Notebookcheck Logo

Intel Core Ultra 7 165H

Intel Ultra 7 165H

The Intel Core Ultra 7 165H is a high-end laptop processor of the Meteor Lake series. This 1st Gen Core Ultra chip has come to replace 13th generation Core chips; it has 16 cores (6 + 8 + 2) and 22 threads at its disposal. The 16 cores are comprised of 6 HT-enabled Performance cores running at up to 5.0 GHz and 10 Efficient cores (8 main cores plus 2 extra ones found in the Low Power Island) running at up to 3.8 GHz. Two of the 10 E-cores are located in the Low Power Island.

The 8-core Arc GPU, just out of the oven, serves as the integrated graphics adapter - this runs at up to 2.30 GHz - and there is a bevy of other brand-new technologies on offer as well, including the integrated AI Boost NPU with two Gen 3 engines for hardware AI workload acceleration.

Architecture & Features

Meteor Lake is a case of throwing everything at AMD (including the kitchen sink, yes) and seeing what sticks. With this product family, Intel intends to deliver higher CPU performance, higher GPU performance, higher hardware AI workload acceleration rates and longer battery life than what Raptor Lake chips were capable of. For those counting, that's four birds to kill with a single stone.

This generation of Intel Core processors features Redwood architecture P-cores and Crestwood architecture E-cores. Both come with architectural improvements over Raptor Cove and Gracemont respectively for slightly higher performance-per-clock figures; the interesting thing is that of the 10 E-cores, two are actually a separate cluster located on what Intel calls a "Low Power Island". Essentially, the latter is an SoC within an SoC that can stay active while most other parts of the chip are temporarily switched off to save power. The low-power E-cores run at up to 2.5 GHz. Intel hopes this approach will let it deliver unprecedentedly low power consumption figures when under low load, boosting battery life of laptops and tablets powered by Meteor Lake.

To build Meteor Lake processors, Intel uses the Foveros technology (stacking several chips on top of each other). This is a cost-cutting measure more than anything else, as manufacturing several small dies on several different processes is so much cheaper than making a huge single die and hoping that there are no defects in it that will require disabling some parts of it.

Elsewhere, the Core Ultra 7 165H comes with 24 MB of L3 cache and a very healthy number of PCIe 5 and PCIe 4 lanes for NVMe SSD speeds up to 15.7 GB/s. vPro Enterprise and business-centric features such as the Remote Platform Erase are onboard as well. It supports RAM running at up to 7467 MHz (DDR5-5600, LPDDR5-7467, LPDDR5x-7467, to be specific - which is about as good as what 8040 series Ryzen chips have). Naturally, the chip also features built-in Thunderbolt 4 support and Intel CNVi Wi-Fi support; fascinatingly enough, Intel chose to keep native SATA III support that AMD had removed from its Ryzen processors quite a while ago.

The 165H is compatible with 64-bit Windows 10, 64-bit Windows 11 and with many Linux distros.

Performance

If one chooses to trust the official Intel performance data, then the 165H is about as fast as the Ryzen 9 6900HX (Zen 3 Plus, 8 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.9 GHz), as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This isn't a ground-breaking result but let's just wait for our in-house testing results instead of jumping to conclusions.

Either way, real-world performance of the chip may vary significantly depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of the system is.

Graphics

The 8-core Arc GPU running at up to 2.30 GHz is slated to be a proper alternative to the mighty Radeon 780M. The thing is almost as fast as the GTX 1650 (Laptop) and the RTX 2050 (Laptop) to represent some seriously solid performance gains over aging Xe-series integrated GPUs. If one chooses to take Intel's word for it, that is.

A proper DX12 Ultimate graphics adapter, the Arc is no stranger to ray tracing and other modern technologies including AI frame generation (XeSS). It will let you connect up to four SUHD 4320p monitors and it will both HW-encode and HW-encode the most widely used video codecs including AVC, HEVC and AV1 in a fast and efficient manner.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are, how competent the cooling solution of your system is, how fast the RAM of your system is. The latter is really important; Intel stresses that for the Arc to deliver the best results possible, multi-channel RAM configuration is a must.

Power consumption

This mighty Core Ultra 7 series processor has a Base power consumption of 28 W, while its Turbo power consumption is not supposed to exceed 115 W. A powerful cooling solution is a must for any system powered by this chip.

The 165H is comprised of five small chips ("tiles") that are connected using Intel's Foveros technology. The tile containing main CPU cores is produced on the fairly modern 7 nm Intel process marketed as Intel 4 while most other tiles (the iGPU, the I/O die, ...) are built with TSMC's N5 and N6 processes. The base tile is built with the old Intel 22FFL process.

