Intel today launched Core Ultra vPro line of mobile processors for commercial notebooks. These chips are based on the "Meteor Lake" silicon, but come with the exhaustive vPro Enterprise or vPro Essentials set of features that let large organizations manage notebooks and other devices they hand out to their personnel. The processor models themselves align with the regular Core Ultra chips the company launched in December for the consumer notebook segment; but with the added vPro brand extension. Notebooks with Core Ultra vPro processors will be available in the commercial notebook channels open to large organizations ordering from OEMs to their exact specs in large enough volumes.

Among the vPro Enterprise features are the popular Intel Active Management tech, which allows remote administration of devices; Remote Platform Erase; Unique Platform ID, Service Record, and platform features such as VT-D, System Resources Defence, total memory encryption, Threat Detection Technology, CFET, and a hardware-based firmware authentication mechanism. All current Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 9 processor models have vPro variants, with identical clock speeds, core-configurations, cache sizes, and performance levels to their consumer notebook siblings.

MSI could be staggering the launch of its Intel Core Ultra-powered Claw gaming handheld, depending on regional availability—VideoCardz has observed contradictory release date data through UK retail channels. A confusing scenario is presented with some listings mentioning March 20, although others outline various dates going into April. MSI's German e-store appears to be the first outlet to have Claw units "in stock," although the active listing indicates that orders will start shipping on March 5. The pre-orderable "Handheld CLAW A1M-036" seems to be the most basic out of MSI's three launch SKUs—€849 (~$921) bags you a model that sports Intel's Core Ultra 5 135H APU and 512 GB of storage.

Preview samples are out in the wild—YouTube reviewers and influencers have started to show off their pre-release units, but Western embargoes are still in effect at the time of writing. Fairly comprehensive comparison videos emerged just over two weeks ago—courtesy of the "Please, Xiao Fengfeng" Bilibili video channel. The MSI Claw (Ultra 7-155H version) was compared to a close handheld rival; an ASUS ROG Ally (Ryzen Z1 Extreme). Overall, the AMD APU-based Ally seemed to outperform MSI's plucky new entrant—it is possible that the latter was disadvantaged with immature chipset drivers. Intel and its hardware partners are attempting to catch up with Team Red's more widespread release of portable-oriented APU packages—another Meteor Lake-based handheld gaming system, Tulpar, was demoed at a recent Intel Extreme Masters event.

Toward the end of 2024, Intel will update its client processor product stack with the introduction of the new "Arrow Lake" microarchitecture targeting both the desktop and mobile segments. On the desktop side of things, this will herald the new Socket LGA1851 with more SoC connectivity being shifted to the processor; and on the mobile side of things, there will be a much-needed increase in CPU core counts form the current 6P+8E+2LP. This low maximum core-count for "Meteor Lake" is the reason why Intel couldn't debut it on the desktop platform, and couldn't use it to power enthusiast HX-segment mobile processors, either—it had to tap into "Raptor Lake Refresh," and use the older 14th Gen Core nomenclature one last time.

All hopes are now pinned on "Arrow Lake," which could make up Intel's second Core Ultra mobile lineup; its first desktop Core Ultra, and possibly push "Meteor Lake" to the non-Ultra tier. "Arrow Lake" carries forward the Xe-LPG graphics architecture for the iGPU that Intel debuted with "Meteor Lake," but there's a key difference between the desktop- and mobile "Arrow Lake" chips concerning this iGPU, and it has not just to do with the Xe core counts. It turns out, that while the desktop "Arrow Lake-S" processor comes with an iGPU based on the Xe-LPG graphics architecture; the mobile "Arrow Lake" chips spanning the U-, P-, and H-segments will use a newer version of this architecture, called the Xe-LPG+.

