Intel's Arrow Lake HX gaming CPU is putting the MacBook Pro M4 Pro through its paces

Yahoo

29-03-2025

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Intel's most powerful mobile CPU has arrived: the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX. Powering the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 gaming laptop, does it live up to the hype?
As with any new silicon, we compared Intel's Arrow Lake HX processor against its predecessor and current competition, especially AMD's latest chips.
While Arrow Lake HX will mostly be used in gaming laptops, a few workstation models may opt for the HX variant instead of Arrow Lake H, so we decided to throw Apple M4 into the mix.
So how does Intel's Core Ultra 200HX series stack up? Let's break it down.
Intel's initial claims about the Arrow Lake HX indicated more than 5% single-thread uplift and 20% multithread performance gains over the 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh HX chipsets.
We've seen only one iteration of Intel's Arrow Lake HX so far, and it isn't even the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processor. However, these numbers do indicate a solid leap in performance over the 14th generation and improvement over the Arrow Lake H model, which is designed for high-performance thin and light laptops.
The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16's Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX had a 5.7% increase in single-core performance on Geekbench 6 compared to the Intel Core i9-14900HX in the Razer Blade 16 (2024). It also outperformed the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo), AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Razer Blade 16 2025), and AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Asus ROG Flow Z13 2025) in single-core performance by 4-5%. The MacBook Pro 16's M4 Pro still holds the single-core performance record, but Arrow Lake HX is helping close the gap.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX also had a 9.8% increase over the i9-14900HX in multicore performance on Geekbench 6, and Arrow Lake outperformed the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 by 19.6%. The Ultra 9 275HX was just shy of the multicore performance of the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and almost gave Apple's M4 Pro a run for its money.
Granted, the Flow Z 13 does cap AMD's big Strix Halo Ryzen AI Max APU to just 70W of power, while the Gigabyte Aorus is a 230W laptop. At full power, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 could offer higher performance, but we've seen that chip in only one device so far.
Click to view chart data in table format.
You'll notice that our Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor doesn't quite meet that 20% gen-to-gen uplift Intel promised.
Typically, Intel is pretty on the mark with performance expectations. And that 20% could well be true of the Intel Core Ultra 7 or Core Ultra 5 variations of the Arrow Lake HX platform.
We've also compared the most powerful Intel Core i9 CPU against the lower-tier Intel Core Ultra 9 chipset, so it's not a complete 1:1 comparison. Both are 24-core CPUs, but the 275HX has 24 threads in total, while the i9-14900HX has 32. Additionally, the 275HX features a lower max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz, while the i9-14900HX offers a 5.8GHz turbo speed.
The Ultra 9 285HX still has fewer threads, as Intel ditched hyperthreading for the Arrow Lake generation, but it's got a slight boost clock improvement at 5.5GHz, which may help close the gap.
Unfortunately, we don't have a great Raptor Lake Refresh comparison CPU for the Ultra 9 275HX. And we haven't received any 285HX laptops for testing just yet. We'll take another look at these gen-over-gen comparisons once we've got more testing data.
While it isn't a 20% uplift, 10% is some solid gen-to-gen performance, and we saw healthy improvement in Geekbench, Handbrake video encoding, and CrossMark scores.
Battery life is not the priority for an Intel HX processor. That's just a fact.
The HX suffix chipsets are high-performance silicon designed for gaming or workstation laptops. They're almost always paired with high-end discrete GPUs, which cause battery life to suffer compared to the H suffix laptops, often shipped with just the integrated GPU.
However, things may get better in this generation.
Our Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 was paired with the Nvidia RTX 5080, which comes with Nvidia's revamped Battery Boost technology for up to 40% better battery life when gaming.
While the web surfing battery life on the 275HX/5080 Gigabyte Aorus wasn't groundbreaking at 5 hours and 31 minutes, the gaming battery life hit an astounding 2 hours and 54 minutes based on the PCMark 10 Gaming Battery life benchmark. This is about 50 extra minutes of web surfing and nearly an 1 hour and 30 minutes more gaming time than the i9-14900HX/4090 Razer Blade 16.
AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (7:22) is more efficient while surfing the web than the Arrow Lake HX CPU (5:31), but that's to be expected considering the Ryzen AI 9 processor is a 25W ultra-portable laptop chip compared to the 55W Arrow Lake HX.
As for AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395, while the Flow Z 13 did offer longer web surfing battery life (10:14), the Arrow Lake Gigabyte Aorus outlasted AMD's big APU in gaming battery life (1:34).
Click to view chart data in table format.
Naturally, the Arrow Lake H chipset outlasted the Arrow Lake HX, since our MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo is using the integrated Intel Arc 140T graphics chip compared to a discrete Nvidia RTX 50-series GPU.
The Core Ultra 275HX doesn't even come close to challenging the Apple MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro's incredible battery life, nor would we expect it to. Arm-based computers like the MacBook Pro and the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s are in a class of their own, and Intel's Lunar Lake is the chip built to challenge that.
Intel's Arrow Lake HX is built to offer competition against Apple Silcon's CPU power.
Unfortunately, Apple remains unchallenged for another generation when it comes to offering benchmark-breaking CPU performance and outstanding battery life.
Perhaps this Fall, we'll get that big blockbuster x86 CPU. Intel's Panther Lake is expected later this year, after all.
It's still very early in the Intel Arrow Lake HX reviews cycle, so we don't have complete data on the new silicon yet. But based on this early look, Intel's managed to eke out a solid boost to performance and battery life with this new generation.
Of course, results will vary depending on each laptop build, as multiple factors like GPU, battery size, and TDP can heavily impact performance and battery life on these machines. That's true of all laptops, but when you get to the high-performance machines, each different implementation of a CPU or GPU can have a great impact.
Plus, few people will be upgrading their 14th-gen, RTX 40-series gaming laptops for the new generation. For those with an 11th-gen/30-series laptop or older, these new chips are a huge improvement across the board.
After all, the base Geekbench 6 multicore score of 11,000 was set based on the desktop i7-12700K. And in 2025, those are rookie numbers even for thin and light laptops.
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