there was no issue with writing "lol two birds with one stone", i even like it without the "kill", it's almost like a yadayadayada or an internet style abridged version like "two birds, etc" (actually now that gives me an idea: "birds, two of them, etc")
Have you not seen those stupid laptops people use for gaming? Massive gaming laptops are still a thing. This just makes it official and easier for Clevo or whatever the current OEM is.
That's what I was thinking too. These 157w CPU's won't be in lapto....err..noteboo....umm...DTR's without discrete graphics that also consume upward of 150+ watts.
Just engineering an external power supply to handle this kind of power delivery is difficult. Traditionally they have capped around 330w (like the Dell and HP variants) before active cooling becomes necessary and many lower powered models designed for sustained peak output have active cooling. The original XBOX 360 PSU's had active cooling and those were like 200w, albeit 15 year old technology so I'm not sure why I even brought it up lol
The only high power external PSU solutions I know of for this type of application is the dualPico project that combines 2x external PSU's to power the 500w PicoPSU. That'd be a pretty exotic solution, though not out of the question I suppose. These things are going in $2000-$3000 DTR's and I suspect $400 power solutions won't be far fetched.
I suppose an OEM could contract someone to produce a bespoke transformer solution but that would be expensive as hell considering the engineering and production costs along with regulatory approval. There just isn't much demand for 1/2kw external power supplies, but now maybe there will be.
I have a mobile gamer laptop from a few years back, that was really bought to test/demo some machine learning stuff using the GTX 1070m that came with it. The SkyLake mobile quad core only has a TDP of 45 Watts, but the GPU easily goes North of 100 Watts, the power brick seems to weigh almost as much as the notbook and is good for 200 Watts.
Of course it can't run GPGPU workloads on battery power.
But it runs 2D workloads reasonably well on battery.
What I am trying to say is this: For gaming and for training ML models, you have to connect it to the wall power. But when I happened to be travelling with the beast, I could do all kinds of 2D stuff for hours without issue, because it sipped tiny bits of power on those workloads.
Those 55-157 Watt figures don't mean this chip will consume much more than a 5 Watts when all you do is type e-mail. And then you might be glad you're not hauling (or bying) yet another notebook, just for those use cases.
While it is true that the Intel Alder Lake CPUs remain less energy efficient than the CPUs made at TSMC, e.g. the mobile AMD Ryzen, there is nothing wrong or unusual with these power values.
Such high power values are normal for the mobile workstation laptops.
For example most of the Dell Precision mobile workstations, like my own laptop, have the power limit for infinite time set to 60 W or to 65 W, even if the official TDP for those CPUs had been 45 W.
Despite the high steady-state CPU power, such thick laptops have much better coolers than typical laptops, so such a high power is easily dissipated, with no CPU throttling and without excessive noise.
In the past the boost power was typically in the 90 W to 120 W range, so Alder Lake is somewhat higher, but not by much.
Moreover, the 17 inch or 16 inch mobile workstations, in which these Intel HX CPUs will be used, normally have NVIDIA discrete GPUs with an 150 W TDP, which exceeds a lot the power consumption of the CPU.
The power supplies for mobile workstations are usually 200 W bricks, or even 250 W bricks.
When mostly idle mobile workstations, e.g. when reading documents, the battery would be drained in 3 to 5 hours, while with the CPU and GPU at maximum utilization the battery of any mobile workstation would be drained in less than an hour.
This does not matter much for mobile workstation users, because such laptops are seldom used on battery.
So the power specifications for these CPUs are normal and the same as they have been for about a decade.
Unfortunately, AMD has chosen to not compete for the mobile workstation market, so there are no mobile Ryzen CPUs with ECC support.
For now, these Alder Lake HX CPUs are the only choice for many professionals and there is no alternative for them.
The problem is with the Intel designs, not necessarily the fab process. Intel looks at what the idiots think first, those who are still locked into not seeing beyond clock speed, then look at what previous chips had for a performance FIRST. So, 5.4GHz 10th and 11th gen Intel chips, oh, can't clock Alder Lake at 5.1GHz because idiots might think the new chips are slower, even with the first significant design improvements in six years!
