Latest processors question

[Austinian]

IDK about "understandable" but AFAIK:

Arrow Lake is Core Ultra 200S.

Lunar Lake is Core Ultra 200V.

Both are known as Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs.

(Meteor Lake is Core Ultra Series 1).

I just ran into this naming mess helping a friend. BestBuy is just listing CPUs as "Core Ultra 7" and it took me digging through the specs and then researching that to see that one had the high power version and the other was the U equivalent with a lot fewer cores and smaller power budget. They were similar laptops on the outside within like 200 dollars so I'm wondering how many people just assume it's the same chip?

I think that would be an easy mistake for some to make.

For example, I could be wrong, but from what I've read it appears that there are three externally very similar variants of the currently available Dell XPS 13. One with Meteor Lake, one with Snapdragon, one with Lunar Lake.

XPS 9340 Laptop | Dell USA

Shop the Dell XPS 13 thin lightweight laptop with Windows 11, and Intel Core Ultra processors. View on Dell.com

www.dell.com

Dell XPS 13 Laptop - Thin Laptops | Dell USA

Shop the Dell XPS 13 Laptop featuring Copilot+, Snapdragon X Elite CPU, Windows 11 ARM, and Dolby Vision & Dolby Atmos.

www.dell.com

Dell XPS 13 Laptop - Thin and Lightweight Laptop | Dell USA

Shop the Dell XPS 13 thin laptop at Dell.com. Explore its AI features, iconic design, and Intel Core Ultra processors.

www.dell.com

 

[CBR1100XX]

With that in mind, I am wondering if the i9 series is an overkill for photo editing. May be an i5 processor with a powerful GPU might work just as well.

The gamers in particular are often going that step or two down. The 14700 over the 14900. On the AMD side, the 5800/7800 over the x900 or x950 choice. The i9 often just means more cores, but slightly slower cores, and 16-24 cores isn't valuable for applications that still only use 4 or 8 of them.

Intel's worst option is the 14900KS, which gets a tiny single digit perf gain at the cost of 30% more power consumption. The issue of diminishing returns is highly relevant now in the cpu market.

With AMD especially you actually get more performance for gaming with the #700/#800 8 core chips with 3D vcache than the higher end models.

I have a 7950X3D but in large part due to it being more efficient not the gaming performance plus there was an amazing sale on it. And it's actually a pain to setup if you wanted to use it for gaming, and this holds true for the 9900/9950X as well. You need a fresh install of Windows for them to behave properly and to set the right power mode with the 12-16 core X3D parts.

Intel has its own issues now with games using the E cores sometimes and tanking performance causing people to go into the BIOS to disable them.

These new chips from both AMD and Intel are incredibly fast but they are getting much more complicated in design and on the user end to set them up properly.

 

[The Point and Shoot Pro]

You can save more money on intel's side of things if you never plan to overclock just get the numbered chips, and leave off all the letters. For example, I don't overclock anymore nor do I plan to, so my system just has the 10700. It sill has the included gpu, etc to take advantage of but it's multipliers are locked. As in the words of the great Ross Gellar it's "fine by me" !

 

[Henry Richardson]

As far as internal graphics are concerned, it´s complex and still a bit fuzzy: With the introduction of last year´s Meteor Lake CPU generation, Intel has added substantial gains in iGPU performance: In terms of raw numbers, the performance of the Intel Arc graphics with 8 cores has roughly doubled, compared to the previous Intel Iris Xe iGPU. In terms of real world applications, you could expect a performance increase of 60%-80%. Which is a lot!

Now in Lunar Lake chips, Intel has again substantially modified and improved iGPU (called Intel Arc 140v iGPU), but the benchmarks are kind of unclear: In raw numbers, performance is about the same as the previous Intel Arc iGPUs, in terms of gaming performance (which can be used as a benchmark of sorts), there´s a substantial increase. Notebookcheck has added an October update on initial benchmarks on the 140v iGPU, and those benchmarks suggest a 20% increase in Photoshop and Lightroom performance, compared to the previous Intel Arc iGPU in the Meteor Lake CPUs.

So, one has to wait for more real world tests of Lunar lake laptops.

Intel boasts also that the neural processing unit in Lunar lake CPUs has increased considerably - how this translates into the use of AI tools like denoise I do not know.

