Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake CPUs finally land with 3x faster gaming

It’s been a protracted course of however Intel has lastly formally unveiled its new Intel Core Extremely CPUs powered by its new Intel Meteor Lake structure. Together with a brand new and complicated hybrid chip design, the brand new processors promise to ship an enormous increase in onboard graphics efficiency. In addition they add in devoted AI cores and new additional low energy cores to make sure laptops and different cellular units can do extra for longer when working on battery energy.

Whereas full of new know-how, these CPUs received’t be candidates for our best CPU for gaming information, as they’re at present for laptop computer and cellular use solely – you’ll be able to’t purchase them as a standalone improve. Certainly, Intel is totally skipping including a spread of desktop CPUs utilizing the Intel Meteor Lake structure. As an alternative, will probably be in late 2024 that we count on to see a model new Intel Arrow Lake structure powering a brand-new vary of desktop CPUs – within the meantime you’ll should make do with the quick however power-hungry Intel 14th-gen chips, such because the Intel Core i5-14600K.

The brand new Intel Meteor Lake chips additionally mark the debut of Intel’s new naming scheme, whereby the ‘i’ that was in Intel CPU names has gone. So, as an alternative of a reputation similar to Intel Core i9 14900K, beneath the brand new scheme this chip could be referred to as the Intel Core Extremely 9 14900K. Hardly a revolution, however one thing to pay attention to.

The largest change for many avid gamers seeking to get probably the most enjoyable from their laptop computer is that Intel’s built-in Arc graphics has seen an enormous increase in efficiency. In Intel’s offered assessments, efficiency within the sport Ghostrunner 2 is proven rising from 26fps utilizing a current-gen Intel Core i7 1370P chip to 62fps utilizing a brand new Intel Core Extremely 165H chip.

Intel additionally highlights how this efficiency could be prolonged additional to 82fps utilizing XeSS (the corporate’s upscaling know-how equal to AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS) – making for that claimed 3x efficiency improve. Nevertheless, XeSS is already accessible on Thirteenth-gen cellular chips and AMD’s competing merchandise also can benefit from related upscaling applied sciences to assert a efficiency improve, so it’s greater than a little bit of a stretch to assert the real-world efficiency improve is that top.

Nonetheless, 26fps to 62fps is a greater than doubling in efficiency, so it’s nonetheless spectacular. That stated, Intel’s personal graphs present these numbers solely simply carry Intel as much as simply previous parity with AMD’s competing options, so it’s not a slam dunk for Intel.

Additionally, an enormous change with the brand new chips is the introduction of recent low-power AI cores – dubbed NPU cores – that enable these chips to speed up AI workloads whereas solely sipping energy. These will work alongside the CPU and GPU to supply a triple-threat of how for AI workloads to be accelerated – CPU for low-latency, GPU for heavy workloads, and NPU for low-power background duties.

Accompanying these adjustments is a 25% discount in general energy consumption in comparison with Thirteenth-gen chips, which partly comes about attributable to a change in manufacturing course of from the bigger Intel 7 (14nm) to the smaller Intel 4 (7nm) course of.

The complete lineup of Intel Core Extremely chips launching right now is massive, however there are two important varieties, with the H chips together with higher-power Intel Arc graphics and the U fashions together with lower-tier Intel graphics. The U fashions even have fewer cores and are typically focussed on skinny and lightweight laptops.

The Intel Core Extremely lineup will likely be arriving in a bunch of recent laptops, with the likes of Acer, Asus, Dell, MSI, and Razer all anticipated to announce new merchandise that includes the chips on the CES 2024 commerce present in January 2024. We’ll be reporting from the present to get hands-on with all these merchandise and extra.

If all this speak of cellular gaming isn’t for you, although, take a look at our best gaming CPU information for our present best choice for desktop CPUs or take a look at what early Intel Arrow Lake leaks to see what Intel’s next-generation processors have in retailer.