Phoronix has spotted intriguing new Linux kernel patches for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors—the Monday morning notes reveal in-house software engineers are implementing default power profile adjustments. Meteor Lake CPUs have been operating on a default "balanced_performance" mode since their December 2023 launch—Linux adjustments will affect the processor's Energy Performance Preference (EPP) under Linux (similar to Windows Power Plans). Michael Larabel (Phoronix head honcho) laid out some history: "We've seen EPP overrides/tuning in the past within the Intel P-State driver for prior generations of Intel processors and this is much the same here. The ACPI EPP value is typically a range from 0 to 255 for indicating the processor/system power to performance preference."

He continued onto present day circumstances: "To date though the Intel P-State EPP override/tuning has been focused on the default "balanced_performance" mode while the first patch (from Monday) allows for model-specific EPP overrides for all pre-defined EPP strings. The second patch then goes ahead and updates the EPP values for Meteor Lake so that the balanced_performance default is now treated as 115 rather than 128 and the "performance" EPP is set to 16 rather than 0." Larabel is hopeful that a public release will coincide with the "upcoming Linux v6.9 cycle." Intel software engineers reckon that their tweaks/overrides have produced higher performance results—for "small form factor devices"—while reducing CPU temperatures and thermal throttling. Meteor Lake is considered to be quite energy inefficient when compared to the closest mobile processor architectures from AMD and Apple. Team Blue's next-gen Arrow Lake family is expected to launch later this year, but the current crop of CPUs require a bit of TLC and optimization in the meantime.

AMD's first generation XDNA-based Neural Processing Unit (NPU) arrived last year, as an onboard aspect of their "Phoenix" Ryzen 7040 mobile processor series, followed many months later by Intel's similarly NPU-laden Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" generation. It was recently revealed that a Windows 11 DirectML preview grants preliminary support for Core Ultra NPUs—Microsoft's software engineering department seems to be prioritizing Intel AI tech. Team Red has already released XDNA on desktop platforms—with its Ryzen 8000G APU family—and the "Hawk Point" 8040 series is nearing a retail launch, but these processors (plus 7040) remain unsupported by Microsoft's DirectML API. An interesting AMD community blog entry was posted two weeks—news outlets have been slow to pick up on its relevance.

Intel NPU activity can be monitored in Windows Task Manager (see screenshot below), and an upcoming update will add competing AMD parts to the mix. Joel Hruska's Team Red community blog post reveals that NPU monitoring for Ryzen 8040 series processors is due soon: " As AI PCs become more popular, there's a growing need for system monitoring tools that can track the performance of the new NPUs (Neural Processing Units) available on select Ryzen 8040 Series mobile processors. A neural processing unit - also sometimes referred to an integrated or on-die AI engine -- can improve battery life by offloading AI tasks that would otherwise be performed on the CPU or GPU. AMD has been working with Microsoft to enable MCDM (Microsoft Compute Driver Model) infrastructure on the AMD NPU (Neural Processing Unit)-enabled Ryzen 8040 Series of mobile processors. MCDM is a derivative of Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) that is targeting non-GPU, compute devices, such as the NPU. MCDM enables NPUs to make use of the existing GPU device management infrastructure, including scheduling, power management, memory management, and performance debugging with tools such as the Task Manager. MCDM serves as a fundamental layer, ensuring the smooth execution of AI workloads on NPU devices."

Chinese review outlets have received MSI Claw sample units—the "Please, Xiao Fengfeng" Bilibili video channel has produced several comparison pieces detailing how the plucky Intel Meteor Lake-powered handheld stands up against its closest rival; ASUS ROG Ally. The latter utilizes an AMD Ryzen Z1 APU—in Extreme or Standard forms—many news outlets have pointed out that the Z1 Extreme processor is a slightly reworked Ryzen 7 7840U "Phoenix" processor. Intel and its handheld hardware partners have not dressed up Meteor Lake chips with alternative gaming monikers—simply put, the MSI Claw arrives with Core Ultra 7-155H or Ultra 5-135H processors onboard. The two rival systems both run on Window 11, and also share the same screen size, resolution, display technology (IPS) and 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 memory configuration. The almost eight months old ASUS handheld seems to outperform its near-launch competition.

