News Intel Meteor Lake BIOS update delivers double-digit performance boost - Core Ultra laptops now more efficient

[Admin]

Reviewers noticed that the Meteor Lake CPUs in their pre-production notebooks weren't performing at full capacity during benchmarking. Intel quickly rolled out an update through respective OEMs boosting the performance by over 12% on the Core Ultra 7 155H.

Intel Meteor Lake BIOS update delivers double-digit performance boost - Core Ultra laptops now more efficient : Read more

 

[usertests]

7840HS still winning in efficiency under 35W if you believe that Cinebench graph, but at least it's no longer a slaughter.

 

[Nyara]

7840HS still winning in efficiency under 35W if you believe that Cinebench graph, but at least it's no longer a slaughter.

Mostly matching now. Largely equivalent products for 28-35W range. Pick up cheapest among the two, basically. AMD still has the lead in 25W sub and Intel on power limit release/relaxed.

It seems Intel 4 process roughly matches TSMC 4nm process, too, which makes promising Intel's coming 20 and 18 processes coming later.

 

[usertests]

Mostly matching now. Largely equivalent products for 28-35W range. Pick up cheapest among the two, basically. AMD still has the lead in 25W sub and Intel on power limit release/relaxed.

It seems Intel 4 process roughly matches TSMC 4nm process, too, which makes promising Intel's coming 20 and 18 processes coming later.

AMD has full 780M graphics in a "15W" TDP chip (7840U/8840U), whereas Intel is using a half-sized graphics tile for their "15W" Core Ultra 7 165U and friends. Are thin laptops going to use a power limited Meteor Lake-H just to get the extra graphics performance?

I'd like to see Meteor Lake-U with 4 Xe cores go up against 7640HS/7640U/8640U/etc. with 760M graphics. If not the 740M models.

Intel picked its new node names to align directly with TSMC. It's good news for consumers if they are comparable. Although TSMC is bragging and saying N2 will beat Intel 18A (instead of matching 20A).

 

[atomicWAR]

Good to see. Still underwhelmed but it is still early in the products life cycle so we could see more improvements in the coming days. I truly hope we do as I want to keep competition as fierce as possible.

 

[Nyara]

AMD has full 780M graphics in a "15W" TDP chip (7840U/8840U), whereas Intel is using a half-sized graphics tile for their "15W" Core Ultra 7 165U and friends. Are thin laptops going to use a power limited Meteor Lake-H just to get the extra graphics performance?

I'd like to see Meteor Lake-U with 4 Xe cores go up against 7640HS/7640U/8640U/etc. with 760M graphics. If not the 740M models.

Intel picked its new node names to align directly with TSMC. It's good news for consumers if they are comparable. Although TSMC is bragging and saying N2 will beat Intel 18A (instead of matching 20A).

Even if TSMC N2 were to beat Intel 18A, their N3 is still a mess in terms of yields and production volume and things looking worst for N2.

Intel once it gets a process running it can effectively manage the whole supply line perfectly and mass produce fast and handle yield differences flexible through its product line, so Intel's availabilty will make TSMC tremble, and everyone dependent on it.

Assuming Intel can avoid further delays, yes, that is the big unknown still.

 

[rluker5]

I like how the CPU on this thing was using 3-5w during normal use like web browsing with 4k video, netflix, typing test, youtube per HWinfo monitoring in the linked review from this article.

It looks like the SOC is adequate for most tasks with the dCPU and dGPU (just using those monickers because that is how Intel says they work-like a nvidia dGPU in a laptop with an iGPU as well.) being woken up just for intensive ones. 3-5w is easily in the fanless range so the laptop should usually be silent for most users.

The combination of typically running silent with long battery life and the ability to crank up the performance (and power use) on a whim seems pretty luxurious.

 

[Nyara]

I like how the CPU on this thing was using 3-5w during normal use like web browsing with 4k video, netflix, typing test, youtube per HWinfo monitoring in the linked review from this article.

It looks like the SOC is adequate for most tasks with the dCPU and dGPU (just using those monickers because that is how Intel says they work-like a nvidia dGPU in a laptop with an iGPU as well.) being woken up just for intensive ones. 3-5w is easily in the fanless range so the laptop should usually be silent for most users.

The combination of typically running silent with long battery life and the ability to crank up the performance (and power use) on a whim seems pretty luxurious.

People says a lot of dumb stuff about the e-cores, but this has been exactly my experience as well with my i5-13600KF, 2-6W use virtually all the time, with an energy efficient RX 6600 doing 2-6W with most tasks as well. I literally run my rig 0 RPM on the fans all the time in my alluminium case.

