Intel’s Arrow Lake-H processors have been put to the test by hardware reviewer Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Bilibili.
The spotlight was on the flagship Core Ultra 9 285H, but the more mainstream Core Ultra 5 225H also demonstrated solid performance.
What’s New with Arrow Lake-H?
Arrow Lake-H introduces LPE cores, a departure from its desktop counterpart. However, Intel has been tight-lipped about whether these cores are based on Skymont or Crestmont. If the latter is true, Arrow Lake-H may reuse the SoC Tile from Meteor Lake-H, though this remains speculative.
Key architecture details include:
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P-cores: Based on Lion Cove.
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E-cores: Built on Skymont.
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Hyper-Threading: Disabled.
The Core Ultra 9 285H features:
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16 cores (6 P-cores + 8 E-cores + 2 LPE cores).
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16 threads.
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Turbo clock of 5.4 GHz.
Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 5 225H offers:
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14 cores (4 P-cores + 8 E-cores + 2 LPE cores).
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Turbo clock of 4.9 GHz.
Performance Benchmarks
Tested on Lenovo’s latest IdeaPad series, the Core Ultra 9 285H excelled in Cinebench R23 and R24 benchmarks:
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13% single-core performance boost over its predecessor.
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26% improvement in multi-core tasks.
In power-limited scenarios (50W), however, the 285H struggled to outpace AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 365 and significantly lagged behind the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. This divergence is surprising, given the desktop Arrow Lake outperformed Zen 5 under similar conditions.
Integrated GPU (iGPU) Insights
Arrow Lake-H features an Alchemist-based iGPU enhanced with XMX cores. It delivers impressive gains in ray tracing, outperforming Meteor Lake by nearly 88% in 3DMark tests.
However, gaming performance tells a different story. AMD’s Radeon 880M consistently outperformed Alchemist+ in gaming benchmarks. While Alchemist+ struggles in gaming scenarios, Intel’s upcoming Xe2 on Lunar Lake has already established itself as the fastest gaming iGPU, even surpassing AMD’s Radeon 890M.
Efficiency Concerns and Future Outlook
Efficiency remains a key weakness for Arrow Lake-H, likely due to testing conditions or reliance on an older SoC Tile. Intel has not disclosed detailed architectural changes for Arrow Lake-H, leaving room for speculation about the design’s potential improvements.
With its disaggregated architecture, Intel may leverage the same CPU Tile for both desktop and mobile versions of Arrow Lake. While the performance gains are promising, efficiency challenges highlight areas where Intel must refine its mobile platform to remain competitive.
Arrow Lake-H showcases impressive innovation, but whether it can tackle efficiency hurdles remains a pressing question for Intel’s mobile processors.
