With its 14th generation of Core laptop, Meteor Lake, Intel finally seems to be able to compete with Radeon in the field of integrated graphics processors (iGPU). For the CPU part, however, it’s another story…
Intel will officially launch its Meteor Lake processors tomorrow, December 14. As this deadline approaches, the leaks concerning this 14th generation of Core laptop are accumulating: we were able to see the iGPU of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H at work in the OpenCL test of Geekbench a year ago twenty days, and had a more complete preview under 3DMark and Cinebench R23 at the end of last week. Here are new results for the Core Ultra 5 125H.
Core Ultra 5 125H, the weakest Meteor Lake?
Based on previous leaks, this processor is the most modest in the Meteor Lake range; it would be positioned just behind the Core Ultra 5 135H. This chip would still mobilize 14 CPU cores / 18 threads (in a 4P + 8E + 2L configuration corresponding to 4 Performance cores, 8 Efficiency cores and 2 low-power cores). The Xe-LPG iGPU inherits 7 Xe cores (i.e. 112 execution units), based on the four Geekbench entries ; this is almost the maximum quantity for this architecture (8 Xe cores / 128 execution units).
This Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor is expected to run at a PBP (processor base power) of 28 watts (W). However, Intel would authorize a 65 W mode to boost the performance of computers that integrate it; fashion also highlighted by Lenovo China via an image published on Weibo recently. Such power would improve multi-core performance by 47.1%, according to the brand.
Above all, it is with this power that the Core Ultra 125H was subjected to some benchmarks by Lenovo China, with performance indices revealed on Baidu.
The Meteor Lake is up against two other chips: a Core i5-13500H (12 cores/16 threads in a 4+8 configuration; 5-core/80 execution unit Xe-LP iGPU) based on Intel’s previous architecture, Raptor Lake; an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, an 8-core/16-thread chip with a Radeon 780M GPU (12 GPU cores).
Processors that run at 65 watts
All processors operate with a power of 65 W, more worthy of desktop APUs than mobile processors. Initially, the Core i5-13500H indeed has a PBP of 45 W and the Ryzen, a cTDP of 35-54 W.
You see, in the CPU benchmarks (Cinebench), the Core Ultra 5 125H struggles to outrun its predecessor and remains dominated by the Ryzen 7 (nothing illogical given the architecture of the two chips).
On the other hand, in the GPU benchmarks (TimeSpy and FireStrike), the Meteor Lake clearly stands out: its iGPU is ahead of the Radeon 780M of the AMD processor, the most efficient integrated graphics solution so far. Last September, Intel promised us an improvement in graphics performance thanks to the Xe-LPG architecture inherited from the Arc Alchemist GPUs, the promise seems to have been kept here.
In any case, take these results with caution. As reported above, these processors operate at much higher powers than usual. In addition, benchmarks remain indicative, but not necessarily representative of performance in “real” workloads, such as video games.
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Sources: Baidu, Lenovo China via HXL
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