Latest news with #ArrowLakeH
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Yahoo
Intel's Arrow Lake HX gaming CPU is putting the MacBook Pro M4 Pro through its paces
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. 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. "Arrow (Lake) is a wonderful, wonderful notebook product,' Intel VP shares what to expect from Intel's new processors in 2025 The RTX 5090 was supposed to be the chosen one, but does the RTX 4090 have the high ground? Handheld gaming PCs have a Windows problem — but maybe not for long
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Intel plans a big push into handheld gaming PCs to take on AMD
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Handheld gaming PCs aren't exactly a niche anymore. Every major gaming hardware manufacturer, other than Alienware, has joined the handheld PC market with at least one attempt at a gaming handheld. And within the world of gaming handhelds, AMD has reigned supreme, supplying chips for the Asus ROG Ally X, Lenovo Legion Go, and more. Intel handhelds, on the other hand, have been something of a niche within a niche. We had the MSI Claw release in 2024, and a few other Meteor Lake handhelds were announced by companies like OneXPlayer and AOKZOE. MSI also updated the Claw with Intel's Lunar Lake chipset for the Claw 8 AI+ and Claw 7 AI+, though neither handheld is readily available on the shelves. But just because Intel is taking a backseat for now doesn't mean it's content to sit in second place. Intel VP and General Manager, of Client AI and Technical Marketing, Robert Hallock tells Laptop Mag, "Intel is beefing up its staff to support gaming ISVs who want to do handhelds." And with expert support staff from engineers to game developers, Intel is readying itself to make a big push into the handheld market. As part of Intel's commitment to the handheld gaming PC market, the company is increasing its support network for handheld manufacturers. Hallock explains, "We're starting a number of internal programs to give them more assistance in targeting this performance profile because – relative to what they're accustomed to – [handhelds] are still relatively rare in terms of availability." Part of Intel's plan to support the emerging handheld market is seeding devices to game developers. "A lot of game devs tend to just target what they have on their desks or in their QA labs," Hallock says, "and so [we're] arming them with more handhelds as prototype devices. Getting them dev kits leading into Panther Lake." But Intel plans to offer more than just dev kits for handhelds. Intel is also keeping handheld specialists on staff as additional support for engineers and software developers. At CES, Intel had a wall of upcoming products featuring Intel chipsets. Familiar Intel-powered devices lined the shelves, including the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Tencent Sunday Dragon 3D handhelds as well as several upcoming Arrow Lake laptops by Acer, Asus, Dell, and Lenovo. But there were a few other gaming handhelds next to the Claw and Sunday Dragon 3D handheld. I wasn't able to identify those devices at the time, and probably for good reason, as Hallock confirmed those handhelds were powered by Intel's latest Arrow Lake H SoC (System-on-a-chip). "Those are coming, you know, Arrow [Lake] H has about the same graphics performance as Lunar [Lake] and some of these handhelds are going all the way up to 30 watts now. And Arrow [Lake] fits really nicely in that sort of form factor," Hallock confirms. Based on what we've seen of Arrow Lake H's integrated Arc 140T graphics tile, we'd be pretty pleased with the performance on an Arrow Lake H gaming handheld, though the battery life might not be as good as the Lunar Lake handhelds. "It's not just Lunar [Lake] either. Whatever our vendors want to take for their product design, we're more than happy to do so. And the cool thing about having more than one SoC design is you can actually be flexible like that," Hallock says. "We don't have to take the same design and just keep cutting it bigger and smaller." Arrow Lake H isn't the endpoint for Intel's handheld commitment either. Co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus confirmed at CES that Intel's next-generation of mobile chips, Panther Lake is already in testing. And Hallock confirmed that Intel is already willing to work with partners to get Panther Lake handhelds on the schedule. But what do we know about Panther Lake so far? This upcoming chipset design won't be joining the Intel Core Ultra 200 family alongside Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake. Panther Lake is the codename for Intel's upcoming mobile CPU family of SoCs, similar to Arrow Lake, and will likely be part of Intel's Core Ultra 300 generation. And while former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that Lunar Lake was something of a one-off in terms of chip design, particularly in putting the system memory on the CPU package, Panther Lake is intended to build on the success of Lunar Lake. "Panther Lake is essentially a direct successor to what Lunar [Lake]'s doing," Hallock tells us. "You saw the [CPU] package get held up at CES, it doesn't have memory on package this time." And while that is a major change from the Lunar Lake design it does have its advantages. "That makes it really nice for handheld vendors as well because now they can customize the memory they put in the platform. But we have other technologies that can compensate for the removal of the memory on package, which saves power," Hallock adds. So even without the benefit of having memory on the CPU package, Panther Lake shouldn't be much slower than Lunar Lake, while offering a more standard silicon design that allows for RAM configuration customization. "We're trying to build a family tree out of Lunar Lake," Hallock explains. "We're trying to create a stack based on that product. We're trying to take the things that people love and do more of it." So while Arrow Lake-H handhelds are coming soon, and a few Lunar Lake handhelds have already been announced, if you have the patience to wait for the Panther Lake versions it might get you the best of both worlds. Intel's internal support for handheld development is less about gamers, it's more of a commitment to hardware design and game developer partners. "If there's a game developer out there who happens upon this article eventually and you've been thinking about handhelds, give us an e-mail," Hallock says. "We would love to work with you and help you optimize your software for handheld devices. We have that staff. We have performance profiling tools. We have game developers on staff who are very familiar with optimizing graphics presets for devices of this performance profile or this form factor, and we would love to step in and give you a hand." "It's a big goal for some of the groups inside Intel to work on this, to make it their number one priority in '24 and '25 and then headed into Panther Lake as know that designing a new game for a new piece of hardware isn't always so we're ready and willing to jump in and help you do it. So if your game isn't coming out in the Lunar Lake generation, cool, we can help you do it for the Panther Lake generation, that's fine." But for all that Hallock's message isn't for gamers, ultimately consumers will have a much better experience on Intel handhelds thanks to partnerships and co-engineering teams like this one. Intel is known for working closely with its OEM partners and expanding into the game development side makes sense. Both for handheld devices that use Intel's SoC chipsets, but also for Intel's Arc discrete graphics business. Ultimately, steeper competition in the handheld gaming space will only benefit gamers in the long run. Silicon Survey 2025 One of my favorite AAA games looks stunning on Intel's new integrated graphics Nintendo Switch 2 price leak suggests affordability in Canada — but what about the U.S.?
