This time, the Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake ” processors are officially launched. These processors represent Intel’s latest generation of chips and symbolize a real revolution in design. Dedicated exclusively to notebooks, several manufacturers, including ASUS, MSI, ACER, Lenovo and Samsung, have taken the opportunity to launch new products using these processors. These processors offer up to 16 cores and 22 threads, with a Turbo frequency of 5.10 GHz, a finally powerful Intel Arc iGPU and a dedicated NPU for AI acceleration. They support up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X RAM at 7,467 MHz and offer Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. Intel claims that these processors are the most efficient in the x86 architecture for ultraportables, even outperforming the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, Apple M3 and AMD Ryzen 7 7840U in terms of energy efficiency…But for the moment the promises don’t seem to be materializing.
The Core Ultra 7 155H disappointing…for now
While these processors have been heralded for months as a major technological upheaval, for the moment they seem to offer a modest improvement on Raptor Lake, with a focus on graphics and efficiency. Initial feedback is highly nuanced, with many observers focusing their fire on the Core Ultra 7 155H, which already powers a number of benchmarks. This variant is measured as less powerful and less efficient in terms of energy consumption than AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840S in almost all areas, including content creation, productivity and gaming. In terms of graphics performance, the Core Ultra 7 155H’s Xe-LPG Arc GPU is also inferior to the Radeon 780M in all the games tested, with significantly lower energy efficiency.
Intel Core Ultra: let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet…
Nevertheless, the comparison with its predecessor, Raptor Lake, is positive. GPU performance has increased considerably, and the additional functionalities via the dedicated SoC tile with NPU, multimedia engine, display controller and LPE cores look promising, even if they haven’t yet been tested in detail today. And therein lies the problem. For the moment, it seems that the full potential of this processor has yet to be realized. At this point, we can only be in two minds about this new generation. On the one hand, it’s impossible not to acknowledge Intel’s technological innovation, notably with the introduction of a modular architecture and the integration of new functionalities such as AI acceleration. However, concerns remain as to the actual performance of these processors and the immediate benefit of AI acceleration for the consumer. That’s why we’ll need to take the time to thoroughly analyze and test the new products. More and more manufacturer announcements are expected over the next few days at CES 2024. We’ll be bringing you our own tests of these processors shortly.
