The Intel Core Ultra 5 125U is a lower mid-range Meteor Lake chip that debuted in December 2023. This 1st Gen Core Ultra processor has come to replace 13th generation Core processors; it has 12 cores (2 + 8 + 2) and 14 threads at its disposal. Its Performance cores, of which there are 2, are HT-enabled and run at up to 4.3 GHz while its Efficient cores, of which there are 10 (8 main cores plus 2 extra ones found in the Low Power Island) run at up to 3.6 GHz. The 4-core Intel Arc Graphics, just out of the oven, serves as the integrated graphics adapter - this runs at up to 1.85 GHz - and there is a bevy of other brand-new technologies on offer as well, such as the integrated AI Boost NPU with two Gen 3 engines for hardware AI workload acceleration.
Architecture and Features
With Meteor Lake, Intel intends to deliver higher CPU performance, higher GPU performance and at the same time, longer battery life than what Raptor Lake chips were capable of. The company also wants a large piece of the AI cake and is working with Microsoft and other partners to make that happen. As a result, Windows Defender is now AI-enabled, meaning it can use the Intel NPU to take some of the load off the main CPU cores. We also get this new Intel Device Discovery technology that is designed to give us a better hardware-based remote laptop management than ever before; and, to make things even better, Intel now offers a dedicated Arc Pro graphics driver for workstations.
This generation of Intel Core processors features Redwood architecture P-cores and Crestmont architecture E-cores. Both come with slight 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 2.1 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 its 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 5 125U comes with 12 MB of L3 cache which is a significant reduction compared to the 24 MB that the 155H, the 165H and the 185H have. The processor has a decent number of PCIe 4 lanes for NVMe SSD speeds up to 7.8 GB/s; 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 125U features built-in Thunderbolt 4 support and Intel CNVi Wi-Fi support. It is also worth mentioning that Intel chose to keep native SATA III support that AMD had removed from its Ryzen processors quite a while ago.
The 125U is compatible with 64-bit Windows 10, 64-bit Windows 11 and with many Linux distros.
Performance
While we have no way of knowing what the 125U will be like, as of December 2023, it's safe to expect the chip to be just a bit faster than the Core i7-1355U (Raptor Lake, 10 cores, 12 threads, up to 5.0 GHz), as far as multi-thread performance is concerned.
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 4-core Arc Graphics runs at up to 1.85 GHz. We expect the iGPU to be a little slower than the aging 96 EU Iris Xe meaning you will be able to play most games at 1080p with most settings set to Low.
A proper DX12 Ultimate graphics adapter, the Arc Graphics 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.
Power consumption
This Core Ultra 5 series processor has a Base power consumption of 15 W, with 57 W being its maximum Intel-recommended Turbo power consumption. An active cooling solution is a must for a system powered by this chip.
The 125U is comprised of several 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.
The AMD Ryzen 7 7735U is a processor for mid-sized laptops based of the Rembrandt refresh generation. The R7 7735U integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.7 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.75 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. Compared to the previous Ryzen 7 6800U, the 7735U offers 50 MHz higher boost clock and a slightly higher TDP of 28W (vs 15-25W).
The Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip offers modern features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4 and DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s.
Performance
The average 7735U in our database is in the same league as the Core i7-1270P, Ryzen 5 6600H, Ryzen 7 5825U, Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. The chip is absolutely capable of making most consumers happy, as of mid 2023; of course, your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your system is and how high the CPU power limits are.
The integrated GPU Radeon 680M is still one of the fastest iGPUs (only bested by the new Radeon 780M). It is based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs at up to 2.2 GHz.
The Ryzen 7735U is manufactured in 6nm FinFET at TSMC and specified at a TDP of 28W.
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
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