Xiao Fengfeng's review (Ultra 7-155H versus Z1 Extreme) focuses on different power levels and how they affect handheld performance—the Claw and Ally have user selectable TDP modes. A VideoCardz analysis piece lays out key divergences: "Both companies offer easy TDP profile switches, allowing users to adjust performance based on the game's requirements or available battery life. The Claw's larger battery could theoretically offer more gaming time or higher TDP with the same battery life. The system can work at 40 W TDP level (but in reality it's between 35 and 40 watts)...In the Shadow of the Tomb Raider test, the Claw doesn't seem to outperform the ROG Ally. According to a Bilibili creator's test, the system falls short at four different power levels: 15 W, 20 W, 25 W, and max TDP (40 W for Claw and 30 W for Ally)."

According to a Bloomberg report, Intel is seeking to raise at least $2 billion in equity funding from investors for expanding its fabrication facility in Leixlip, Ireland, known as Fab 34. The chipmaker has hired an advisor to find potential investors interested in providing capital for the project. Fab 34 is currently Intel's only chip plant in Europe that uses cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. It produces processors on the Intel 4 process node, including compute tiles for Meteor Lake client CPUs and expected future Xeon data center chips. While $2 billion alone cannot finance the construction of an entirely new fab today, it can support meaningful expansion or upgrades of existing capacity. Intel likely aims to grow Fab 34's output and/or transition it to more advanced 3 nm-class technologies like Intel 3, Intel 20A, or Intel 18A.

Expanding production aligns with Intel's needs for its own products and its Intel Foundry Services business, providing contract manufacturing. Intel previously secured a $15 billion investment from Brookfield Infrastructure for its Arizona fabs in exchange for a 49% stake, demonstrating the company's willingness to partner to raise capital for manufacturing projects. The Brookfield deal also set a precedent of using outside financing to supplement Intel's own spending budget. It provided $15 billion in effectively free cash flow Intel can redirect to other priorities like new fabs without increasing debt. Intel's latest fundraising efforts for the Ireland site follow a similar equity investment model that leverages outside capital to support its manufacturing expansion plans. Acquiring High-NA EUV machinery for manufacturing is costly, as these machines can reach up to $380 million alone.

An Open Image Denoise 2.2 release candidate was released earlier today—as discovered by Phoronix's founder and principal writer; Michael Larabel. Intel's dedicated website has not been updated with any new documentation or changelogs (at the time of writing), but a GitHub release page shows all of the crucial information. Team Blue's open-source oneAPI has been kept up-to-date with the latest technologies—not only limited to Intel's stable of Xe-LP, Xe-HPG and Xe-HPC components—the Phonorix article highlights updated support on competing platforms. The v2.2 preview adds support for Meteor Lake's integrated Arc graphics solution, and additional "denoising quality enhancements and other improvements."

Non-Intel platform improvements include updates for Apple's M-series chipsets, AArch64 processors, and NVIDIA CUDA. OIDn 2.2-rc: "adds Metal device support for Apple Silicon GPUs on recent versions of macOS. OIDn has already been supporting ARM64/AArch64 for Apple Silicon CPUs while now Open Image Denoise has extended that AArch64 support to work on Windows and Linux too. There is better performance in general for Open Image Denoise on CPUs with this forthcoming release." The changelog also highlights a general improvement performance across processors, and a fix that resolves a crash incident: "when releasing a buffer after releasing the device."

DFI, the world's leading brand in embedded motherboards and industrial computers, is targeting the AI application market by launching the embedded system module (SOM) MTH968 equipped with the latest Intel Core Ultra processor. It is the first product integrated with an NPU (Neural Processor Unit) processor, representing the official integration of AI with industrial PCs (IPCs). With the expansion into AI IPC, DFI expects to inject new momentum into the AI edge computing market.

