I’m going to save you some time. For all I have to say, the CPU performance is fantastic but it definitely needs a discrete GPU to unleash its full potential. For our testing unit today, we have the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5401 Space Edition. It’s a thin and light laptop equipped with the Core i7-12700H, but also using the Intel Iris Xe.

Weird combos aside, we’re only focusing on the CPU performance today.

For today, our particular laptop comes with a list of rather beefy specs, barring the lack of a dedicated discrete GPU. It’s still packed with an Intel Iris Xe – though that is something that we’ll get more into later.

 

As a quick introduction to the entire 12th Gen Intel Core processors for laptops, we now have a total of 3 different families of chips. The separation between the 3 families is now more clear-cut than before, as the chip’s TDP is now used as the indicator.

We have a new addition of the P-series, which sits in the fine line between the 11th Gen’s H-series and U-series, whereby the U-series is split into two different sub-categories.

Intel 12th Gen Core i7 12700K performance highlight

Also, the biggest architectural change on the new Intel 12th Gen Core processors is the separation of P-cores and E-cores, which stands for Performance cores and Efficiency cores respectively.

What’s even more different from the desktop counterparts is the inclusion of at least one P-core and at least 4 E-cores for every single 12th Gen mobile chip. That makes sense since this will definitely help to improve the battery life, especially for laptops.

Intel 12th Gen Core i7 12700K performance highlight

As for the performance of the Core i7-12700H that we’ve tested today, I think the laptop is pretty much bottlenecked by the Intel Iris Xe GPU, and yet this Iris Xe is pretty much a copy-paste from the 11th Gen U-series. The GPU performance is pretty much the same, as we’ve repeated tested from last year and got about the same performance.

As for the temperature, it’s going to hit the Tj max pretty much instantly and then throttled back to a safe temperature of about 90°C.

Intel 12th Gen Core i7 12700K performance highlight

Still, I think that Intel is also making way for the Intel Arc discrete GPUs to unlock even better overall compute performance. I say this, because I realize Intel is making Iris Xe to be optional by wording it as “Iris Xe Eligible” in the specs sheet. Perhaps we’ll see laptops that has the Intel Arc GPUs but without Iris Xe? Only time will tell.

Intel 12th Gen Core i7 12700K performance highlight

As of now, I am impressed by the performance that the Intel Core i7-12700H brings to the table – but the GPU performance leaves a lot to be desired. I’m still looking forward to testing the Intel Arc GPUs.

Where to buy the ASUS Zenbook 14LX OLED UX5401 Space Edition? (Affiliate links)

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