And when more power is needed it gets to it right away without affecting the basic stuff nor the basic stuff affecting my performance with the heavier stuff or gaming. Multitasking is extraordinary smooth, optimized and power efficient and the e-cores impact for it is felt right away compared to other CPUs I work with that lacks them.

Now the i5-13600KF is not very power efficient once it gets constantly heavier demanded (though undervolt helps a lot), but Meteor Lake and future Intel products will, specially non-k & mobile.

 

[sebastienbo]

Is this problem only affecting 155h? Or also 165h?

The article is really not clear about that...

 

[cyrusfox]

Intel picked its new node names to align directly with TSMC. It's good news for consumers if they are comparable. Although TSMC is bragging and saying N2 will beat Intel 18A (instead of matching 20A).

Has TSMC came up with a competing tech to Intel's Backside power delivery that comes with Intel 18A or 20A? If not, hard to take their claims seriously

Now the i5-13600KF is not very power efficient once it gets constantly heavier demanded (though undervolt helps a lot), but Meteor Lake and future Intel products will, specially non-k & mobile.

Are you using Windows 11? I am on Windows 10 and I need to force my PC in a lowpower mode for it to properly use the low power e-cores on my 13900. Otherwise my P-cores do the majority of the driving, system is responsive, but a bit power inefficient.

The meteorlake tiering of compute cores and how well it appears to work on the laptops is really admirable. Only wish it would natively work in the old desktop space without forcing upgrade to Microsofts latest OS. I need to try undervolting my CPU, unsure it will let me or not as I am using a H670 board and have a non-K cpu.

 

[Nyara]

Has TSMC came up with a competing tech to Intel's Backside power delivery that comes with Intel 18A or 20A? If not, hard to take their claims seriously

Are you using Windows 11? I am on Windows 10 and I need to force my PC in a lowpower mode for it to properly use the low power e-cores on my 13900. Otherwise my P-cores do the majority of the driving, system is responsive, but a bit power inefficient.

The meteorlake tiering of compute cores and how well it appears to work on the laptops is really admirable. Only wish it would natively work in the old desktop space without forcing upgrade to Microsofts latest OS. I need to try undervolting my CPU, unsure it will let me or not as I am using a H670 board and have a non-K cpu.

Maybe it is a specific problem with the 13900? I am using Windows 10 too and 100% power.

The system uses 1 p-core only, and it is reserved for burst activity as needed, like when I shift-alt to a video it will use my p-core by around 20% briefly. My e-cores constantly move 10-60% usage and largely varies by use by background tasks. Main task does not use e-cores until after 1 minute or so the p-core handled it, as in the CPU "learns" what is happening and realize task is low demand and move it to e-core use instead.

If my activity requires 60%+ use in most e-cores then the other p-cores start getting use. Also the same if the only p-core working gets saturated, the other p-cores will light up to help it.

On heavier tasks my e-core use stays consistent and dedicated to the background tasks as usual, while my p-cores goes from 0% to anything my heavier task is demanding and goes back to 0% after the main task is done using them, so there is a lot of efficiency moving until you hit about 50% total use, then your energy consumption skyrockets (like from 35W when 45% used to 150W at 100% used)

About undervolting, you can undervolt with any Intel motherboard and any chip, including non-K, 13rd gen Intel is the 2nd most benefited by the practice after X3D AMD chips, just tutorial for your specific motherboard company bios. Give it a try, I was able to reduce my consumption by 20% while not losing performance by part, and got a temperature drop from 90C to 75C while reducing my air cooler from 1800RPM to 1400RPM, and I got a bit bad silicon lottery as most people was able to reduce by 25%-35% my same CPU without performance lose.

 

[usertests]

Has TSMC came up with a competing tech to Intel's Backside power delivery that comes with Intel 18A or 20A? If not, hard to take their claims seriously

TSMC is moving to gate-all-around for N2, and then adding backside power delivery in N2P:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17469/tsmc-first-n2-node-to-use-gaafets-skip-backside-power

 

[cyrusfox]

TSMC is moving to gate-all-around for N2, and then adding backside power delivery in N2P:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17469/tsmc-first-n2-node-to-use-gaafets-skip-backside-power

Based on those dates and Intels own comments, looks like Intel is back in the lead(12 months but products and customers pending). Real performance will be measured in the field of future products.

Unless TSMC has ran test chips with Intel, foolhardy to claim superiority against either 20A or 18A. But they are partners and competing business, TSMC is still on top until they aren't.