According to the STL Partners report, the potential market value of global edge computing will increase from US$9 billion in 2020 to US$462 billion in 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49%. Therefore, the development of products that utilize the core capabilities of chips to rapidly execute AI edge computing in devices has become a key focus for many major technology companies.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation, has outlined future performance expectations for the company's Core range of processors. In a recent fourth quarter 2023 earnings call he declared: "The Core Ultra platform delivers leadership AI performance today with our next-generation platforms launching later this year, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake tripling our AI performance. In 2025 with Panther Lake, we will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x." Team Blue's Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors arrived right at the tail end of last year, as a somewhat delayed answer to AMD's Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APU series—both leveraging their own AI-crunching NPU technologies. Gelsinger believes that the launch of Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake Core product lines will bring significant (3x) AI processing improvements over Meteor Lake. He seemed to confident in a delay-free release schedule for the new year and beyond: "We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter unexpected two years ahead of our competition. Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle will launch this year."

He proceeded to gush about their next node advancement: "Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half 2024, completing our five nodes in four year journey and bringing us back to process leadership. I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly." Industry experts posit that Core "Panther Lake" parts could borrow elements from the next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" efficiency-focused family—possibly the latter's "Darkmont" E-cores, to accompany "Cougar Cove" P-cores. The Intel CEO is quite excited about the manufacturing outlay for 2025: "I'll just say, hey, we look at this every single day and we're scrutinizing carefully our progress on 18A. And obviously the great news that we just described those Clearwater Forest taping out, that gives us a lot of confidence that 18A is healthy. That's a major product for us. Panther Lake following that shortly."

Yesterday's CPU-Z update—now version 2.09—brings support for unreleased next generation Intel and AMD processors. PC hardware sleuths have combed through the freeware app's mid-January changelog—we first see "improved support" for Intel's recently launched 14th Generation Meteor Lake mobile CPU series, while the same line also mentions "preliminary support" for Team Blue's Arrow Lake desktop processor family. The latter is hotly anticipated to launch at the tail-end of 2024, so it is intriguing to see CPU-Z's development team getting familiar with Intel's mainstream 15th gen microarchitecture.

The main competition also makes an appearance further down—AMD's "Hawk Point and Hawk Point 2 (Zen 4/Zen 4c)" CPU families are present, although the changelog does not clarify whether this is preliminary support (or full blown). "Hawk Point" seems to be a very light refresh of their proceeding "Phoenix" product line, with some extra NPU "oomph" sprinkled in. The rumor mill has Team Red's Ryzen 8040 Series of mobile parts marked down for a first quarter 2024 launch. Version 2.09 also adds support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER (AD104-350-A1) GPUs. We expect to see the higher-up models joining in on the fun, with upcoming CPU-Z updates.

During the CES 2024 show, the ASUS booth had a wide variety of products on display. Among the more interesting solutions was the highly-anticipated ROG NUC. Initially, Intel sold the NUC design and manufacturing license to ASUS, and we were left wondering how ASUS would adapt its compact design. We had a booth tour and took pictures of the new design in person. The ASUS ROG NUC can be configured with Intel's flagship Meteor Lake-H Core Ultra 9 185H processor, a 16-core/22-thread CPU with a 115 W maximum turbo TDP that boosts up to 5.1 GHz. It features six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power performance cores. The system can be equipped with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU for graphics.

A more affordable option pairs the Core Ultra 7 155H processor with an RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. Other key specifications include support for up to 32 GB of DDR5 memory across two SO-DIMM slots, three M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD slots, Intel Killer WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, 2.5G LAN, Thunderbolt 4, as much as six USB ports, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and a choice of Windows 11 Home 64-bit, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, or no pre-installed OS. The 2.5-liter chassis shows that miniature size can equal big performance and can easily provide great gaming and productivity results.