Honestly, Intel just can't handle the idea that AMD might catch up in clock speed plus have better IPC, so Intel just overclocks from the factory, or encourages consumers to clock to 5.7GHz, just to make sure the chip has higher performance, and then, "who cares how much power a desktop chip uses?!?" people can then use their computers to double as a space heater.
Then you have the same stupidity into the laptop space, gotta be faster, no matter how much power the chip uses. Efficiency doesn't matter because gamers don't run on battery, right?
Many students/ workers want play latest PC games but they often cannot have there own room or enough space to let them buy PCs with High-end Graph Cards, Laptop is there choice. The poor Cpu or Gpu performance cannot satisfied in the passed decade.
Laptop + desktop Gaming experience is great for them, power brick is not considerations they just rarely move it.
And you know current Gaming laptops has 17'' screens is made by many manufactures LOL...
157w... that sounds like a very unpleasant laptop. Even at the 55w base that thing is going to be hot and noisy and have limited battery life.
PS Gavin, you deserve a gold star for sticking around and continuing to make quality content, it's super appreciated. I know that Anandtech is dying a slow miserable death, but the content you make here is the last of it's kind and I will be sticking around until the bitter end.
You're way too kind and I know exactly what you are saying, but don't fear. I'm not going anywhere and I'll always do my best to make sure everyone who reads what opinions I have, gets just that!
I was opening AT, and saw almost no change since I don't know when. And thought about mr. Lal Shimpi. Would he be reading this site still? I was a daily reader since 2001 I think. I thought it would die a quick death after Anand sold the place, But Ryan and co kept it live and kicking for quite some time. It's sad that it will go the way of the dodo it seams. The articles that do get published are from a high level. But not enough to keep me remembering to open the page every day. Somehow Toms is doing alright I think. Different angle, different readers. But it probably shows it's not only the new owner that causes the demise. Or toms is just lucky. I do appreciate all the effort that is put in the articles. Thanks Gavin!
Tom's has been going down hill also, I've been a daily follower of that site since the turn of the century. They seem to have a decent content stream but I've noticed a ton of clickbait articles lately.
So, when used plugged in, as a Desktop, it will have good enough performance, as long as the turbine sound doesn’t drive you out of the room. But as with other Intel laptops (AMD too), as soon as you pull the plug, performance will be miserable, and still very loud. Considering that the biggest batteries allowed by the FAA for anything brought on an airplane is just 100 watt hours, I believe, I can’t see these things as having great battery life.
I don't understand why you are putting AMD into the same category as Intel for blatant disregard for battery run time and performance while on battery. AMD 6000 APUs are significantly better than Intel when it comes to these two categories.
It's interesting the i9-12900T only consumes 35w (106w Turbo) while being nearly identical performance to the i9-12900HX. Maybe the GPU is stronger in the HX?
you know the reason people don't use lunix or apple shit? cuz of lack of software. nobody making quality commerical software for windows is going to bother making an ARM build.
"The HX-series also loses Alder Lake-H's support for low-power memory, such as LPDDR5 and LPDDR4X." Are you sure? Acording to the release, it supports LPDDR5 and LPDDR4.
I don't understand how Intel believes in terms like "advanced" whilist touting 20% better average performance against a CPU microachitecture back from 2020. With almost 160w TDP, it feels more like a publicity stunt than truly meaningful product.
