Leaked Core Ultra 9 185H performance vs 13th-gen Raptor Lake points to efficiency as primary selling point

It is no secret that the Intel Meteor Lake processors are focused primarily on energy efficiency, AI, and iGPU performance, something which we covered in detail in our launch piece. So, it is unsurprising that leaks for Meteor Lake chips like the Core Ultra 7 155H and the Core Ultra 9 185H have showcased underwhelming performance compared to the 13th-gen Raptor Lake mobile CPUs.

Now, courtesy of Moore’s Law Is Dead, we have a look at how the MTL Core Ultra 9 185H performs vs the 13th-gen Intel mobile CPUs.

Intel Core Ultra 9 185H performance

First up, MLID reports that the flagship Core Ultra 9 185H chip with 16 cores and 22 threads earns >700 and 7,700 points in the Cinebench R20 Single-Core and Multi-Core tests respectively. To put this into perspective, MLID’s previous leak about the Core Ultra 7 155H performance placed the chip at around 7,000 points in the Cinebench R20 Multi-Core benchmark. So, the Core Ultra 9 185H Multi-Core listed here is about 5% faster.

Furthermore, the best-performing Core i7-13700H and Core i9-13900H chips in our database display similar Cinebench R20 Multi-Core results to the Core Ultra 9 with averages ranging around 5,939 and 6,737 points or -33% and -13% respectively. 

Moving on, the Core i7-13700H and the Core i9-13900H perform, on average, -2% and +4% vs the Core Ultra 9 in the Cinebench R20 Single-Core test. The deltas jump to +5% and +13% when we compare the max Core i7-13700H and Core i9-13900H scores to the leaked Core Ultra 9 185H.

Intel Meteor Lake efficiency and performance/watt

In addition to revealing the Core Ultra 9 185H Cinebench R20 results, MLID also reports some interesting figures related to the power consumption and energy efficiency of Intel MTL chips. 

Per one of MLID's OEM sources, the Intel MTL “Ultra” CPUs could have efficiency as the main marketing point as the OEM has had to do “much more efficiency-focused testing”. The source also claimed that the MTL chips hit their “Heavy Load Perf/Watt” between 65-95 W, whereas the Raptor Lake mobile CPUs performed optimally around 120-145 W. In other words, the MTL processors reportedly use much less energy resulting in increased perf/watt.

Finally, the source also conjectured that the MTL processors seem to be their “best relative to Phoenix and RPL-R in idle usage and casual workloads”. As a refresher, the AMD Phoenix CPUs, although not the most performant chips out there, can be super efficient at 35-55 W as shown by our analysis of the Ryzen 9 7940HS.

All in all, it looks like the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is focused entirely on efficiency as the leaked performance figures of the CPU aren’t flattering. As always, these are pre-release numbers and the final figures of the retail chip could vary quite a bit. So, take the information with a grain of salt.

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