Intel® Core® i9-12900H (2.50GHz 14-core / Turbo Boost up to 5.00GHz)
and
AMD Ryzen™ 7 (3.20GHz 8-core 6800H / Boost clock up to 4.70GHz)
Would the Ryzen actually be faster on average on single-core workloads since it's base spec is 3.20GHz vs the intel's base spec 2.50GHZ? (Not sure how long single core's can Boost for)
Or does the Intel outperform the Ryzen pretty much unilaterally?
Simply looking at the clock rate has never been the most useful metric when comparing CPUs.
Even back in the day a 33 MHz 486 DX was much faster than a 33 MHz 386 DX.
It’s better to look at benchmarks. Passmark is a good one. Its headline number is good for comparing performance in software that takes advantage of multiple cores. For that reason they also show single core performance to see how a cpu will performance relatively using games and apps that don’t use multiple cores.
Golden Cove is a much wider core than Zen 3 and has decently higher IPC. I'd guess Zen 3 is faster at base clocks, but I believe the 12900H doesn't stay at base clocks very often.
Or does the Intel outperform the Ryzen pretty much unilaterally?