Core i5-12500H: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-12500H was the mainstream workhorse of Intel's 12th-generation Alder Lake-H family — a 12-core hybrid design from 2022 that brought big-laptop throughput down to mid-range prices. The catalog matches it to 56 models, and it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 36 of the 69 games the site tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings to a portable, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i5-12500H sits in 2026

A catalog score of 54.6 places the chip 215th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the middle of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood mixes eras and lineages: the Core Ultra 7 355 (54.7), Core i9-11950H (54.7) and Core i5-8259U (54.6) just above, the Core Ultra 5 335 (54.5), Core Ultra 5 125H (54.4) and Core Ultra 9 288V (54.2) just below. Sitting level with a much older i5-8259U while the newer Core Ultra 5 125H lands within two tenths is the honest picture: mid-pack silicon whose value today comes from price, not pedigree.

What the chip brings

Alder Lake-H is a 12-core, 16-thread design on a 7 nm-class process, rated at 45 W in its H-class configuration: a 2.5 GHz base clock and up to 4.5 GHz boost. The integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics with 80 execution units carries the machines in this roster that ship without a discrete GPU. Memory support and cache details were not captured for this chip, so the table above sticks to what the catalog verifiably holds: a PassMark overall score of 20,321.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 36 of 69 cataloged games — from Diablo 4, Escape from Tarkov and Flight Simulator 2020 at the demanding end through Far Cry 5, Doom Eternal, Death Stranding and God of War down to Civilization 6 and Overwatch. Another 26 sit at the minimum tier: Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Counter-Strike 2, Black Myth Wukong, Returnal and Alan Wake 2 all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. Seven ask for more processor than this — Starfield, Helldivers 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Apex Legends and Fortnite. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and the roster spans everything from Iris Xe ultrabooks to discrete-GPU gaming machines.

Laptops that carry it

The 56-model roster leans 2023 mainstream and gaming. HP's OMEN 16 appears three times between $971 and $1,284, Gigabyte covers gaming from the Aero 14 OLED and Aorus 15 and 17 at $922 down to the budget G5 at $553, and ASUS fields the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED at $954 plus Vivobook 14X and 16X OLED machines at $553. The workstation slot goes to the HP ZBook Power G9 at $654, while Lenovo's Yoga Pro 7 covers the ultrabook angle at $753. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: office comfort at a perfect 100, a gaming index of 67 and a performance index of 68.5 reflect the gaming-heavy selection, while mobility at 37 and portability at 39.1 say these are full-size machines rather than thin-and-lights.

Bottom line

The Core i5-12500H fits a buyer who wants 12-core Alder Lake muscle at used-market prices: enough processor for over half the tracked game catalog at recommended CPU settings and nearly all the rest at minimum, inside laptops from $553 Vivobooks to $1,284 gaming rigs. It is mid-pack silicon in 2026 — the neighbors from the i5-8259U to the Core Ultra 5 125H tell that story — so judge each listing by its GPU and condition rather than the CPU badge.