SYSTEM ANALYZER

Rate My PC: Intel Core i5-12600HX + Intel Arc A550M

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Build Configuration

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PROCESSOR (CPU)

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GRAPHICS CARD (GPU)

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93 Score

Top 7% Ranking

93 / 100

ULTIMATE READY

Apex Performer

Top 7% of systems. Capable of 4K Ultra gaming and advanced rendering.

4K 60+ FPSVR ReadyRay Tracing

System Balance Analysis

CPU vs GPU performance ratio

Well Balanced

CPU

90%

GPU

96%

PROCESSOR

Intel Core i5-12600HX

33,375 Benchmark Score

Top 10% Market Ranking

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GRAPHICS CARD

Intel Arc A550M

49,737 Benchmark Score

Top 4% Market Ranking

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Market Position

How your build compares to others

Budget

0-30

Mid-Range

30-60

High-End

60-85

Enthusiast

85-100

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Your system is in the top tier. You can run any modern game at maximum settings.

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Performance Tiers Explained

90-100

Ultimate

4K Ultra gaming, VR ready, ray tracing enabled, professional workloads

4K 60+ FPS VR Ready

70-89

High-End

1440p Ultra or 4K High settings, excellent for modern AAA titles

1440p Ultra 4K High

50-69

Mid-Range

1080p Ultra or 1440p Medium, great value for most gamers

1080p Ultra 1440p Med

30-49

Entry Level

1080p Medium settings, suitable for eSports and older titles

1080p Med eSports

0-29

Legacy

Basic gaming, older titles, consider upgrading for modern games

720p-1080p Low Older Games

# Intel Core i5-12600HX + Intel Arc A550M

The Intel Core i5-12600HX paired with the Intel Arc A550M represents a mobile gaming platform built around a 12-core Alder Lake-HX processor and Intel's Xe-HPG discrete GPU architecture. This combination sits at the 85th percentile overall among all CPU+GPU pairings in the database, placing it in the upper tier of laptop configurations. The CPU alone holds the 83rd percentile among all processors, while the GPU achieves the 86th percentile among all graphics cards, indicating a balanced pairing where both components perform near the same relative level. No measured frame-rate data exists for this exact combination, so all FPS discussions are estimates derived from benchmark scores rather than direct game testing.

CPU Analysis

The Intel Core i5-12600HX is a 12-core, 16-thread mobile processor built on Intel's Alder Lake-HX architecture, manufactured on a 10 nm process with a 215 mm² die size. It operates with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.60 GHz, drawing a 55 W TDP. The hybrid architecture combines performance and efficiency cores, though the FACT PACK does not specify the exact core distribution; the 12 cores and 16 threads indicate a configuration with 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores, a typical Alder Lake-HX layout. Cache hierarchy includes 80 KB L1 per core, 1.25 MB L2 per core, and 18 MB of shared L3 cache.

Benchmark results reveal a processor with strong multi-threaded capability relative to its mobile class. In Cinebench R23, the CPU scores 20,714 points in multi-core and 2,924 points in single-core. The multi-core score represents sustained throughput for rendering and compilation workloads, while the single-core score indicates solid responsiveness in lightly threaded applications. The Cinebench R20 results follow the same pattern: 8,699 multi-core and 1,228 single-core. PassMark tests show 79,339 in integer math, 58,378 in floating-point math, and 24,681 in multithreaded performance. Data compression scores 292,256, while encryption reaches 17,506 and extended instructions hit 17,328. The processor finds prime numbers at a rate of 83, and random string sorting completes at 33,110.

Comparing to nearest rivals, the i5-12600HX sits within a tight cluster. The AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS has an average score of 33,244 (0.4% lower), while the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H scores 33,537 (0.5% higher). The AMD Ryzen 5 240 matches at 33,542 (0.5% higher), and the Intel Core i7-14701E scores 33,206 (0.5% lower). The average benchmark score of 33,375 places this CPU essentially at parity with these competitors, meaning real-world differences between these processors would be negligible in most workloads. The 83rd percentile ranking confirms this is a capable mid-to-upper mobile processor, not a flagship, but comfortably above the median.

For real workloads, the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20,714 suggests strong performance in video encoding, 3D rendering, and code compilation tasks. The single-core score of 2,924 indicates snappy application launch and responsive single-threaded performance, though it trails the highest-end desktop parts. The PassMark physics score of 1,504 is modest, but the floating-point and integer math results show balanced arithmetic capability. The 18 MB L3 cache helps with data-heavy workloads, and ECC memory support adds reliability for professional use cases.

