The latest member of Intel’s 1st Gen Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” lineup has leaked out, leaving us less than impressed. The Core Ultra 7 165H is a 16-core CPU with 6 P-cores (Redwood Cove), 8 E-cores (Crestmont), and 2 LPE cores (Crestmont on SoC). It has a max boost clock of 5GHz for the P-core, 3.8GHz for the E-cores, and 2.5GHz for the LPE cores. It has a default TDP of 28W, a maximum boost power limit of 115W, and a maximum assured power of 65W.
The chip tested by Notebookcheck had a PL2 limit of 65W and a base power of 55W. It was pitched against the Core i7-13700H (53W-89W) and the Ryzen 7 7840HS (54W-64W). The number of benchmarks is limited, but at least they’re somewhat relevant (unlike Geekbench).
The Core Ultra 7 165H emerges victorious in only one test. In the 10+ years old Cinebench R15, where it’s 9% and 12% faster than the Core i7-13700H and the Ryzen 7 PRO 7840HS. The 13700H is faster in R20 and R23, though not by a substantial margin. Still, it’s a poor look for Meteor Lake, no matter how you spin it.
The single-core performance is even worse as the Core Ultra 7 165H falls behind the Core i7-13700H and the 7840HS in Cinebench R23. It continues to trail the former in R20 and R15 with deltas of 3% and 6%, respectively. There isn’t much to say except, “What the hell happened to Meteor Lake.” This is no better than Ice Lake, minus the delays.