You have made very good points concerning the newer iGPUs + NPUs in recent Intel and AMD chips with regards to photo programs.

Reading through this thread and the links with info about 2023 AMD integrated GPU + NPU and 2024 Intel integrated GPU + NPU may be interesting for some people:

7840U/780M vs 258V/140V (Lunar Lake)

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67938543

Note that a 2024 AMD is a bit faster and more powerful than the 2023 AMD.

In the linked to thread there are timings I made using Topaz programs using the AMD 7840U/780M/NPU in my travel laptop:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67468698

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67469891

LrC Classic 13.1 Denoise:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67471497

These newer chips can run AI stuff such as Topaz pretty well using the iGPU + NPU. Note, that the time is also dependent on the file size. If you are working on, for example, 24mp files then they will be processed much faster than 61mp files.

 

[Liquid Light]

As far as internal graphics are concerned, it´s complex and still a bit fuzzy: With the introduction of last year´s Meteor Lake CPU generation, Intel has added substantial gains in iGPU performance: In terms of raw numbers, the performance of the Intel Arc graphics with 8 cores has roughly doubled, compared to the previous Intel Iris Xe iGPU. In terms of real world applications, you could expect a performance increase of 60%-80%. Which is a lot!

Now in Lunar Lake chips, Intel has again substantially modified and improved iGPU (called Intel Arc 140v iGPU), but the benchmarks are kind of unclear: In raw numbers, performance is about the same as the previous Intel Arc iGPUs, in terms of gaming performance (which can be used as a benchmark of sorts), there´s a substantial increase. Notebookcheck has added an October update on initial benchmarks on the 140v iGPU, and those benchmarks suggest a 20% increase in Photoshop and Lightroom performance, compared to the previous Intel Arc iGPU in the Meteor Lake CPUs.

So, one has to wait for more real world tests of Lunar lake laptops.

Intel boasts also that the neural processing unit in Lunar lake CPUs has increased considerably - how this translates into the use of AI tools like denoise I do not know.

You have made very good points concerning the newer iGPUs + NPUs in recent Intel and AMD chips with regards to photo programs.

Reading through this thread and the links with info about 2023 AMD integrated GPU + NPU and 2024 Intel integrated GPU + NPU may be interesting for some people:

7840U/780M vs 258V/140V (Lunar Lake)

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67938543

Note that a 2024 AMD is a bit faster and more powerful than the 2023 AMD.

In the linked to thread there are timings I made using Topaz programs using the AMD 7840U/780M/NPU in my travel laptop:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67468698

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67469891

LrC Classic 13.1 Denoise:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67471497

These newer chips can run AI stuff such as Topaz pretty well using the iGPU + NPU. Note, that the time is also dependent on the file size. If you are working on, for example, 24mp files then they will be processed much faster than 61mp files.

Thanks, very interesting!! It´s going to take some time going through your results in detail....!

Regarding AMD CPUs: The Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 seems to be a home run, because other than Intel it combines very good battery efficiency with better single-, and much better multicore benchmarks, compared to Lunar Lake.

Do you know how much faster the Radeon 890m is effectively compared to previous AMD iGPUs? On videocardbenchmark, it scores approx. 8.000 points, while Intel Arc 140v AND Intel Arc (8 cores) are both only slightly above 5.000 points. Radeon 780m is around 7.000 points.

For comparison: An RTX3050ti laptop GPU scores approx. 10.000 points. This suggests AMD iGPUs have reached and surpassed entry level dGPU territory.

Yet there´s still the confounder that Intel Arc 140v seems better in games than Radeon 890M.

How much would an external 4K display attached to either a Lunar Lake or AMD laptop tax the performance of an iGPU? And in light of those recent iGPUs being more RAM-hungry, how much of a safety margin will 32gb of RAM provide?

 

[GodSpeaks]

Your laptop is going to be faster than a new one with the Core Ultra, although it won't be as efficient.

Yup. It's nice having a cool laptop on your lap. In summer it's nice not getting your desk hot.

Satyaa, here is a paragraph explaining Intel's new numbering system. As of today the Wikipedia page isn't updated for Ultra 2 (Arrow Lake) processors, which just started to appear in laptops that we've discussed here. Nothing I'd want to buy yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core#Core_and_Core_Ultra_3/5/7/9

This is as bad as the USB naming schemes and as equally confusing.

