Intel’s Meteor Lake laptop processors are
launching today, and I’ve got one here to see how it performs in raw CPU performance,
battery life, and even gaming on the integrated Arc graphics! And spoiler, it did much better there than
I expected. This is the 2024 version of the ASUS Zenbook
14, and inside it’s got Intel’s new Core Ultra 7 155H processor with integrated Arc
graphics. This new chip has 6P cores and 8E cores, so
kind of like the Core i7-12700H and 13700H from the last two generations, but it’s
also got 2 new lower power cores and more cache. Based on that, I went out and bought the 12th
and 13th gen versions of ASUS’s Zenbook 14X OLED, as I figured these use a similar
chassis with comparable processors. But I found out that the new 155H CPU is an
H28 part, which means it’s limited to just 28 watts of power. If you want 45 watts, it seems like you’ve
got to go up to Intel’s Core Ultra 9 series. Now that’s perfectly fine in thinner laptop
designs like this Zenbook 14, but my higher tier 14X versions can actually sustain their
processors at 50 to 60 watts, and more power means more performance. But that’s because these Zenbook 14X versions
are a little thicker compared to this Zenbook 14. But this was the only way I could get a 12700H
and 13700H in a comparable laptop. And I mean for what it’s worth, the 155H
is this laptop does run fairly cool at 28 watts, so in theory it could use more power
and perform better. But unfortunately I wasn’t able to boost
it, because the current public version of Intel XTU doesn’t support Meteor Lake, and
I’m making this video before the embargo ends. Anyway long story short, to keep this a fair
comparison I’ve power limited the 12700H and 13700H to 28 watts to match our 155H. So this testing is more about comparing thinner
laptops at lower power limits than a Zenbook comparison. And unfortunately my Meteor Lake laptop is
an early engineering sample, so the usual disclaimers apply. This isn’t an in-depth test and the final
results of this product may vary. But with that out of the way, let’s see
what Meteor Lake can do! Starting out with Cinebench R23, the new 155H
CPU was the best in multicore, which was to be expected, as it’s got two extra low power
efficiency cores which increase the total core and thread count. It’s scoring 14% ahead compared to 13th
gen, while 13th gen was also 14% ahead of 12th gen, so about the same gen-on-gen gains
there. I did not expect the single core performance
to be lower with the 155H though. Meteor Lake is a newer architecture and the
single core boost clock is 100MHz higher than the 12700H. Again, this is an early engineering sample,
so maybe that will change. But based on some other early results out
there, this just might be how it is. And it wasn’t just in Cinebench either. The single core score was also lower in Geekbench,
but there is a bigger gap in multicore performance with the 155H 29% ahead of 13th gen. But what about battery life? Meteor Lake uses a new design and scheduler,
which should help save power. 13th Gen Raptor Lake on the left would start
a new process on the bigger more power hungry P cores, then move it to the lower powered
E cores as needed. But Meteor Lake on the other hand starts processes
out on the new low power E cores, which are on a separate SoC tile. If more processing power is required, the
process then goes to the regular E cores, and then the higher powered P cores if needed. Basically this means that in lighter workloads,
the CPU tile that contains the P and E cores should be able to shut off. And then the workload just runs on those new
two lower powered E cores. The Meteor Lake 155H laptop was lasting the
longest when running my standard YouTube video playback test at 9 and a half hours. A great result, but we’ve also got to take
into account that ASUS have also increased that battery size with each generation of
Zenbook 14. If we divide the run time in minutes by the
size of the battery, we get these values which show us how many minutes the laptop is actually
lasting for each watt hour of power the battery has. This isn’t perfect, but when we look at
it this way, there’s not actually a difference between the last gen 13700H and newer 155H. It’s possible that this workload may not
be light enough to only run on the lower powered E cores, which is disappointing given it’s
not what I’d call a tough workload. But the integrated graphics would also be
active during that workload. And with Meteor Lake being Intel’s first
laptop processor with integrated Arc graphics, well I can’t wait any longer to show you
the results! In 3DMark Time Spy we’re looking at almost
double the graphics score with the Arc graphics in the 155H when compared to Intel’s last
gen Iris Xe graphics, which is what’s in both the 13th and 12th gen processors. I even added in Lenovo’s Legion Slim 5 14”
with Ryzen 7 7840HS and Radeon 780M graphics to the party, but Intel’s Arc still had
the win. And that was the case in a game too. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the 155H with
Arc graphics was 8% ahead of the 780M. That’s quite impressive considering the
780M graphics are what power popular handheld devices like ASUS’s ROG Ally and Lenovo’s
Legion Go. But don’t forget that these laptops have
more power too, so it may be a different story at lower wattage in handheld devices. In any case, it’s still impressive that
Intel’s latest is 74% ahead compared to what they had last gen, so this is quite a
big leap forward in terms of iGPU performance from team blue. It’s unlikely that we’re going to see
any significant improvements from AMD on the laptop side in early 2024, as their Ryzen
2024 laptop processors are pretty much the same as the 2023 versions. Same core and thread counts, same boost clock
speeds, same cache and same 780M iGPUs. Basically it’s a Zen 4 re-brand with an
8 at the front to indicate that it’s a 2024 chip, despite the fact that not much else
has changed. The main differences are that the 8840HS and
8640HS have a lower TDP compared to the 7840HS and 7640HS they replace, but the new 45HS
parts replace those instead, so there are just more options now. The other change is these new 8000 versions
have a decent boost in AI performance with the integrated NPU. Unfortunately there aren’t a whole lot of
great AI benchmarks out there just yet. I compiled one on this Meteor Lake laptop
only to find that it was using the GPU and completely ignoring the NPU, and then it ended
up crashing before finishing anyway… I suspect there probably will be a decent
performance improvement from both Intel and AMD with these new gen processors thanks to
the NPUs built in. But I just wasn’t able to properly test
those out in this early look. But based on the testing that I was able to
complete, it looks like Meteor Lake has a nice raw multicore CPU performance boost compared
to last gen, and there’s also an even bigger improvement when it comes to integrated graphics
performance. Which are two things that we aren’t seeing
from AMD’s new laptop chips. Now I normally focus on gaming laptops with
more powerful discrete graphics inside, and despite these improvements with Meteor Lake,
I still stand by what I said in this video. So check that one out next to find out why
I can still easily recommend an older 2023 gaming laptop. Even with Meteor Lake launching today, I’ll
see you in that one next.
