Intel has been making waves with its upcoming Arrow Lake series, especially the integrated GPU Arrow Lake iGPU, the Xe-LPG+ based Arc 130T. Recently, it was put through its paces in Geekbench’s OpenCL tests, and the results are turning heads as it outperformed the Xe2-based Arc 140V.
The intriguing part of this development is how the Arc 130T, despite having one fewer Xe core than the Arc 140V from the Lunar Lake lineup, manages to score better in these tests. The Arrow Lake-H “Core Ultra 200H” series, expected to debut at CES 2025, promises to bring substantial enhancements not only in CPU but also in GPU performance.
One particular chip in focus is the Intel Core Ultra 225H, a 14-core marvel with 4 performance cores and 10 efficiency cores. With a base clock of 1.70 GHz that can boost up to 4.9 GHz, it’s packed with 18 MB of L3 cache. It was tested on a Samsung laptop equipped with 16 GB of memory, and onboard was the Arc 130T iGPU. This iGPU operates on the evolved Xe-LPG+ architecture, featuring 7 Xe cores or 112 execution units, backed by 8 GB of shared system memory.
In the Geekbench OpenCL scoring, the Arc 130T hit an impressive 33,508 points, surpassing the Arc 140V’s top score of 27,109 points. Though lagging behind the AMD Radeon 890M’s 37,804 points in the same test, the Arc 130T’s showing is formidable, especially considering it’s not the full-blown version of Xe-LPG+ which could support up to 8 cores.
The current theory buzzing among tech enthusiasts is that the Xe-LPG+ architecture, while being a refined version of its predecessor, may benefit from improved support for legacy OpenCL APIs. On the other hand, Intel’s Xe2 architecture aims at harnessing newer API technologies, which might explain its lag in these particular benchmarks. Furthermore, Lunar Lake’s lower power envelope (17-30W SoC) compared to Arrow Lake-H’s upper limit of 115W in maximum turbo boost potentially affects performance outcomes.
Beyond the GPUs, the Intel Core Ultra 5 225H processor also showed a decent jump in prowess. It clocked 2547 points single-core and 12,448 multi-core, slightly edging out its counterpart, the Core Ultra 5 155H.
While the CPU performance boost is moderate, the integrated GPU advancement is promising. However, as we are still months away from seeing these laptops hit the shelves, further optimizations and enhancements are expected to refine and amplify these results. Keep a lookout for these powerhouses redefining the boundaries of integrated graphics and performance efficiency in the future.
