For the primary time in a few years, you have got a alternative when shopping for a brand new Intel-based laptop computer: Intel’s 14th-gen Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) or its newest 14th-gen Core HX chip. Which must you purchase, and why? We’ll speak in regards to the variations between the 2 platforms, with some testing to assist illustrate the distinctions.

We’ve already finished a deeper dive on Intel’s 14th-gen Core HX, the “Raptor Lake Refresh” platform that doesn’t provide that many variations from the Thirteenth-gen “Raptor Lake” pocket book platform that debuted a yr in the past. As the codenames recommend, the 2 platforms are fairly related. But Intel’s Meteor Lake is considerably completely different, each in design in addition to goal.

Intel is utilizing “Core Ultra” in addition to “Core” because the manufacturers of each the 14th-generation Meteor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh, and that’s what you’ll see on the field. As Intel strikes into subsequent generations, equivalent to Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, executives have stated the corporate will preserve these manufacturers — and with out the generational distinctions of years previous. We discover that complicated. For readability’s sake, you’ll see us consult with each the structure in addition to the model the place crucial.)

Put merely, Intel’s Core Ultra seems to be the model Intel and its companions will use for AI PCs that emphasize lengthy battery life. The Core HX is aimed toward efficiency and gaming. But you’ll doubtless see some overlap, equivalent to within the just lately introduced Asus notebooks which break up the distinction between creativity and productiveness.

Further studying: The best laptops of 2024

Core Ultra vs. Core HX: Two completely different chips

If you’d like you’ll be able to dig into our deep dives into the Meteor Lake architecture as properly as the 14th-gen Core HX. What that you must know, nonetheless, is that the 2 chips are solely completely different.

14th-gen Core HX chips use a standard two-die Intel structure, combining the principle CPU and a secondary I/O chip inside a package deal. Intel’s 14th-gen Core HX chips are fabricated on the Intel 7 course of, with each efficiency and effectivity cores (P-cores and E-cores). Turbo clock speeds run as much as 5.8GHz on the excessive finish, with a base energy consumption of 55W.

From a platform perspective, the 14th-gen Core HX consists of an eight-lane PCI Express 5 connection particularly designed for an exterior GPU. Memory runs as much as DDR5-5600 speeds. This would be the platform on which Intel launches Thunderbolt 5, although as a discrete part that’s not yet available.

Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) is a four-tile structure, consisting of particular CPU, “SOC,” graphics, and I/O tiles comprised of differing course of applied sciences and even completely different factories. The Meteor Lake CPU tile is made on a finer, much less power-hungry Intel 4 course of know-how, with P-cores that prime out at 5.0GHz at turbo speeds. In normal, Intel’s Meteor Lake chips are made to eat 28W, although there’s a 45W chip, the Core Ultra 9 185H, because of ship this quarter at as much as 5.1GHz.

Meteor Lake additionally consists of eight lanes of PCIe 5 for eGPUs, however a sharply improved built-in graphics unit as properly. Only Thunderbolt 4 is on the market.

There’s additionally a refined, profound distinction in how the 2 chips really deal with new duties. Intel’s Thead Director works with the working system to route new duties, or threads, to the CPU. The 14th-gen Core HX has a standard strategy: Thread Director routes information duties to the quickest P-cores, and drops them right down to slower, extra environment friendly E-cores if crucial. The Core Ultra really features a particular, slower low-power E-core, and Thread Director routes new duties to those slowest, most-power environment friendly cores first, after which pushes them to the P-cores if wanted.

Core Ultra vs. Core HX: The AI distinction

You’ve most likely heard fairly a little bit of discuss AI, and the way Meteor Lake is the engine of the AI PC. That’s true, to an extent. Meteor Lake consists of an AI engine, additionally referred to as an NPU, inside certainly one of its tiles. The 14th-gen Core HX doesn’t; there’s no AI block in any respect.

This will matter lower than Intel (or, to be honest, AMD or Qualcomm) would have you ever consider within the close to future. For now, a lot of AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Google Bard, and Microsoft Copilot) occurs within the cloud, together with your PC speaking with these companies similar to every other server or web site. At CES 2024, we found very few “local” AI applications, and an NPU can be replaced by a good CPU or GPU in AI calculations. NPUs are extra environment friendly than both of the 2 others by way of battery life, for functions like Windows Studio Effects in the Surface Pro 9.

However, the only, strongest method to obtain AI efficiency proper now could be merely to purchase a gaming- or creator-class notebook with a strong discrete GPU — and it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s Meteor Lake or a Core HX. (Intel is working to triple the performance of its NPU inside the Lunar Lake cell chip due on the finish of this yr, but it surely’s not right here but.)

Core Ultra vs. Core HX: Which is quicker?

In a perfect world, a laptop computer producer would design the identical laptop computer with choices for each the 14th-gen Core HX in addition to Meteor Lake, for an apples-to-apples comparability. (We recall fondly 2019’s Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 which supplied each the Tenth-gen Core [Ice Lake] and the Ryzen 3000 Mobile household, permitting for a head-to-head comparison.) But due to the separate roles that the Core HX and Meteor Lake platforms play — in addition to their energy consumption — this isn’t doable.

Intel

In truth, we don’t have two comparable laptops (say, two gaming laptops) accessible, both. We not less than have two laptops from the identical producer, MSI: the Prestige 16 AI Evo (with a Core Ultra 7 155H “Meteor Lake” chip inside) and the MSI Raider GE78 pocket book with a Core i9-14900HX chip inside. That helps assume some commonality within the design and the elements.