Intel in its 2024 International CES presentation, unveiled its two new upcoming client microarchitectures, "Arrow Lake" and "Lunar Lake." Michelle Johnston Holthaus, EVP and GM of Intel's client computing group (CCG), in her keynote address, held up a next-generation Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" chip. This is the Lunar Lake-MX package, with MOP (memory on package). You have a Foveros base tile resembling "Meteor Lake," with on-package LPDDR5x memory stacks. With "Lunar Lake," Intel is reorganizing components across its various Foveros tiles—the Compute and Graphics tiles are combined into a single tile built on an Intel foundry node that's possibly the Intel 20A (we have no confirmation); and a smaller SoC tile that has all of the components of the current "Meteor Lake" SoC tile, and is possibly built on a TSMC node, such as N3.

"Lunar Lake" will pick up the mantle from "Meteor Lake" in the U-segment and H-segment (that's ultraportables, and thin-and-light), when it comes out later this year (we predict in the second half of 2024), with Core Ultra 2-series branding. Intel also referenced "Arrow Lake," which could finally bring light to the sluggish pace of development in its desktop segment. When it comes out later this year, "Arrow Lake" will debut Socket LGA1851, "Arrow Lake" will bring the AI Boost NPU to the desktop, along with Arc Xe-LPG integrated graphics. The biggest upgrade of course will be its new Compute tile, with its "Lion Cove" P-cores, and "Skymont" E-cores, that possibly offer a large IPC uplift over the current combination of "Raptor Cove" and "Gracemont" cores on the "Raptor Lake" silicon. It's also possible that Intel will try to bring "Meteor Lake" with its 6P+8E Compute tile, Xe-LPG iGPU, and NPU, to the LGA1851 socket, as part of some mid-range processor models. 2024 will see a Intel desktop processor based on a new architecture, which is the big takeaway here.

Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processor may be the the company's most efficient, but isn't a generation ahead of the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" mobile processors in terms of performance. This isn't just because it has an overall lower CPU core count in its H-segment of SKUs, but also because its performance cores (P-cores) actually post a generational reduction in IPC, as David Huang in his blog testing contemporary mobile processors found out, through a series of single-threaded benchmarks. Huang did a SPECint 2017 performance comparison of Intel's Core Ultra 7 155H, and Core i7-13700H "Raptor Lake," with AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, 7840H "Phoenix, Zen 4," and Apple M3 Pro and M2 Pro.

In his testing, the 155H, an H-segment processor, was found roughly matching the "Zen 4" based 7840U and 7840HS; while the Core i7-13700H was ahead of the three. Apple's M2 Pro and M3 Pro are a league ahead of all the other chips in terms of IPC. To determine IPC, Huang tested all processors with only one core, and their default clock speeds, and divided SPECint 2017 scores upon average clock speed of the loaded core logged during the course of the benchmark. Its worth noting here that the i7-13000H notebook was using dual-channel (4 sub-channel) DDR5 memory, while the Core Ultra 7 155H notebook was using LPDDR5, however Huang remarks that this shouldn't affect his conclusion that there has been an IPC regression between "Raptor Lake" and "Meteor Lake."

UltrabookReview, which recently took the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 for a spin, noticed something interesting with the Intel Core Ultra 155H "Meteor Lake" processor powering it—apparently Intel is still working with its device partners to improve performance and efficiency, and a UEFI firmware update (BIOS update) from ASUS improves the processor's performance/Watt. The reviewer compares the notebook with its original BIOS version 201, to the updated version 203, and notices improvements in performance/Watt at 28 W. The firmware apparently updates the notebook's power management. The improvements are most apparent with Cinebench R23, where the best-run score with the original 201 firmware was 12357 points, and the updated 203 firmware was 13873 points (a 12.25% improvement). You can catch the review in the source link below.