Intel mobile H has always been a way to increase desktop chip production to lower marginal cost per unit of production shoed into a portable capable of desktop applications performance. Smart component production economically but not necessarily smart segment or category management. And cagey competitively 10 M to 20 M units is a traditional H volume run and that takes from what competitors might offer for sale that are more well rounded options on performance factors when Intel bundles H into other primary procurements. H sucks power? H sucks capital out of the production chain, from IDMs and OEMs, that could have been invested elsewhere. mb
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shabby - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
157w? I didn't know intel was also selling portable lap warmers... lol two birds with one stone I guess.shabby - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Kill...shabby - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Wheres that edit button?!? Are we still in the 20th century?nathanddrews - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
Maybe Elon will buy AT and add one.DigitalFreak - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
Nah, he's too busy playing a third rate Bond villian.kn00tcn - Thursday, May 12, 2022 - link
there was no issue with writing "lol two birds with one stone", i even like it without the "kill", it's almost like a yadayadayada or an internet style abridged version like "two birds, etc" (actually now that gives me an idea: "birds, two of them, etc")Oxford Guy - Sunday, May 15, 2022 - link
More proofreading, less whinge.powerarmour - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Hot garbageKevin G - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Typo in the table: Alder Lake instead of Alder Lahe.eloyard - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
55w base. 157w boost. Mobile.Let that sink in.
At this point they're not even pretending their not taking customers for fools.
lmcd - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Have you not seen those stupid laptops people use for gaming? Massive gaming laptops are still a thing. This just makes it official and easier for Clevo or whatever the current OEM is.Arsenica - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
157W CPU plus 150W GPU with a 2kg power brick and 2008-era look and feel.Kangal - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Don't forget the USD $2,000+ price as well.I guess it's not that horrible if you repurpose it as a Desktop or HTPC console.... but that price
Samus - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
That's what I was thinking too. These 157w CPU's won't be in lapto....err..noteboo....umm...DTR's without discrete graphics that also consume upward of 150+ watts.Just engineering an external power supply to handle this kind of power delivery is difficult. Traditionally they have capped around 330w (like the Dell and HP variants) before active cooling becomes necessary and many lower powered models designed for sustained peak output have active cooling. The original XBOX 360 PSU's had active cooling and those were like 200w, albeit 15 year old technology so I'm not sure why I even brought it up lol
The only high power external PSU solutions I know of for this type of application is the dualPico project that combines 2x external PSU's to power the 500w PicoPSU. That'd be a pretty exotic solution, though not out of the question I suppose. These things are going in $2000-$3000 DTR's and I suspect $400 power solutions won't be far fetched.
I suppose an OEM could contract someone to produce a bespoke transformer solution but that would be expensive as hell considering the engineering and production costs along with regulatory approval. There just isn't much demand for 1/2kw external power supplies, but now maybe there will be.
Glaurung - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
"Battery life of (mumble mumble) under load."Sharken03 - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
Best comment today :)azrael- - Monday, May 16, 2022 - link
Turns on laptop. Laptop starts to boot, then turns off."Did it crash?"
"No. Battery is empty."
TayesonCulbertson - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
AMD: Makes power efficient CPU's that are optimized for performanceIntel: *snorts some coke* lets put 16 cores in a laptop
nandnandnand - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-confirms-zen...AMD will also put a 16-core desktop CPU in a laptop next year (Raphael-H aka Dragon Range). It will be more efficient than this one though.
timecop1818 - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
You're implying there's AC equivalent AMD which is faster, cooler, and uses less watts to do the same? because i don't think there is.and target market for these always been heavy gaming laptops with bricks for power supplies, so what?
Eletriarnation - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
It's not like it's idling at 55W. There are 15W and 28W processors for people who care about their battery life at load. These are for other people.Makste - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
Atleast they mentioned it. So no surprisesabufrejoval - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
I have a mobile gamer laptop from a few years back, that was really bought to test/demo some machine learning stuff using the GTX 1070m that came with it. The SkyLake mobile quad core only has a TDP of 45 Watts, but the GPU easily goes North of 100 Watts, the power brick seems to weigh almost as much as the notbook and is good for 200 Watts.Of course it can't run GPGPU workloads on battery power.
But it runs 2D workloads reasonably well on battery.
What I am trying to say is this: For gaming and for training ML models, you have to connect it to the wall power. But when I happened to be travelling with the beast, I could do all kinds of 2D stuff for hours without issue, because it sipped tiny bits of power on those workloads.
