Intel Core Ultra 5 225H delivers 14% better single core and 16% improved iGPU performance than Meteor Lake per early benchmarks — the CPU still falls short of its Lunar Lake counterparts

Intel Arc GPU Meteor Lake images and slides
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 5 225H from the Arrow Lake-H mobile family has been tested at Geekbench (via Benchleaks), delivering moderate uplifts compared to its predecessor in the CPU and iGPU (OpenCL) departments. However, even this sizeable uplift is still insufficient to leapfrog Lunar Lake, which sits comfortably at the top of the table at much lower power limits.

The Core Ultra 5 225H is the successor to the Core Ultra 5 125H. It features 14 cores (four P + eight E + two LPE) and 14 threads alongside 18MB of L3 cache. The test bench is an upcoming notebook from Samsung—codenamed "NP965XHD"—offering 16GB of unspecified memory. Based on this test, the Core Ultra 5 225H clocked at a maximum of 4.9 GHz—roughly 9% faster than the Core Ultra 5 125H.

Starting with the CPU scores, the Core Ultra 5 225H amassed 2,547 points and 12,448 points in the single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. This lands it 14% faster in single-core performance than the 125H, though multi-core remains a disappointment at just 8% faster; that may be attributed to the lack of hyperthreading. Lunar Lake still takes the lead in single-core while consuming less power. The gap was more prominent with the previously leaked Core Ultra 9 285H, so these results probably do not indicate the final silicon.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ProcessorSingle CoreMulti CoreOpenCL
Core Ultra 5 225H25471244833508
Core Ultra 5 125H22331153028862
Core Ultra 5 228V25871026025557
Ryzen AI 7 PRO 36026981153730049

Arrow Lake ships with Intel's upgraded Xe-LPG+ architecture with the Core Ultra 5 225H sporting the Arc 130T iGPU with 7 Xe cores (112 Xe Vector Engines) clocked at 2.2 GHz. Oddly enough, 7 Xe-LPG+ cores outperform 7 Xe2 cores (Core Ultra 5 228V), at least in OpenCL, a synthetic test.

To explain this, Lunar Lake operates at a lower TDP (17W - 37W) than Arrow Lake-H (expected to be 28W - 115W). Secondly, Lunar Lake offers faster gaming performance in practice than what theoretical benchmarks suggest, owing to architectural refinements and better drivers. Nonetheless, Core Ultra 5 225H's iGPU scores 16% better than its Meteor Lake equivalent. Real-world performance, however, will primarily be subject to driver support and game optimizations.

Intel will release the Core Ultra 200H/U/HX/non-K CPUs at CES 2025. Rumors allege that Battlemage will arrive ahead of RDNA 4 and Blackwell as early as next month.

Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

  • gggplaya
    My guess is Intel wants to get this out before AMD crushes them at CES with their new APU's.
    Reply
  • JRStern
    Could you make this harder to read?
    Is all "performance" now a matter of running games better?
    I'd like to see some "low power performance", maybe power/heat (aka battery life) running typical web browsing in a somewhat accelerated for test purposes manner.
    Reply
  • evdjj3j
    Either use code names or models numbers.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    For a mobile 5 that thing is a beast. Needs more power than a V, but as a midrange it may find it's way into some bargains.
    Reply
  • usertests
    gggplaya said:
    My guess is Intel wants to get this out before AMD crushes them at CES with their new APU's.
    If you're referring to Strix Halo, AMD has to convince laptop OEMs to adopt a big new design and ditch Nvidia graphics, in order to compete in gaming laptops. A tall order. Then AMD has to open up an entirely new "AI workstation" category. Nothing to do with a mid-range "Ultra 5" chip.

    I guess Arrow Lake-H graphics is going to be slower than Lunar Lake, which is not ideal. But they could just sell more Lunar Lake for devices with no discrete GPU.
    Reply
  • magbarn
    Why are Intel/AMD allowing Apple to dog walk them with their M4? x86 is falling further and further behind.
    Reply
  • defunctup
    magbarn said:
    Why are Intel/AMD allowing Apple to dog walk them with their M4? x86 is falling further and further behind.
    Apple isn't tho? M4 chugs power compared to lunar lake (ironic lol) and isn't topping any charts.
    Reply
  • Mama Changa
    gggplaya said:
    My guess is Intel wants to get this out before AMD crushes them at CES with their new APU's.
    You mean Halo. Not even a competitor in any way shape or form. Totally different segment. Arrow Lake H is the current Strix Point competitor.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    "Arrow Lake ships with Intel's upgraded Xe-LPG+ architecture with the Core Ultra 5 225H sporting the Arc 130T iGPU with 7 Xe cores (112 Xe Vector Engines) clocked at 2.2 GHz. Oddly enough, 7 Xe-LPG+ cores outperform 7 Xe2 cores (Core Ultra 5 228V), at least in OpenCL, a synthetic test."

    My take as to why the 7 cores iGPU is faster, Intel wants to show that Lunar Lake is power efficient and made a conscious decision to hard cap the power limit on Lunar Lake. I am pretty sure the iGPU in Lunar Lake is not running near its full potential, which is also reflected in the significant clockspeed regression from Arc Alchemist.
    Reply
  • dada_dave
    defunctup said:
    Apple isn't tho? M4 chugs power compared to lunar lake (ironic lol) and isn't topping any charts.
    You must be thinking of the M4 Pro ... the base M4 CPU has higher performance at lower power than Lunar Lake - heck the M3 CPU has higher performance at lower power than Lunar Lake, graphics is more equivalent. For the M4 Pro, Apple ditched the M3 Pro's design and went back to the M1/2 chopped die approach which means the CPU consumes far more power having more P-cores and access to greater memory bandwidth. And both M4 and M4 Pro are topping charts in performance and perf/W in their respective categories (thin and lights and 14" laptop chips).
    Reply