktops, signaling new competition for Nvidia and AMD on the graphics front.

What follows are Intel’s five biggest announcements at CES 2022.

(Pictured: Gregory Bryant, head of Intel’s Client Computing Group)

New 12th-Gen Intel Core H-Series For Gaming Laptops

Intel launched its 12th-generation Core H-series mobile processors for gaming and content creation laptops, marking the second lineup of chips to use the company’s Alder Lake hybrid architecture.

The chipmaker is calling the new H-series “the fastest mobile processor ever” and said the flagship Core i9-12900HK outperforms AMD’s flagship H-series CPU from last year and Apple’s new M1 Max that powers the latest MacBook Pro models.

Intel said the 12th generation represents its fastest ramp yet for H-series processors, with more than 100 laptop designs expected this year from Acer, Dell, Gigabyte, HP Inc., Lenovo, MSI and more. Systems will be available starting in February.

The CPU lineup consists of eight models, and they feature up to 14 cores, split between a maximum of 6 Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores, and a maximum turbo frequency of 5GHz. The lowest model on the stack, the Core i5-12450H, comes with a total of eight cores, split between 4 Performance cores and 4 Efficient cores, and a turbo frequency of 4.4GHz.

The H-series processors support four memory types — DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200, LPDDR5-5200 and LPDDR4x-4267 — and they also feature support for Intel Wi-Fi 6E, Thunderbolt 4, PCIe 4.0 on the die.

Intel said the flagship Core i9-12900HK provides up to 40 percent faster performance than the previous-generation Core i9-11980HK. It also said the processor outperforms AMD’s flagship Ryzen 9 5900HX across multiple measures, including games and content creation applications. Intel measured the chip against Apple’s M1 Max and M1 Pro chips too and found instances where Intel’s is better or on par.

Intel Ships Arc GPUs to OEMs, Discloses 50 Design Wins

Intel’s plan to become a big player in the discrete GPU market is finally coming to fruition with the announcement that the company is shipping its Arc GPUs to OEMs with more than 50 design wins.

Those design wins consist of both laptops and desktops from several major OEMs, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP Inc., Lenovo, Samsung and MSI, Intel announced at its CES press conference.

The chipmaker plans to take on Nvidia and AMD with “industry-leading advanced features” such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing, an AI-driven upscaling technology called Xe Super Sampling and Intel Deep Link technology, which allows Intel’s CPU and GPU to work in tandem to optimize performance.

Intel said it is already seeing good pickup with its Xe Super Sampling technology, also known as XeSS, among large and small game studios. This includes Kojima Productions, which is doing an exclusive XeSS integration for the upcoming “Death Stranding: Director’s Cut.”

Other studios buying into Intel XeSS include 505 Games, Codemasters, Ubisoft, PUBG Studios, Techland, IO Interactive, EXOR Studios and Fishlabs.

More 12th-Gen Intel Core Desktop CPUs Released

Intel launched an expanded lineup of its 12th-generation Core desktop processors at CES 2022 after releasing its fastest CPUs last fall.

The expanded lineup consists of 22 new processors that range from a $489 Core i9 to a $64 Pentium and $42 Celeron, and they cover gaming, creation, productivity and IoT segments. The new processors were accompanied by the announcement of three new Intel 600 Series chipsets — H670, B660 and H610 — giving customers more options for motherboard configurations.

The lineup includes a handful of F-series processors that lack integrated graphics and cost slightly less than their counterparts with on-board GPUs. The processors feature up to 16 cores, split between eight Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores and a maximum boost frequency of 5.1GHz. Several of the processors only have Performance cores and have no Efficient cores.

Outside of the regular lineup, Intel revealed that a special KS-series processor in the 12th-generation Core lineup will reach a maximum turbo frequency of up to 5.5GHz. The processor, which will start shipping at the end of the first quarter, will also be capable of reaching 5GHz across multiple cores.

All of the processors support DDR5-4800 and DDR4-3200 for a total memory capacity of 128GB, and they all come with a total of 20 PCIe lanes. Their Intel Smart Cache ranges from 4-30MB, and the L2 cache ranges from 2.5-14MB. The non-IoT processors have base power range of 46-65 watts, and their maximum turbo power goes from 89-202 watts.

All of the IoT processors, which carry the “T” suffix, carry a base power of 35 watts, and the maximum turbo power ranges from 69-106 watts. Their features include high-computing performance and flexibility for heavier workloads, accelerated AI and deep learning capabilities, embedded use condition reliability, enhanced integrated graphics, hardware-based security, real-time capabilities, long-life availability and long-term software support.

Intel said its new mid-range Core i5-12600 is faster than AMD’s Ryzen 7 5700G across several benchmarks: 19 percent faster in SYSmark25, 30 percent faster in CrossMark, 8 percent faster in UL Procyon Productivity and 31 percent faster in Pugetbench Premier Pro, among others.

The new 65-watt processors are accompanied with the new Intel Laminar Cooler, which comes in three different configurations depending on the performance level of the processor.

New 12th-Gen Intel Core CPUs For Ultra-Thin Laptops

While Intel focused a good chunk of its press conference on the new H-series CPUs for gaming laptops, the chipmaker also revealed two other lineups of 12th-generation Core mobile CPUs.

The new P-series processors have a base power of 28 watts and are built for “performance” thin-and-light laptops, representing a new category of mobile CPUs for Intel. Meanwhile, the new U-series processors have a base power range of 9-15 watts and are “tailor-made” for thin-and-light laptops with innovative form factors like foldables, 2-in-1s and detachables.

Windows and Chrome laptops with both sets of processors will be available starting in the first quarter.

Like other 12th-generation Core CPUs, the P-series and U-series processors rely on Intel’s Alder Lake hybrid architecture, but they mainly differ in thermal design, core counts, Performance-core-to-Efficient-core ratios and cache size.

The P-series, for instance, sports up to a total of 14 cores — split between 6 Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores — an L3 cache of 24MB, a max turbo frequency of 4.8GHz for Performance cores, 96 graphics execution units and a max graphics frequency of 1.45GHz. There are a total of six processors in the lineup, ranging from Core i7 to Core i3.

The U-series, on the other hand, has up to a total of 10 cores — split between 2 Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores — an L3 cache of 12MB, a max turbo frequency of 4.8GHz for Performance cores, 96 graphics execution units and a max graphics frequency of 1.25GHz. There are a total of 14 processors in the lineup, ranging from Core i7 to Celeron.

Intel Expands vPro Platform In Multiple Ways

Intel’s vPro platform for commercial PCs may have not gotten the spotlight during the press conference, but the chipmaker did announce a significant expansion for the business during CES.

First, Intel said that it is expanding the vPro platform to cover small businesses, going beyond the platform’s original purview of providing processors with additional manageability, security and stability features to large enterprise customers.

As a result, Intel has bifurcated the platform into two segments for its new 12th-generation Core CPUs: Intel vPro Enterprise, which provides all the enterprise-grade features that the platform has traditionally offered, and Intel vPro Essentials, which provides features for security and basic PC management. The chipmaker has also expanded Intel vPro Enterprise capabilities to select Chrome devices.

Intel is making a bigger effort to differentiate between consumer laptops under the Intel Evo brand and vPro-powered commercial laptops that meet Intel Evo specifications. This has resulted in a new Intel vPro badge that demarcates devices meeting Intel Evo specifications as “An Evo Design,” which means that the devices meet certain key experience indicators as defined by Intel.