Why is it that big tech is incapable of coming up with simple and understandable naming of their products?

 

[Robert Zanatta]

The iGPU benchmarks for Lunar Lake score noticeably higher than the AMD 890M on various GPU benchmarks. Strange.

Otherwise the HX 370 gets way better multicore performance over the i7 258V. The difference in power consumption fairs better for the 258V at 37W vs 54W for the HX 370.

There's pretty much no difference between the HX 370 and the i7 258V in PugetBench Photoshop.

 

[Liquid Light]

The iGPU benchmarks for Lunar Lake score noticeably higher than the AMD 890M on various GPU benchmarks. Strange.

Otherwise the HX 370 gets way better multicore performance over the i7 258V. The difference in power consumption fairs better for the 258V at 37W vs 54W for the HX 370.

There's pretty much no difference between the HX 370 and the i7 258V in PugetBench Photoshop.

Thanks!

Do you have a link to those PugetBench scores? I find their website utterly confusing.....

I´m in the market for a laptop, and multicore performance is less important to me than decent iGPU performance. Single core performance seems pretty good. I´ve set my eyes on the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 (b/c of the 2-in-1 form factor), but for some odd reason Samsung, despite earlier announcements, does not offer a version with 32gb ram. If they continue to limit to 16gb it´s a dealbreaker.

 

[CBR1100XX]

The iGPU benchmarks for Lunar Lake score noticeably higher than the AMD 890M on various GPU benchmarks. Strange.

Otherwise the HX 370 gets way better multicore performance over the i7 258V. The difference in power consumption fairs better for the 258V at 37W vs 54W for the HX 370.

There's pretty much no difference between the HX 370 and the i7 258V in PugetBench Photoshop.

Thanks!

Do you have a link to those PugetBench scores? I find their website utterly confusing.....

I´m in the market for a laptop, and multicore performance is less important to me than decent iGPU performance. Single core performance seems pretty good. I´ve set my eyes on the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 (b/c of the 2-in-1 form factor), but for some odd reason Samsung, despite earlier announcements, does not offer a version with 32gb ram. If they continue to limit to 16gb it´s a dealbreaker.

How soon do you need it? If iGPU power is big concern AMD Strix Halo is supposed to be announced at CES so January 7-10th. The 890M in current Strix Point processors has 16 GPU CUs, Strix Halo should have 40.

 

[The Point and Shoot Pro]

The iGPU benchmarks for Lunar Lake score noticeably higher than the AMD 890M on various GPU benchmarks. Strange.

Otherwise the HX 370 gets way better multicore performance over the i7 258V. The difference in power consumption fairs better for the 258V at 37W vs 54W for the HX 370.

There's pretty much no difference between the HX 370 and the i7 258V in PugetBench Photoshop.

Thanks!

Do you have a link to those PugetBench scores? I find their website utterly confusing.....

I´m in the market for a laptop, and multicore performance is less important to me than decent iGPU performance. Single core performance seems pretty good. I´ve set my eyes on the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 (b/c of the 2-in-1 form factor), but for some odd reason Samsung, despite earlier announcements, does not offer a version with 32gb ram. If they continue to limit to 16gb it´s a dealbreaker.

How soon do you need it? If iGPU power is big concern AMD Strix Halo is supposed to be announced at CES so January 7-10th. The 890M in current Strix Point processors has 16 GPU CUs, Strix Halo should have 40.

That sounds like it's going to be a beast of an igpu if it works correctly and gives copious access to system ram.

 

[Liquid Light]

How soon do you need it? If iGPU power is big concern AMD Strix Halo is supposed to be announced at CES so January 7-10th. The 890M in current Strix Point processors has 16 GPU CUs, Strix Halo should have 40.

Didn´t hear about that one - I´m not so familiar with AMD CPUs. But it sounds like a monster - will this really be a laptop CPU? Multicore performance should be off the charts.

 

[kelpdiver]

Why is it that big tech is incapable of coming up with simple and understandable naming of their products?

few naming schemes can last indefinitely, even without the Marketing Department messing it up to catch up with their competitors.