The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H Review: Meteor Lake Marks A Fresh Start To Mobile CPUs
by Gavin Bonshor on April 11, 2024 8:30 AM ESTASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405MA: Graphics Performance (Arc vs Radeon)
Moving onto gaming performance, Intel has gone all out for Meteor Lake when it comes to integrated graphics by incorporating their discrete-based Arc graphics into a more power-efficient mobile package. Designed with Arc performance for mobile, Intel includes their latest Arc Xe LPG graphics cores into Meteor Lake, which includes eight Xe cores designed to provide good performance levels.
Screenshot of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with Arc Xe Graphics in GPU-Z
Regarding competition, AMD's mobile Radeon 780M and 760M graphics use their RNDA3 graphics architecture. The AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and Ryzen 7 8700G both include the Radeon 780M, which includes twelve RDNA3 CUs, while the Ryzen 5 8600G uses the Radeon 760M, which is similar in design to the 780M but has just eight RDNA3 CUs. In relation to comparing both architectures, the Radeon 780M is Intel Meteor Lake's primary competition in the integrated mobile graphics arena.
Notably, here, the Ryzen 9 7940HS laptop is only using DDR5-5600 via SO-DIMMs, rather than soldered-down LPDDR5X. As a result it comes into this contest with a memory bandwidth deficit. Though by how much is uncertain, as current hardware info tools are not correctly reading the LPDDR5X memory speeds on Meteor Lake devices. Our best guess for now is that this would be paired with LPDDR5X-8533.
On the flip side, as we established with our look at power consumption, the Ryzen 9 7940HS laptop is able to sustain a much higher TDP overall – so that memory bandwidth deficit is counterbalanced by a sizable TDP advantage.
For this review, we will focus on gaming performance at 1080p, which is the most commonly used gaming resolution according to the latest Steam survey, and given these are mobile chips, we've opted for middle-of-the-road settings using the Medium preset.
Gaming Performance @ 1080p Medium Settings
Looking at gaming performance with the 1080p resolution and medium preset across all the games, we can see that the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405MA is very competitive with the Razer Blade 14 with the Radeon 780M chip in Company of Heroes 3. Looking at the other titles, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 2023, we can see that performance lags slightly behind the integrated Arc Xe graphics when compared directly to AMD's RDNA3 architecture. The difference isn't night and day, but certainly enough to consider the Radeon 780M, the superior integrated graphics chip combined with the Zen 4 cores, even when set at 35 W.
In Returnal, Intel's Core Ultra 7 155H within the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED performs very well, although in Total War Warhammer 3, the Meteor Lake chip displays fairly reasonable average frame rates but bottoms out massively in the 5% low framerates; this is on both the ASUS and MSI ultrabooks.
We can also see a pattern where the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED is considerably ahead in some games than the MSI Prestige 13 Evo A1MG, despite featuring the same Core Ultra 7 155H processor. This is because the MSI notebook is actually smaller and ultimately runs with less power overall than the ASUS model. This is prevalent in our peak power testing.
Overall, there are certain benefits to Intel's Arc Xe LPG integrated graphics in Meteor Lake, and for the best part, it's competitive with the AMD Radeon 780M and 760M. We also feel that if the Intel pair of ultrabooks had better cooling, performance could be even greater, as we saw in our power analysis. That being said, Intel's Arc Xe LPG graphics work, and given that it's Intel's first go at a tiled architecture in their mobile portfolio, it provides a solid stepping stone to the next generation.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 11, 2024 - link
"Also the official title is CPU review and there are graphs for BATTERY CHARGE TIME ??? Really ? What does that have to do with the CPU at all ?"With these integrated devices, we're reviewing the notebook as much as we're reviewing the chip inside. And in any case, battery life/recharge testing is very straightforward and is something that can be run overnight, so it doesn't get in the way of other testing. Reply
haplo602 - Friday, April 12, 2024 - link
Sure, but then the title should be "Review of 155H and the ASUS Zenbook 14". If it is a CPU review, then the other tests are irrelevant. If it is a device review, then there are things missing.Currently it poses as a some kind of strange hybrid while the title says only CPU review. Basically the content does not match the label on the box ... Reply
mode_13h - Monday, April 15, 2024 - link
> Intel has a huge advantage with LPDDR5X here that it manages to waste somehow.LPDDR5 and 5X are both much higher-latency than regular DDR5. That probably explains some of the performance vs. expectations mismatch. Reply
timecop1818 - Thursday, April 11, 2024 - link
what's with the trend of removing INS key and replacing it with a camera or power or some other useless button. this is getting ridiculous. i use shift-ins to paste all the time, and there are plenty of times when i want to overwrite something without caring to select it, thus needing an ins toggle. what the hell? is this some new crap mandated by the Microsoft ai button initiative? Replysylwah - Thursday, April 11, 2024 - link
From the inconsistencies between benchmark results and the text, to the comparison between latest Intel and previous gen AMD and the article title, this is clearly paid advertising by either Asus or Intel.Journalism guidelines say paid content should be disclosed, and yet I see it nowhere in the article. Feels like a new low. Reply
Orfosaurio - Thursday, April 11, 2024 - link
Maybe, but there is the presumption of innocence. ReplyRyan Smith - Friday, April 12, 2024 - link
"this is clearly paid advertising by either Asus or Intel."This is not a paid article in any shape or form. We have not received a dime from any party for this review.
To be clear, Intel did supply the Asus laptop for review purposes - as they usually do for mobile-first CPU launches - and we sourced the MSI laptop separately so that we could have a second data point. Reply
jeenam - Friday, April 12, 2024 - link
The benchmarks don't paint the Intel chip in a positive light. I agree with your assessment. The first thing I checked was the Graphics benchmarks as I recently purchased a 7840HS which has the Radeon 780M iGPU. It would seem Company of Heroes and Returnal were cherry-picked for the GPU benchmarks just so it would appear the integrated Intel ARC GPU isn't a dog compared to the 780M.Any objective reader who simply went on benchmarks would make the following honest assessment:
- The Intel ARC GPU is a dog compared to the 780M
- General benchmark performance indicates the Intel chip getting smoked by Ryzen 4
- The one area where Intel has an advantage is battery life
It's obvious the GPU benchmarks included games that were cherry-picked to give the appearance that the Intel ARC GPU can actually be competitive, when most likely if you were to pick a typical suite of games for benchmarking (e.g. GTA V, RE4 Remake, Forza, CS2, etc.) the losses to the 780M would continue to pile up. Reply
Ryan Smith - Friday, April 12, 2024 - link
" It would seem Company of Heroes and Returnal were cherry-picked for the GPU benchmarks just so it would appear the integrated Intel ARC GPU isn't a dog compared to the 780M."To be clear, the benchmarks were picked before we had the hardware. There's a lot of calculus that goes into selecting software for the benchmark suite, but the big things are suitability as a benchmark (i.e. does it even have a benchmark mode), popularity, and performance scalability.
Even then, we kind of whiffed it in the end, as Returnal doesn't break 30fps on current iGPUs. Reply
Hulk - Friday, April 12, 2024 - link
It's a great review and I appreciate it. Reply