Those 55-157 Watt figures don't mean this chip will consume much more than a 5 Watts when all you do is type e-mail. And then you might be glad you're not hauling (or bying) yet another notebook, just for those use cases.
gescom - Sunday, May 15, 2022 - link
"Those 55-157 Watt figures don't mean this chip will consume much more than a 5 Watts when all you do is type e-mail."Of course not but what's the point?
A heavy brick, bad battery life, loud, throttling, hot, ... yet people still buy those. ML? Don't be ridiculous :)
AdrianBc - Thursday, May 12, 2022 - link
While it is true that the Intel Alder Lake CPUs remain less energy efficient than the CPUs made at TSMC, e.g. the mobile AMD Ryzen, there is nothing wrong or unusual with these power values.Such high power values are normal for the mobile workstation laptops.
For example most of the Dell Precision mobile workstations, like my own laptop, have the power limit for infinite time set to 60 W or to 65 W, even if the official TDP for those CPUs had been 45 W.
Despite the high steady-state CPU power, such thick laptops have much better coolers than typical laptops, so such a high power is easily dissipated, with no CPU throttling and without excessive noise.
In the past the boost power was typically in the 90 W to 120 W range, so Alder Lake is somewhat higher, but not by much.
Moreover, the 17 inch or 16 inch mobile workstations, in which these Intel HX CPUs will be used, normally have NVIDIA discrete GPUs with an 150 W TDP, which exceeds a lot the power consumption of the CPU.
The power supplies for mobile workstations are usually 200 W bricks, or even 250 W bricks.
When mostly idle mobile workstations, e.g. when reading documents, the battery would be drained in 3 to 5 hours, while with the CPU and GPU at maximum utilization the battery of any mobile workstation would be drained in less than an hour.
This does not matter much for mobile workstation users, because such laptops are seldom used on battery.
So the power specifications for these CPUs are normal and the same as they have been for about a decade.
Unfortunately, AMD has chosen to not compete for the mobile workstation market, so there are no mobile Ryzen CPUs with ECC support.
For now, these Alder Lake HX CPUs are the only choice for many professionals and there is no alternative for them.
Targon - Monday, May 16, 2022 - link
The problem is with the Intel designs, not necessarily the fab process. Intel looks at what the idiots think first, those who are still locked into not seeing beyond clock speed, then look at what previous chips had for a performance FIRST. So, 5.4GHz 10th and 11th gen Intel chips, oh, can't clock Alder Lake at 5.1GHz because idiots might think the new chips are slower, even with the first significant design improvements in six years!Honestly, Intel just can't handle the idea that AMD might catch up in clock speed plus have better IPC, so Intel just overclocks from the factory, or encourages consumers to clock to 5.7GHz, just to make sure the chip has higher performance, and then, "who cares how much power a desktop chip uses?!?" people can then use their computers to double as a space heater.
Then you have the same stupidity into the laptop space, gotta be faster, no matter how much power the chip uses. Efficiency doesn't matter because gamers don't run on battery, right?
LeftAlways - Saturday, May 21, 2022 - link
Many students/ workers want play latest PC games but they often cannot have there own room or enough space to let them buy PCs with High-end Graph Cards, Laptop is there choice. The poor Cpu or Gpu performance cannot satisfied in the passed decade.Laptop + desktop Gaming experience is great for them, power brick is not considerations they just rarely move it.
And you know current Gaming laptops has 17'' screens is made by many manufactures LOL...
Abort-Retry-Fail - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
""Intel Vision""
(not really '20-20' these days)
wrkingclass_hero - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
157w... that sounds like a very unpleasant laptop. Even at the 55w base that thing is going to be hot and noisy and have limited battery life.PS Gavin, you deserve a gold star for sticking around and continuing to make quality content, it's super appreciated. I know that Anandtech is dying a slow miserable death, but the content you make here is the last of it's kind and I will be sticking around until the bitter end.