Mini PC designer Geekom is bring three innovative desktops to the 2024 International CES, based on the very latest mobile processors by Intel and AMD. These boxes are hinged on MoDT (mobile on desktop) hardware, meaning that energy efficient mobile processors are crammed into compact desktop cases, and wired out with all the connectivity they can put out. The three mini PC models Geekom is launching includes the IT14 Pro, the A8 Max, and the APro8 Max. The Geekcom IT14 Pro comes in a 0.7-liter chassis (about the size of a NUC), and is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" processor configured with 6P+8E+2LP cores, or 16-core/22-thread. The desktop relies entirely on the maxed out Arc iGPU with all its 8 Xe cores enabled (128 EU). The NPU is also enabled. The company didn't reveal the memory, storage, or WLAN configuration of this desktop, yet.

The A8 Max is based on a similar 1-liter class chassis, but uses an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS or Ryzen 9 8940HS "Hawk Point" processor, both of which are 8-core/16-thread "Zen 4," and configured with the full Radeon 780M iGPU available (12 CU or 768 stream processors). The star attraction here is the updated Ryzen AI NPU, which drives up the AI inference performance of these chips to 39 TOPS, compared to 34 TOPS of the Intel "Meteor Lake" chips. The APro8 Max is a based on a physically larger chassis that looks a bit like a game console. It's based on mostly the same hardware as the A8 Max, but with an added Radeon RX 7600M XT discrete GPU, which should give it the ability to offer maxed out AAA gaming at 1080p, or power productivity workloads at 4K UHD. We shoud know more about these three in Vegas next month.

ASRock Industrial releases the NUC Ultra 100 Motherboard Series with breakthrough powered by Intel Core Ultra processors (Meteor Lake-H). Presenting a 3D performance hybrid architecture that supports up to 14 cores and 20 threads, complemented by the latest integrated Intel ARC Graphics and the pioneering Intel NPU AI engine. The NUC Ultra 100 Motherboard Series are designed in NUC form factor, providing two DDR5-5600 MHz memory up to 96 GB, triple storages, 4K quad displays, 2.5G dual LAN, one USB4/Thunderbolt, and four USB 3.2 Gen 2. This advancement expands into enhanced creativity, efficiency, and collaboration using AI across diverse areas such as entertainment, corporate functions, smart retail, kiosks, digital signage, smart cities, embedded industries, Edge AIoT applications, and more.

The NUC Ultra 100 Motherboard Series encompass NUC-155H and NUC-125H models, powered by Intel Core Ultra 7/5 processors 155H/125H (Meteor Lake-H). The Series feature the upgraded dual-channel SO-DIMM DDR5 5600 MHz up to 96 GB memory, plus support for up to 4K quad displays with one DP 2.1 (from USB4), one DP 1.4a (from Type-C), and two HDMI 2.0b with Intel ARC Graphics, providing immersive experience. Notable upgrades extend to the triple storages of one M.2 Key M (2242/2280), one M.2 Key M (2242) with PCIe Gen4x4 for SSD, and one SATA 3.0. Moreover, rich I/O connectivity and expansion include one USB4/Thunderbolt 4, four USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-C/Type-A), 2.5G dual LAN, and one M.2 Key E (2230) with PCIe x1, USB 2.0 and CNVi for wireless. The Series also provide 12-24 V DC-in jack for flexible power input, -20°C ~ 70°C wide operating temperature, plus TPM support with Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT) for enhanced security.

Intel, in a company presentation made to its channel partners, confirmed that it is looking to release its next generation Arc Xe² discrete GPU lineup, codenamed "Battlemage." This would be Intel's second rodeo with high performance gaming graphics since its 2022 return to the segment with the Arc "Alchemist" series. The One Intel presentation slide talks about what to look forward to from the company in the client segment, in the coming year. The slide states that PC processor, workstation processor, and discrete GPU segments will each see upcoming products, which can be seen as a confirmation for a 2024 launch of "Battlemage." Older company slides had illustrated that the launch of "Battlemage" would be timed around that of the company's "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" client processors. The company is expected to launch "Arrow Lake" sometime in 2024. With "Battlemage," Intel is looking to offer a linear increase in performance, along with new hardware capabilities. The discrete GPUs from this family are expected to be built on a 4 nm-class foundry node by TSMC.

