The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H is the top-of-the-line Meteor Lake family chip that debuted in December 2023. This 1st Gen Core Ultra processor has come to replace 13th generation Core chips; it has 16 cores (6 + 8 + 2) and 22 threads at its disposal. Its Performance cores, of which there are 6, are SMT-enabled and run at up to 5.1 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 3.8 GHz. The 8-core Arc GPU, just out of the oven, serves as the integrated graphics adapter - this runs at up to 2.35 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 the rest of the chip is turned off to save power. The low-power E-cores run at up to 2.5 GHz. Intel hopes that 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 9 185H 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 185H 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 185H is not a whole lot faster than the Ryzen 9 6900HX (Zen 3 Plus, 8 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.9 GHz), as far as multi-thread performance is 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.
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 9 series processor has a "base" power consumption of 45 W, while its Turbo power consumption is not supposed to exceed 115 W. A powerful cooling solution will be needed to sort out this chip's hot temper.
The 185H 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 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 Intel Xeon W-11955M is a high end octa core SoC for laptops and mobile workstations. It is based on the Tiger Lake H45 generation and was announced in mid 2021. It integrates eight Willow Cove processor cores (16 threads thanks to HyperThreading). The base clock speed depends on the TDP setting and at 45 Watt is at 2.6 GHz. The single core boost speed can reach up to 5 GHz (ITBM 3.0, also two cores), all cores can reach up to 4.5 GHz. The CPU offers 24 MB level 3 cache and supports DDR4-3200 memory. Similar to the Core i9-11950H, the Xeon W-11955M supports SIPP, vPro and TXT. In addition to this, the Xeon line supports ECC memory.
Performance
The average W-11955M in our database is in the same league as the Ryzen 7 4800H, Core i7-11850H, Core i7-1360P, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned. This is a fairly fast chip, as of early 2023.
Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is, and how high the CPU power limits are.
Furthermore, Tiger Lake SoCs add PCIe 4 support (20 lanes in the H45 series), AI hardware acceleration, and the partial integration of Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 and Wi-Fi 6E in the chip.
Power consumption
This Xeon series chip has a default TDP, also known as the long-term power limit, of 35 W to 45 W, the expectation being that laptop makers will go for a higher value to get better performance.
The W-11955M is built with Intel's third-gen 10 nm process marketed as SuperFin for average, as of early 2023, energy efficiency.
The Intel Core i5-11500B is a hexa-core processor for desktops and mini PCs. It is based on the Tiger Lake architecture (H45) and was presented in Q2 2021. The chip offers a TDP of 65 watts (configurable). The six processor cores can clock from 3.3 to 4.6 GHz (single-core turbo). The processor offers 12 MB level 3 cache and supports DDR4 RAM with up to 3,200 MT/s. The integrated graphics are based on the Xe architecture and are named UHD Graphics (32 EUs). In the 11500B it clocks from 350 to 1,450 MHz. The chip is manufactured using the 10 nm SuperFin process.
Performance
The performance of the Intel Core i5-11500B depends primarily on the performance of the installed cooling unit. The TDP of the SoC can also be lowered. In principle, however, the Intel Core i5-11500B should offer slightly more performance than an Intel Core i5-11400H (6 cores 2.7 - 4.5 GHz).
Features
As with the smaller Tiger Lake chips, Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 6E) and Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 are (partially) integrated into the chip for faster, cheaper and space-saving implementations in desktops and mini-PCs. The i5-11500B also offers 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes.
Average Benchmarks Intel Core Ultra 9 185H → 100%n=27
Average Benchmarks Intel Xeon W-11955M → 80%n=27
Average Benchmarks Intel Core i5-11500B → 72%n=27
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