Upgrade Path and Platform

The i5-12600HX uses the Intel BGA 1964 socket, which is a soldered mobile package. This means the CPU is not upgradeable in a traditional sense; users cannot swap the processor in a laptop motherboard. The platform supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration, giving OEMs flexibility in memory choices. PCIe connectivity includes Gen 5 with 20 lanes from the CPU, which is a forward-looking feature that supports the fastest current SSDs and provides headroom for future peripherals.

Memory bandwidth is not explicitly listed in the FACT PACK, but dual-channel DDR4 or DDR5 support indicates adequate bandwidth for the 12-core processor. The integrated UHD Graphics 770 provides a fallback display output and hardware acceleration when the discrete GPU is idle or for quick-sync video encoding tasks. ECC memory support is notable for a mobile processor, suggesting potential use in workstation-class laptops where data integrity matters.

The GPU's TDP is 60 W, and the CPU's TDP is 55 W, meaning the total platform power draw for these two components alone is around 115 W before accounting for memory, storage, and display. The FACT PACK does not list a suggested PSU for this combination, but given the mobile class and the 60 W GPU TDP, a typical laptop power adapter in the 150–200 W range would be expected to handle the combined load; however, no specific figure is available in the data. The GPU uses a PCIe 4.0 x16 bus interface, which is standard for discrete mobile graphics and provides ample bandwidth for the 8 GB GDDR6 memory.

A sensible next upgrade from this platform would involve moving to a newer generation of mobile processors with higher core counts or newer architectures, but the BGA socket prevents in-place upgrades. For users seeking more performance, a laptop with a higher-tier processor or a more powerful GPU would be the practical path. The PCIe Gen 5 support means storage upgrades to Gen 5 NVMe drives are possible, though the performance benefit over Gen 4 is largely theoretical for most consumer workloads.

Usage Scenarios

High-refresh gaming: The Arc A550M's 86th percentile GPU ranking and the i5-12600HX's strong single-core score of 2,924 in Cinebench R23 suggest this pairing can drive high-refresh 1080p gaming in most titles. The GPU's 8.397 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are adequate for competitive shooters and esports titles at high frame rates, though the lack of measured FPS data means exact numbers are estimates.

Streaming: The CPU's 12 cores and 16 threads provide ample headroom for encoding while gaming. The PassMark multithreaded score of 24,681 indicates the processor can handle x264 encoding at reasonable presets, and the integrated UHD Graphics 770 supports Intel Quick Sync for hardware encoding. The 18 MB L3 cache helps maintain frame pacing during simultaneous gaming and streaming workloads.

Video editing: Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20,714 places this CPU in a strong position for video editing timelines, with the 12 cores handling multi-track edits and effects rendering. The GPU's 16.79 TFLOPS FP16 performance accelerates effects and color grading tasks, and the 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for 4K timelines with moderate effects layers.

3D rendering: The combined CPU and GPU performance is meaningful for rendering workloads. The CPU's R23 multi-core score of 20,714 handles CPU-based rendering engines effectively, while the GPU's 8.397 TFLOPS FP32 and 16.79 TFLOPS FP16 provide acceleration in GPU-accelerated renderers. The 16 RT cores support hardware ray tracing, though the FACT PACK provides no RT-specific benchmark scores.

Software development: The 12-core, 16-thread configuration with 79,339 PassMark integer math score handles compilation workloads efficiently. The 292,256 data compression score speeds up build artifact compression, and the single-core score of 2,924 ensures responsive IDE interaction. The 18 MB L3 cache benefits large codebases that exceed typical cache sizes.

Student and office work: The 3,623 PassMark single-thread score handles everyday productivity applications with ease. The 83rd CPU percentile means this processor vastly exceeds the requirements for word processing, spreadsheets, and web browsing. The GPU's 8 GB VRAM is overkill for office tasks, but the platform's overall responsiveness makes it a premium choice for students who also game or create content.

Who Should Build It

This pairing targets gamers who want a laptop capable of high-refresh 1080p gaming without paying flagship prices. The GPU's 86th percentile ranking and the CPU's 83rd percentile mean this system sits comfortably above mid-range, suitable for gamers who play at 1080p with high settings and occasionally at 1440p with adjusted settings. Content creators who edit video or render 3D scenes will benefit from the 12-core CPU and the GPU's FP16 throughput, making this a viable mobile workstation for freelance creators. Software developers compiling large projects will appreciate the integer math performance and multithreaded compilation speed. Students in engineering or computer science programs who need a capable laptop for both coursework and gaming will find this combination well-suited. Small business workstations requiring ECC memory support and reliable multi-threaded performance for data processing tasks can leverage this platform, though the mobile form factor limits expansion.

