Intel had just recently launched its’ first ever 12th generation ‘Alder Lake’ chips with six new processors including Core i9-12900K, which is a 16-core chip with eight performance and efficiency cores. Since its’ launching, it was being compared with Apple’s M1 Max chip (although Alder lakes are desktop-class processors). The recent benchmarking results have shown that Alder Lake core i9 is faster than Apple M1 Max SoC but when it comes to power efficiency, M1 Max is more efficient. Let’s discuss what Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 benchmarking results of Apple M1 Max and Intel Alder Lake Core i9 have concluded.
Alder Lake Core i9 vs M1 Max: Which is faster?
According to the Geekbench benchmarking results of these two high-end processors, it has revealed that Alder Lake Core i9 is faster than M1 Max. Intel’s SoC is about 1.5x faster than that of Apple in multi-core performance. Alder Lake Core i9 has scored a score of 18,057 versus 12,590 of Apple M1 Max in multi-core (as per Geekbench 5). While in Cinebench R23 it is 27092 and 12311 respectively. In single-core, Core i9 has scored 2038 while 12537 is the score of M1 Max as per Geekbench 5. Cinebench has given them a score of 1979 and 1539 respectively.

Which one of these two SoC is more power-efficient?
The Intel Alder Lake Core i9 is much faster than Apple M1 Max, but it also uses more power and thus is less power efficient. The Apple chips in Cinebench multi-core testing drew about 40W of power, while Alder Lake Core i9 drew approximately 130W of power. So, clearly, Apple’s M1 Max is very much power-efficient than Intel Alder Lake Core i9.
So, Intel Alder Lake Core i9 is a smart choice when it comes to performance but Apple M1 Max is surely the first choice when it comes to power efficiency. What do you think which factor is more important? Tell us in the comments below!!
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