Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX laptop CPU somehow defeats desktop counterpart in CPU benchmark

The upcoming Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX laptop CPU has made its debut on Passmark, revealing impressive performance potential. Perhaps even more interestingly, or rather shockingly, the laptop CPU appears to be able to outperform its desktop counterpart, the Core Ultra 5 245 "Arrow Lake" CPU.

Spotted by TechPowerUp, the Passmark listing for the Core Ultra 245HX CPU reveals a single-core score of roughly 4,500 and a multi-core score of 40,000. Compared to its predecessor, the Intel Core i5-14500HX, an improvement of 25% and 37% can be seen in the single-core and multi-core departments respectively. However, the story gets even more interesting when we compare the results to its desktop sibling.

In the previous generation, the Core i5-14500 "Raptor Lake" desktop CPU was roughly 9.6% and 8.9% faster in single-core and multi-core performance compared to its laptop counterpart, the Core i5-14500HX, according to Passmark. However, this time around, it seems that the 55-watt Core Ultra 5 245HX laptop CPU is quite a bit faster than its desktop counterpart, the 65-watt Core Ultra 5 245. The 125-watt Core Ultra 5 245K (currently $259.99 on Amazon) does remain ahead, thankfully.

To be precise, the Core Ultra 5 245 scores roughly 4,409 in single-core and 37,930 in multi-core, revealing a 2.7% and 5.3% deficit in 1T and nT respectively compared to the Core Ultra 5 245HX laptop chip. Of course, despite the base power for the 245HX being lower than the 245, the maximum turbo power for the 245HX is a whopping 160 watts, which is substantially higher than the Core Ultra 5 245's 121 watts. This was not the case in the Raptor Lake era, when both the 14500 and 14500HX had almost the same turbo power.

Of course, a single benchmark is hardly the final word in performance. Real-world capabilities are a different story, but nevertheless, witnessing a laptop CPU outpace an equivalent desktop part is hardly a common occurrence.