Balance and Bottleneck

The CPU and GPU are closely matched in relative performance, with the CPU at the 83rd percentile and the GPU at the 86th percentile. This near-parity means neither component will consistently bottleneck the other in most workloads. In CPU-bound games, the i5-12600HX's single-core score of 2,924 in Cinebench R23 can become a limiting factor in titles that rely heavily on a few threads, while the GPU's raw throughput of 8.397 TFLOPS will be underutilized. Conversely, in GPU-bound scenarios at higher resolutions or with demanding graphics settings, the Arc A550M's 8 GB VRAM and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth may become the constraint, leaving CPU headroom unused.

The combined 85th percentile ranking suggests the pairing is well-balanced overall. The CPU's 18 MB L3 cache and the GPU's 128-bit memory bus with GDDR6 memory at 14 Gbps effective provide complementary data handling capabilities. In multi-threaded workloads that use both CPU and GPU, such as rendering or video encoding with GPU acceleration, the balance is favorable. In gaming, the bottleneck will shift between components depending on the title and settings, but given the close percentile positions, neither component should dominate the other consistently.

Gaming Performance

No measured FPS data exists for the Intel Core i5-12600HX paired with the Intel Arc A550M. The FACT PACK contains no rows in the measuredFpsUltraByGame field, so all frame-rate figures discussed here are estimates derived from the benchmark scores rather than direct game testing. The GPU's Geekbench OpenCL score of 49,894 and Vulkan score of 49,580, combined with the 86th percentile ranking, suggest performance comparable to desktop GPUs from several generations ago, based on the nearest rivals listed. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti scores 49,957 (0.4% higher), the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 scores 50,001 (0.5% higher), the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT scores 50,951 (2.4% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT scores 48,477 (2.6% lower).

At 1080p ultra settings, this GPU should deliver smooth frame rates in most titles, likely exceeding 60 FPS in esports and older games, with more demanding modern titles falling into the 40–60 FPS range. At 1440p ultra, expect lower performance, with many titles requiring settings reductions to maintain 60 FPS. The 8 GB VRAM is adequate for 1080p ultra textures in most current games, but some titles with very large texture packs may approach this limit at 1440p. Ray tracing workloads will stress the 16 RT cores, and performance will vary significantly depending on the game's implementation. These are estimates based on the GPU's score compared to known performers; actual frame rates will vary by title, driver version, and system configuration.

Benchmark Performance

The CPU's average benchmark score is 33,375, placing it at the 83rd percentile among all CPUs. The nearest rivals are tightly clustered: the AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS at 33,244 (0.4% lower), the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H at 33,537 (0.5% higher), the AMD Ryzen 5 240 at 33,542 (0.5% higher), and the Intel Core i7-14701E at 33,206 (0.5% lower). This clustering shows that the i5-12600HX performs essentially identically to its closest competitors, with differences well within run-to-run variance.

The GPU's average benchmark score is 49,737, placing it at the 86th percentile among all GPUs. The nearest rivals show a wider spread: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti at 49,957 (0.4% higher), the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 at 50,001 (0.5% higher), the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT at 50,951 (2.4% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT at 48,477 (2.6% lower). The GPU's Geekbench OpenCL score of 49,894 and Vulkan score of 49,580 show consistent performance across API types.

The combined percentile for this CPU+GPU pairing is 85th, which is between the individual CPU and GPU percentiles, indicating a well-matched pairing where the combined performance is slightly below the GPU's individual ranking but above the CPU's. In Cinebench R23, the CPU's 20,714 multi-core and 2,924 single-core scores provide a clear picture of its compute capability. The PassMark scores across various workloads show strong integer and floating-point performance, with the 79,339 integer math score being particularly notable for general-purpose compute.

Build Overview

This is a laptop-class build (buildClass: "laptop") pairing the Intel Core i5-12600HX mobile processor with the Intel Arc A550M discrete GPU. The combination achieves the 85th overall percentile, placing it in the upper tier of all CPU+GPU pairings in the database. The CPU is a 12th-generation Alder Lake-HX part with 12 cores and 16 threads, while the GPU is an Alchemist-generation Arc 5 Mobile part with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The launch MSRP for the CPU is $284, though no launch MSRP is listed for the GPU.