SeriesIntel Intel Meteor Lake-H
CodenameMeteor Lake-H

Series: Intel Meteor Lake-H Meteor Lake-H

Intel Core Ultra 9 185H compare3.8 - 5.1 GHz16 / 22 cores24 MB L3
Intel Core Ultra 7 165H « 3.8 - 5 GHz16 / 22 cores24 MB L3
Intel Core Ultra 7 155H compare3.8 - 4.8 GHz16 / 22 cores24 MB L3
Intel Core Ultra 5 135H compare3.6 - 4.6 GHz14 / 18 cores18 MB L3
Intel Core Ultra 5 125H compare3.6 - 4.5 GHz14 / 18 cores18 MB L3
Clock Rate3800 - 5000 MHz
Level 3 Cache24 MB
Number of Cores / Threads16 / 22
6 x 5.0 GHz Intel Redwood Cove P-Core
8 x 3.8 GHz Intel Crestmont E-Core
2 x 2.5 GHz Intel Crestmont E-Core
Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power)28 Watt
Manufacturing Technology7 nm
Max. Temperature110 °C
SocketBGA2049
FeaturesDDR5-5600/LPDDR5-7467/LPDDR5x-7467 RAM, PCIe 5, Thr. Director, DL Boost, AI Boost, vPro Enterprise, RPE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES, AVX, AVX2, AVX-VNNI, FMA3, SHA
GPUIntel Arc 8-Cores iGPU ( - 2300 MHz)
64 Bit64 Bit support
Architecturex86
Announcement Date12/14/2023
Product Link (external)ark.intel.com

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15 - Cinebench R15 CPU Multi 64 Bit
2642 Points (17%)
0135270405540675810945108012151350148516201755189020252160229524302565Tooltip
Geekbench 6.2 - Geekbench 6.2 Single-Core
min: 2358     avg: 2436     median: 2435.5 (74%)     max: 2513 points
Geekbench 6.2 - Geekbench 6.2 Multi-Core
min: 11616     avg: 12452     median: 12452 (49%)     max: 13288 points
Geekbench 5.5 - Geekbench 5.1 - 5.4 64 Bit Single-Core
min: 1688     avg: 1771     median: 1770.5 (75%)     max: 1853 points
Geekbench 5.5 - Geekbench 5.1 - 5.4 64 Bit Multi-Core
min: 11733     avg: 11857     median: 11856.5 (21%)     max: 11980 points
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance

Add one or more devices and compare

In the following list you can select (and also search for) devices that should be added to the comparison. You can select more than one device.

restrict list:

show all (including archived), 2024, 2023
v1.26
log 25. 02:36:53

#0 no ids found in url (should be separated by "_") +0s ... 0s

#1 not redirecting to Ajax server +0s ... 0s

#2 did not recreate cache, as it is less than 5 days old! Created at Tue, 23 Apr 2024 05:40:15 +0200 +0.001s ... 0.001s

#3 composed specs +0.022s ... 0.023s

#4 did output specs +0s ... 0.023s

#5 getting avg benchmarks for device 16905 +0.003s ... 0.026s

#6 got single benchmarks 16905 +0.018s ... 0.045s

#7 got avg benchmarks for devices +0s ... 0.045s

#8 min, max, avg, median took s +0.266s ... 0.311s

#9 return log +0.033s ... 0.343s

Reviews for the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H processor

Dell XPS 16 9640, Ultra 7 165H RTX 4070: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, 16.30", 2.1 kg
  External Review » Dell XPS 16 9640, Ultra 7 165H RTX 4070

Please share our article, every link counts!

» Mobile CPU Comparison
Comparison of all mobile CPU series

» Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist
Benchmarklist of all known CPUs that are used in laptops (desktop and laptop CPUs)

Other CPUs of the series Intel Meteor Lake-H

» Intel Core Ultra 9 185H
   16x 3.8 GHz - 5.1 GHz
» Intel Core Ultra 7 165H
   16x 3.8 GHz - 5 GHz
» Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
   16x 3.8 GHz - 4.8 GHz
» Intel Core Ultra 5 135H
   14x 3.6 GHz - 4.6 GHz
» Intel Core Ultra 5 125H
   14x 3.6 GHz - 4.5 GHz

Surrounding CPUs

+ Intel Core i9-13900HK
   14x 1.9 GHz - 5.4 GHz
+ Intel Core Ultra 9 185H
   16x 3.8 GHz - 5.1 GHz
+ Intel Core i9-13905H
   14x 1.9 GHz - 5.4 GHz
+ Intel Core i9-13900H
   14x 1.9 GHz - 5.4 GHz
+ Apple M3 Max 14-Core
   14x 2.75 GHz - 4.06 GHz
» Intel Core Ultra 7 165H
   16x 3.8 GHz - 5 GHz
- Intel Core i7-13800H
   14x 1.8 GHz - 5.2 GHz
- Intel Core i7-12850HX
   16x 1.5 GHz - 4.8 GHz
- Intel Core i7-12800HX
   16x 1.5 GHz - 4.8 GHz
- Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
   16x 3.8 GHz - 4.8 GHz
- Intel Core i9-12900HK
   14x 1.8 GHz - 5 GHz
> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Benchmarks / Tech > Notebook Processors > Intel Core Ultra 7 165H Processor - Benchmarks and Specs
Klaus Hinum (Update: 2023-12-14)