Core i5-12500H vs Core Ultra 9 288V

The Core i5-12500H packs 12 cores / 16 threads, while the Core Ultra 9 288V offers 8 cores / 8 threads — the Core i5-12500H has 4 more cores. Boost clocks reach 4.5 GHz on the Core i5-12500H versus 5.1 GHz on the Core Ultra 9 288V — a 12.5% clock advantage for the Core Ultra 9 288V (base: 2.5 GHz vs 3.3 GHz). The Core i5-12500H uses the Alder Lake-H (2022) architecture (Intel 7 nm), while the Core Ultra 9 288V uses Lunar Lake (2024) (3 nm). In PassMark, the Core i5-12500H scores 20,462 against the Core Ultra 9 288V's 20,280 — a 0.9% lead for the Core i5-12500H. Geekbench 6 single-core — the metric most relevant to gaming — records 2,260 vs 2,800, a 21.3% lead for the Core Ultra 9 288V that directly translates to higher frame rates. Multi-core Geekbench: 9,900 vs 10,000 (1% advantage for the Core Ultra 9 288V). L3 cache: 18 MB (total) on the Core i5-12500H vs 12 MB (total) on the Core Ultra 9 288V.

The Core i5-12500H uses the FCBGA1744 socket (PCIe 4.0), while the Core Ultra 9 288V uses FCBGA2833 (PCIe 5.0) — making them incompatible on the same motherboard. Both support up to DDR5-4800 memory speed. The Core i5-12500H supports up to 64 GB of RAM compared to 32 GB — 66.7% more capacity for professional workloads. Both feature 2-channel memory with ECC support. PCIe lanes: 20 (Core i5-12500H) vs 8 (Core Ultra 9 288V) — the Core i5-12500H offers 12 more lanes for additional GPUs or NVMe drives. Chipset compatibility: Adler Lake-H PCH (Core i5-12500H) and SoC (Core Ultra 9 288V).

Virtualization support: VT-x, VT-d (Core i5-12500H) vs true (Core Ultra 9 288V). Both include integrated graphics — Intel Iris Xe Graphics 80EU (Core i5-12500H) and Intel Arc 140V (Core Ultra 9 288V) — useful as a fallback for troubleshooting or display output without a dedicated GPU. Primary use case: Core i5-12500H targets Performance Laptop.