Intel Core Ultra 7 165U "Meteor Lake" Linux Performance

[kylew77]

Why does it feel like desktop and server chips have advanced so much in the last 5 years but laptops really haven't?

[coder]

Very very odd numbers from this 165U part: it definitely does not look like a "U" model, probably something is off in the laptop/bios power management because of the high baseline power usage and very high peak power usage.

Indeed. I think the default power limits are PL=12W and PL2=57W, yet the very first benchmark has an average of 70.6W and a peak of 122.9W! This thing is being run too far outside of its design parameters for good efficiency, and it has too few cores/threads to offer performance comparable to the others, at any power!

If they'd have at least kept within sane power limits, it might've had a fighting chance to deliver some wins on the efficiency front. Cranking it up to max Watts is a lose-lose proposition.

[coder]

Why does it feel like desktop and server chips have advanced so much in the last 5 years but laptops really haven't?

Back then, you could get 8x Zen 2 cores with LPDDR4 and PCIe 3.0. Now, you can get 8-16 Zen 4 cores with LPDDR5 and PCIe 5.0. Also, RDNA3 iGPUs instead of GCN. So, I'd say that's a pretty big difference. If you compare them side-by-side, you sure wouldn't have trouble guessing which is which.

With Intel, you can now get on-package LPDDR5X and also much bigger & better iGPUs. The P-cores are a lot better than those skylake-era cores, while the E-cores are no worse.

In both cases, you now get NPUs.

[coder]

Only having TWO performance cores is kind of a joke in this form factor. It's more forgivable in something like a tablet / convertible Surface type device where they may even be in some TDP down scenario trying to get below 15W.

I'd say it could be forgivable based on the price. But, this CPU has a list price of $448, which I think is much too high for only 2 P-cores.

[vegabook]

can Intel just start doing ARM or RISC-V already? They've got a great software team but if feels like x86 is holding them back. It can't be fun getting crushed so completely on performance _and_ power draw and I bet it's demotivating the engineers who have to work against the headwind of this obviously inferior architecture. Even AMD can't hold a candle to the leading ARM chips.

[coder]

can Intel just start doing ARM or RISC-V already? They've got a great software team but if feels like x86 is holding them back. It can't be fun getting crushed so completely on performance _and_ power draw and I bet it's demotivating the engineers who have to work against the headwind of this obviously inferior architecture. Even AMD can't hold a candle to the leading ARM chips.

Based on the rumors, you ain't seen nothing, yet. First, there's APX, which is the biggest revision to the x86 ISA since 64-bit support. x86S also deprecates some addressing support, with unknown practical benefits. Finally, rumors are swirling about a ground-up redesign, supposedly delivering truly massive IPC improvements. I'm not sure exactly when the latter is supposed to hit, but maybe Panther Lake (2025)?

I'm not saying you're wrong about ISA, but it would seem the boulder of x86 can yet be pushed a lot further up the hill.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Back then, you could get 8x Zen 2 cores with LPDDR4 and PCIe 3.0. Now, you can get 8-16 Zen 4 cores with LPDDR5 and PCIe 5.0. Also, RDNA2 iGPUs instead of GCN.

The 780M iGPU in the 7040 series mobile parts and newer are even RDNA3, so quite modern.

[kylew77]

With Intel, you can now get on-package LPDDR5X and also much bigger & better iGPUs. The P-cores are a lot better than those skylake-era cores, while the E-cores are no worse.

I was referring to the Intel chips specifically, ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 had a quad core icelake so 4 P cores. This Ultra 7 165 that comes in a ThinkPad T14 comes with 2 P cores and 8 E cores from the article. I was referring to the P core count actually going down while the total core count went up because of the added E cores.

[rabcor]

Why does it feel like desktop and server chips have advanced so much in the last 5 years but laptops really haven't?

the ryzen 6800u was actually quite an amazing advancement for laptops. i really wish i could have gotten a laptop with it but all the laptops with it were those small form factor ones and never had a dedicated gpu to go with it so i had to settle for a 6900hx.