Microsoft Xbox Series X/S, their hardware refreshes, and variants, will reportedly be the company's mainstay all the way up until 2028, the company disclosed in its documents filed as part of its anti-trust lawsuit with the FTC. In a presentation slide titled "From "Zero Microsoft" to "Full Microsoft," the company explains how its next gen Xbox, scheduled for calendar year (CY) 2028, will see a full convergence of Microsoft co-developed hardware, software, and cloud compute services, into a powerful entertainment system. It elaborates on this in another slide, titled "Cohesive Hybrid Compute," where it states the company's vision to be the development of "a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences."

From the looks of it, Microsoft fully understands the creator economy that has been built over the gaming industry, and wants to develop its next-gen console to target exactly this—a single device from which people can play, stream, and create content from—something that's traditionally reserved for gaming desktop PCs. Game streamers playing on consoles usually have an entire creator PC setup handling the production and streaming side of things. Keeping this exact use-case in mind, Microsoft plans to "enable new levels of performance beyond the capabilities of the client hardware alone," by which it means that not only will the console rely on its own hardware—which could be jaw-dropping powerful as you'll see—but also leverage cloud compute services from Microsoft.

On December 14 Intel launched its first generation Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" line of mobile processors, and here is a a brief overview of the various processor models on offer at launch, thanks to a compilation by ComputerBase.de. "Meteor Lake" is Intel's first completely disaggregated processor, in which its numerous components are broken up into chiplets fabricated on different foundry nodes that strike the right performance/Watt suitable to the component, all held together by Intel's Foveros packaging technology (an evolution in multi-chip modules with a design focus on reducing inter-chiplet latencies to levels comparable to components on a monolithic chip). "Meteor Lake" also introduces a 3-tiered heterogeneous CPU architecture, with the introduction of the low-power island CPU cores.

Intel's mobile processor lineup is broadly categorized into the U-segment, targeting thin-and-light and ultraportable devices; and the H-segment, targeting notebooks of conventional thickness. At launch, the Core Ultra H-segment, and U-segment processors will coexist with P-segment processor models from the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" series; as well as the upcoming 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" HX-segment. The P-segment is positioned between the U- and H-segments, targeting a class of devices that either what to be thin-and-light mainstream notebooks, or higher performance ultraportables. The HX-segment caters to high performance gaming notebooks and mobile workstations.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading computer brand, proudly introduces the latest evolution in gaming laptops for 2024 - the AORUS 17 and AORUS 15 - delivering cutting-edge performance in their signature sleek and portable package.

Powered by the all-new Intel Core Ultra 7 processors and equipped with full-powered NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs alongside expandable DDR5 memory, the AORUS 17 and AORUS 15 effortlessly handle demanding gaming and creative tasks on the go. The exclusive WINDFORCE Infinity cooling technology ensures optimal performance in a super-portable chassis, while the addition of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos technologies provides an immersive personal cinema experience.

Intel on Wednesday held a pre-launch round-table with HotHardware, in which it made several performance disclosures of its upcoming Core "Meteor Lake" mobile processor, comparing it with the current U-segment chips based on the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake," and competing AMD Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix." In these, the company is claiming that its next-generation iGPU based on the Xe-LPG graphics architecture, armed with 128 EU, is significantly outperforming the Radeon 780M RDNA3 iGPU of the Ryzen 7040, while its CPU is ahead in multi-threaded performance.

In its comparison, the company picked the Core Ultra 7 165H, a middle-of-the-market performance segment part in the 28 W class. This is compared to the Core i7-1370P "Raptor Lake," and the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U. The company also dropped in the fastest Windows-ready Arm chip in the market, the Qualcomm 8cx Gen 3. In the 33 games that the 165H was compared to the 7840U, the Intel iGPU is shown posting performance leads ranging between 3% to 70% over the Radeon 780M, in 23 out of 33 games. In one of the games, the two perform on par with each other. In 9 out of 33 games, the Radeon 780M beats the Intel Xe-LPG by 2% to 18%. The iGPU of the 165H packs 8 Xe cores, or 128 EU (1,024 unified shaders). The Radeon 780M is powered by 12 RDNA3 compute units (768 stream processors).

