Intel Core Ultra 5 115U vs Intel Core Ultra 5 125U

Intel Core Ultra 5 115U

The Intel Core Ultra 5 115U is a lower-end Meteor Lake chip that debuted some time in 2024. This 1st Gen Core Ultra processor has 8 cores (2 + 4 + 2) and 10 threads at its disposal. Its Performance cores, of which there are 2, are HT-enabled and run at up to 4.2 GHz; the Efficient cores run at much lower clock speeds. The 4-core Intel Arc Graphics, just out of the oven, serves as the integrated graphics adapter - and there is a bevy of other 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 Crestwood 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 6 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' base clock speed is just 0.7 GHz.

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.

The processor has 20 PCIe 4 lanes for NVMe SSD speeds up to 7.8 GB/s; naturally, the 115U also features built-in Thunderbolt 4 support and Intel CNVi Wi-Fi support.

Performance

Due to its slightly lower clock speeds and a lower number of E-cores, the 115U should be 10% to 15% slower than the 125U in multi-threaded tasks.

Graphics

The 4-core Arc Graphics should be just 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 115U 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.

Intel Core Ultra 5 125U

Der Intel Core Ultra 5 125U ist eine gehobene Mittelklasse-CPU mit 12 Kernen der Meteor-Lake-U-Serie die im Dezember 2023 vorgestellt wurde. Der SoC setzt zum ersten Mal auf ein Tile/Chiplet-Design. Der kleinere Compute-Tile (im Vergleich zu den H-Prozessoren) bietet 2 Performance Kerne (P-Kerne, Redwood Cove Architektur, SMT) und 8 Effizienzkerne (E-Kerne, Crestmont Architektur). Die P-Kerne unterstützten Hyperthreading (daher gemeinsam 14 Threads) und takten bis 4,3 GHz. Die E-Kerne takten mit maximal 3,6 GHz. Zusätzlich gibt es nun noch zwei weitere Low-Power-Efficiency-Kerne auf der Low-Power-Island, im Leerlauf und bei einfachen Aufgaben kann der Compute-Tile daher komplett deaktiviert werden, um Strom zu sparen.

Performance

Mit Meteor-Lake-P wird die bisherige Architektur weiter verbessert, es gibt aber keine grundlegenden Änderungen. Die Leistung ist daher auch nur geringfügig höher als bei den Raptor-Lake-Prozessoren.

Grafikeinheit

Der Core Ultra 5 125U bietet eine neue Arc basierende iGPU namens Intel Graphics mit 4 Xe-Kernen und 64 EUs, die maximal 1,85 GHz erreichen. Die Leistung liegt damit aber weit unterhalb der neuen Arc iGPU in der H-Serie.

Features

Meteor Lake-H hat WiFi 6E und Thunderbolt 4 (4x) integriert. Der integrierte Speicherkontroller unterstützt jetzt LPDDR5/x-7467 (max. 64 GB) oder DDR5-5600 (max. 96 GB). Es kommt nun eine dedizierte NPU (2x Gen3 Neural Compute Engines) zum Einsatz. Die Xe Media Engine unterstützt MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1 Decode, JPEG, VP8 Decode, VP9, HEVC und AV1 Decode bis zu 8K 10-Bit HDR. Der Chip unterstützt jetzt PCIe-5.0 (x8 für GPU) und PCIe-4.0 (drei x12 für SSDs).

Leistungsaufnahme

Der Intel Core Ultra 5 125U ist mit 15 Watt TDP (Base) und 57 Watt (PL2) max. Turbo Power angegeben. Meteor Lake besteht aus fünf einzelnen Chips, wobei der Prozessorteil im neuen Intel 4 Prozess (7nm) gefertigt wird. Die Grafikeinheit wird bei TSMC in N5 produziert und SoC und I/O-Tile im älteren N6 Prozess. Diese 4 Chips werden dann per Foveros-Verfahren auf den 22nm Base-Tile aufgebracht.