Intel Core Ultra 7 165H Meteor Lake CPU Appears in Geekbench Listing

Intel's Core Ultra Meteor Lake CPUs are primed for launch on Dec. 14, and now we have another data point to whet our appetite while we put on a sweater and start our launch countdown. An upper midrange Core Ultra 7 CPU has appeared in the Geekbench test results database, and its performance is decent, though we don't know the TDP just yet.

The CPU tested this time is the Core Ultra 7 165H, a 16-core, 22-thread chip with a maximum boost clock of 5GHz. This configuration consists of six P-cores, eight E-cores, and the two low-power cores we previously mentioned in our architecture coverage. This clarifies how focused Intel is on efficiency since 10 out of 16 cores are dedicated to that goal.

In Geekbench 6, the CPU scored 2,502, according to Benchleaks on Twitter. That's a bit quicker than the Core i7-13700H, which also features a 6+8 core configuration and hits around 2,300 in this test. AMD's equivalent chip, the Ryzen 7 7840HS, also an eight-core, 16-thread part, scores 2,452, so Intel's chip is 2% faster in single-core performance. The Ryzen 9 7940HS, which has slightly higher clocks and the same number of cores, is around 2,487, so it's neck-and-neck with Intel's latest CPU. That's not bad, considering Intel's chip only has six P-cores compared with eight on the AMD APUs.

Though performance will vary this far from launch, the specs of this particular SKU make it competitive with current offerings. Credit: Geekbench 6

Regarding multi-core performance, the Core Ultra CPU achieved a score of 12,545. Once again, the Core i7-13700H is also in that ballpark, with systems running between 12,000 and 13,000 on the high-end, so we can call this a tie. That is better than the Ryzen 7 APU, though, which tends to score about 11,500 depending on the system. The AMD chip is a 35-54W part, too, whereas the Intel chip is rumored to be around 15-30W.

Overall, this is looking promising for the Core Ultra range of CPUs. They will probably not smash benchmark records, but they seem likely to offer decent CPU performance and a much improved iGPU uplift compared with 13th Gen CPUs. Of course, there's that NPU chip for AI-related tasks, too, which will be a focus of Intel's launch, we imagine.

Meteor Lake will be arriving on mobile first, with desktop chips to follow in 2024, according to Intel. There's still no word on what the Raptor Lake refresh chips will look like, though we assume there will be both desktop and mobile CPUs as part of that launch.