This pairing represents a mid-to-upper tier mobile gaming and content creation platform. The CPU's 83rd percentile and GPU's 86th percentile indicate both components perform above the median, and the combined 85th percentile confirms the system as a whole is well-positioned for demanding workloads. The GPU's production status is end-of-life, which suggests this is a platform from the previous generation, but its benchmark performance remains competitive with current mid-range options. The CPU remains in active production, suggesting continued availability for system integrators.

FAQ

Q: How many cores and threads does the Intel Core i5-12600HX have?

A: The CPU has 12 cores and 16 threads, based on the Alder Lake-HX architecture with a 10 nm process.

Q: What is the memory capacity and type of the Intel Arc A550M?

A: The GPU has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit bus width and 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth, running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective).

Q: How does the i5-12600HX compare to its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS?

A: The i5-12600HX has an average benchmark score of 33,375, which is 0.4% higher than the Ryzen 5 8645HS's score of 33,244, making the two effectively identical in performance.

Q: Is the GPU still in production?

A: No, the Intel Arc A550M has a production status of "End-of-life," meaning it is no longer being manufactured, though the CPU remains in active production.

Q: What is the combined performance percentile of this CPU+GPU pairing?

A: The combined percentile is 85th among all CPU+GPU pairings, with the CPU at the 83rd percentile and the GPU at the 86th percentile individually.

Q: What PCIe interface does the GPU use?

A: The Arc A550M uses a PCIe 4.0 x16 bus interface, while the CPU supports PCIe Gen 5 with 20 lanes.

Q: Does the CPU support ECC memory?

A: Yes, the i5-12600HX supports ECC memory, and it supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration.

GPU Analysis

The Intel Arc A550M is built on the Xe-HPG architecture with the DG2-512 chip, manufactured on a 6 nm process by TSMC. The chip contains 21,700 million transistors on a 406 mm² die, with a transistor density of 53.4 million per mm². The GPU operates with a base clock of 900 MHz and a boost clock of 2050 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). The 8 GB GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

Compute resources include 2,048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, 64 raster output units, and 16 ray tracing cores. The pixel rate is 131.2 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 262.4 GTexel/s. FP32 performance is 8.397 TFLOPS, while FP16 performance reaches 16.79 TFLOPS with a 2:1 ratio. The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, making it feature-complete for modern gaming APIs.

The GPU's average benchmark score of 49,737 places it at the 86th percentile among all GPUs. In Geekbench, it scores 49,894 in OpenCL and 49,580 in Vulkan, showing consistent performance across compute APIs. Compared to nearest rivals, it trails the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT by 2.4% and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 by 0.5%, while leading the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT by 2.6%. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is 0.4% ahead. These comparisons indicate the A550M performs at a level comparable to high-end desktop GPUs from previous generations, despite being a mobile part with a 60 W TDP.

For rendering workloads, the FP32 throughput of 8.397 TFLOPS provides solid rasterization performance, while the FP16 capability of 16.79 TFLOPS accelerates compute-heavy tasks like machine learning inference or certain rendering effects. The 16 RT cores enable hardware ray tracing, though the FACT PACK provides no dedicated ray tracing benchmark scores. The 8 GB VRAM is adequate for 1080p gaming with high texture settings and for 1440p with some adjustments. The 224.0 GB/s bandwidth may become a limiting factor in memory-intensive workloads, but it is typical for a 128-bit memory interface. The GPU's end-of-life production status means driver updates and optimization may taper off, though Intel's commitment to the Arc series suggests continued software support for the architecture.

Rate My PC: Intel Core i5-12600HX + Intel Arc A550M

Apex Performer

System Balance Analysis

Intel Core i5-12600HX

Intel Arc A550M

Market Position

Game Performance Benchmarks

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

Performance Insights

Optimal Performance

4K Gaming Ready

Performance Tiers Explained

Ultimate

High-End

Mid-Range

Entry Level

Legacy

CPU Analysis

Upgrade Path and Platform

Usage Scenarios

Who Should Build It

Balance and Bottleneck

Gaming Performance

Benchmark Performance

Build Overview

FAQ

GPU Analysis

4K Gaming Performance

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

1440p Gaming Performance

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

1080p Gaming Performance

Cyberpunk 2077

Red Dead Redemption 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Control

Call of Duty: Warzone

Fortnite

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