Le Geek - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
I echo your emotions. Being following Anandtech for 10+ years now. Hard to see it decay to state it is at now.29a - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Been here since '98 and I totally agree. It genuinely makes me sad.Gavin Bonshor - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
You're way too kind and I know exactly what you are saying, but don't fear. I'm not going anywhere and I'll always do my best to make sure everyone who reads what opinions I have, gets just that!Foeketijn - Friday, May 13, 2022 - link
I was opening AT, and saw almost no change since I don't know when. And thought about mr. Lal Shimpi. Would he be reading this site still?I was a daily reader since 2001 I think. I thought it would die a quick death after Anand sold the place, But Ryan and co kept it live and kicking for quite some time. It's sad that it will go the way of the dodo it seams. The articles that do get published are from a high level. But not enough to keep me remembering to open the page every day.
Somehow Toms is doing alright I think. Different angle, different readers. But it probably shows it's not only the new owner that causes the demise. Or toms is just lucky.
I do appreciate all the effort that is put in the articles. Thanks Gavin!
29a - Saturday, May 14, 2022 - link
Tom's has been going down hill also, I've been a daily follower of that site since the turn of the century. They seem to have a decent content stream but I've noticed a ton of clickbait articles lately.melgross - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
So, when used plugged in, as a Desktop, it will have good enough performance, as long as the turbine sound doesn’t drive you out of the room. But as with other Intel laptops (AMD too), as soon as you pull the plug, performance will be miserable, and still very loud. Considering that the biggest batteries allowed by the FAA for anything brought on an airplane is just 100 watt hours, I believe, I can’t see these things as having great battery life.meacupla - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
I don't understand why you are putting AMD into the same category as Intel for blatant disregard for battery run time and performance while on battery. AMD 6000 APUs are significantly better than Intel when it comes to these two categories.[email protected] - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
Here is why Intel lost Apple and AMD is stiff competition. So sad how Intel lost its edge. They need to hire the guitar player from U2.Gavin Bonshor - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
The last time I heard, Bono was too busy to respond to such comments.Samus - Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - link
It's interesting the i9-12900T only consumes 35w (106w Turbo) while being nearly identical performance to the i9-12900HX. Maybe the GPU is stronger in the HX?Speedfriend - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
Qualcomms Windows ARM processor from Nuvia cant come soon enough...timecop1818 - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
you know the reason people don't use lunix or apple shit? cuz of lack of software. nobody making quality commerical software for windows is going to bother making an ARM build.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
LOLARMgescom - Sunday, May 15, 2022 - link
Thisedzieba - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
ITT people unaware that the desktop replacement and mobile workstation markets exist, and are of sufficient size to support dedicated hardware.abundance - Thursday, May 12, 2022 - link
This.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, May 12, 2022 - link
Most mobile workstatiosn dont use 157 watt CPUs, not even close. People honestly think its 2010 and DTRs are 2 inches thick.Only the most extreme of mobile workstations will use these, and its still equially rediculous when you consider AMD destroys intel in perf/watt.
Silma - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
"The HX-series also loses Alder Lake-H's support for low-power memory, such as LPDDR5 and LPDDR4X."Are you sure? Acording to the release, it supports LPDDR5 and LPDDR4.
iranterres - Thursday, May 12, 2022 - link
I don't understand how Intel believes in terms like "advanced" whilist touting 20% better average performance against a CPU microachitecture back from 2020. With almost 160w TDP, it feels more like a publicity stunt than truly meaningful product.Mike Bruzzone - Friday, May 13, 2022 - link
Intel mobile H has always been a way to increase desktop chip production to lower marginal cost per unit of production shoed into a portable capable of desktop applications performance. Smart component production economically but not necessarily smart segment or category management. And cagey competitively 10 M to 20 M units is a traditional H volume run and that takes from what competitors might offer for sale that are more well rounded options on performance factors when Intel bundles H into other primary procurements. H sucks power? H sucks capital out of the production chain, from IDMs and OEMs, that could have been invested elsewhere. mbMDD1963 - Thursday, June 2, 2022 - link
Must....have....muh....PCI-e 5.0!!!!!