Let’s be clear: This is just not a direct comparability. Let’s name this a “first look” between the 2 platforms, and we would by no means get higher. Anyone who says that is an unfair comparability — properly, you’re proper. But for proper now, this could assist clarify the efficiency variations between the 2 platforms for many who need a bit extra context.

As we did with the Core HX comparisons, we’ve targeted on CPU-specific benchmarks, with the hope that we will get rid of the affect of the GeForce RTX 4090 cell GPU within the MSI Raider, and the shortage of a discrete GPU within the Prestige Evo. Once once more, we’ve dialed up the Windows 11 efficiency slider to its highest. The one factor we don’t really feel comfy testing is battery life or energy consumption, because the discrepancies in GPU and show are simply too nice.

Remember, this can be a Core i9 versus a Core 7 chip, with important energy (and cooling) behind the Core HX machine. The two chips have very completely different core/thread counts as properly.

Cinebench R23 might be the best level of comparability: The check renders a scene utilizing simply the CPU, and the entire cores and threads that the platform permits. According to our checks, the Core i9-14900HX pocket book outperforms the Core Ultra 7 155H by greater than an element of two. We additionally ran the check on Cinebench’s single-threaded benchmark, with nearer outcomes.

Mark Hachman / IDG

That’s not notably uncommon, nonetheless. Just for some further context, we reviewed our historic database and in contrast the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 productiveness laptop computer, with a Thirteenth-gen Core i7-1360P inside, and a multithread rating of 10,145 and single-thread rating of 1,791, towards the MSI Titan GT 77 HX 13V gaming behemoth, with a Core i9-13980HX inside, and a Cinebench R23 multithread rating of 31,072, and a single-threaded rating of two,063. Those chips had been from the identical structure, however we see the same differential between productiveness and gaming platforms in that era as properly.

(We couldn’t bear to not run this check on an Acer Swift Edge 16 with a Ryzen 7 7840U inside: 12,574 for the multithreaded check, and 1,718 for the single-threaded consequence.)

We additionally ran two extra checks evaluating Meteor Lake and the Core HX. The Handbrake app transcodes a video file over a protracted interval, so it’s a very good indicator how the efficiency of the CPU will maintain up over a protracted process. How the processor is cooled will make a major distinction, giving a bonus to the gaming laptop computer and its Core HX chip.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Using the HWInfo utility, we all know that the Core HX chip we examined can run in a turbo, overclocked state for 56 seconds, climbing over 5GHz earlier than falling again to 2.4GHz to keep away from overheating. The similar software experiences that the Core Ultra 7 155H can run as much as 4.8GHz for a shorter 28 seconds earlier than falling again to 3GHz. That additional demonstrates that the Core HX would be the superior processor, as operating sooner for an extended time period ends in extra efficiency.

Finally, we seemed on the UL Procyon benchmark, which measures AI. Again, the Core HX chip doesn’t embrace an NPU, whereas the Meteor Lake structure does. The Procyon measures how properly particular person logic blocks just like the CPU, GPU, and NPU fare in processing AI duties just like the underpinnings of LLMs, or AI chatbots. We check utilizing OpenVINO, which is optimized for the Intel Core structure.

Mark Hachman / IDG

What the benchmark doesn’t do is add up the mixed energy of all three logic blocks working collectively. Instead, it checks the person elements. Here, the Core HX nonetheless outperforms Meteor Lake, although the distinction is nearer than in different benchmarks. We additionally examined Meteor Lake’s NPU, for comparability. (Incidentally, testing the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo’s CPU for AI efficiency runs the fan fairly aggressively. When the NPU was examined, it was silent.)

And the outcomes present a distinct perspective: Although we’ve written that the NPU doesn’t matter as much in comparison with the GPU, Meteor Lake’s NPU handily outperformed the Core HX’s CPU, not less than the place AI is worried, with a rating of 511. That’s important! (However, the MSI Raider GE78’s GeForce 4090 GPU crushes it, because it returns a rating of two,745 when the GPU is examined, with GeForce RTX optimizations turned on.)

Remember, what we haven’t examined is battery life, which is affected by the chip, the show, and so forth. This is likely one of the Core Ultra’s sturdy fits, and your finest wager is to easily peruse opinions of Meteor Lake notebooks you plan to purchase and see what reviewers say.

Core Ultra vs Core HX: Which must you purchase?

The early knowledge suggests that there’s nonetheless a transparent demarcation in efficiency between Meteor Lake and the Core HX platform — which isn’t that completely different from the efficiency distinction that existed in earlier generations of Intel chips.

This time round, although, it’s simpler to inform. Instead of asking you to parse the CPU mannequin numbers on the facet of the field, the excellence might be extra in your face: The model emblem would be the sign that tells you what that laptop computer affords — AI and strong battery life (the Core Ultra) or sheer efficiency (the Core, and particularly the Core HX).

On steadiness, although, this clearer communication is sweet: for Intel, for reviewers, and for you.

Recall the fairly slimy attack Intel made on AMD’s mannequin numbers, labelling them “snake oil.” Neither Intel nor AMD’s processor naming schemes are nonetheless that simple to learn. But if Intel can proceed to differentiate between the Core (HX) and Core Ultra processor manufacturers, with notable variations of their efficiency and capabilities, then this new dual-brand strategy to cell processors may simply be one customers will perceive and profit from. After all, it will likely be proper on the field.

Further studying: The best laptops of 2024