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H is designed to be a middle-of-the-market processor SKU from Intel's next generation "Meteor Lake" processor family. It comes with a CPU core configuration of 14-core/18-thread. That's 4P+8E+2L (four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, two low-power island cores), although with a full featured Xe-LPG iGPU that has all 8 Xe cores (128 EU) enabled. The chip is normally rated for a 28 W power envelope, although OEMs such as Lenovo have developed a custom 65 W "power mode," which raises the base power value.

A Chinese PC enthusiast with access to an unreleased Lenovo notebook based on this processor, including Lenovo's 65 W Mode toggle, benchmarked it, and compared it with a notebook powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS "Phoenix" processor (8-core/16-thread, "Zen 4," Radeon 780M iGPU with all 12 compute units enabled); and another notebook powered by Intel's current middle-of-market chip in the H-segment, the Core i5-13500H "Raptor Lake" (4P+8E, Xe-LP iGPU with 5 Xe cores or 80 EU). The results were a little unexpected. The Xe-LPG iGPU of the 125H is shown beating both the Radeon 780M of the Ryzen, and the Xe-LP iGPU of the i5-13500H, with the highest 3DMark Time Spy and Fire Strike scores in the comparison. The Xe-LPG iGPU is 15% faster than the Radeon 780M in Time Spy, and 6% faster in Fire Strike. It's a whopping 70% faster than the Xe-LP iGPU of the "Raptor Lake" chip in this comparison. Things are shockingly different on the CPU performance front for the "Meteor Lake" chip.

FinalWire Ltd. today announced the immediate availability of AIDA64 Extreme 7.00 software, a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking tool for home users; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Engineer 7.00 software, a professional diagnostic and benchmarking solution for corporate IT technicians and engineers; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Business 7.00 software, an essential network management solution for small and medium scale enterprises; and the immediate availability of AIDA64 Network Audit 7.00 software, a dedicated network audit toolset to collect and manage corporate network inventories.

The new AIDA64 update introduces a revamped user interface with a configurable toolbar, as well as AVX-512 accelerated benchmarks for AMD Threadripper 7000 processors, AVX2 optimized benchmarks for Intel Meteor Lake processors, and supports the latest AMD and Intel CPU platforms as well as the new graphics and GPGPU computing technologies by AMD, Intel and NVIDIA.

DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 Extreme v7.0

Intel is slowly preparing to launch its next-generation Meteor Lake mobile processor family, dropping the Core i brand name in favor of Core Ultra. Today, we are witnessing some early Geekbench v6 benchmarks with the latest leak of the Core Ultra 7 155H processor, boasting an integrated Arc GPU featuring 8 Xe-Cores—the complete configuration expected in the GPU tile. This tile is also projected to be a part of the more potent Core 9 Ultra 185H CPU. The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor has been benchmarked in the new ASUS Zenbook 14, which houses a 16-core and 22-thread hybrid CPU configuration capable of boosting up to 4.8 GHz. Paired with 32 GB of memory, the configuration was well equipped to supply CPU and GPU with sufficient memory space.

Perhaps the most interesting information from the submission was the OpenCL score of the GPU. Clocking in at 33948 points in Geekbench v6, the GPU is running over AMD's Radeon 780M GPU found in APU solutions like AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and Ryzen 9 7940U, which scored 30585 and 27345 points in the same benchmark, respectively. The GPU tile is millimeters away from closing the gap between itself and the desktop Intel Arc A380 discrete GPU, which scored 37105 points for less than a 10% difference. The Xe-LPG GPU version is bringing some interesting performance points for the integrated GPU platform, which means that Intel's Meteor Lake SKUs will bring more performance/watt than ever.