Meteor Lake - meh

jfreund

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 3, 2006
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Found an open box Asus Zephyrus G16 185H/4080 for a really good price. I can now see why it was returned.

It came with Win11 23H2 and wouldn't update to 24H2, so I did a fresh install from USB. I had to download the Intel driver to the USB drive and install it during OS setup. Also had to download the touchpad driver after install. No big deal after I found the answer and got the NVMe driver.

After OS install and update, everything in Device Manager showed it had a driver installed. Time for some benchmarks. Civ6 Gathering Storm AI is atrocious at 60 sec/turn. My AMD Advantage 5980HX does 40 sec/turn, an my 5700X3D does 38 sec/turn. Boo.

The 4080 does pretty well but with the slim build of the G16, the laptop gets HOT. 3DMark said the GPU averaged 84C and CPU 95C during Time Spy, but it felt like that was the temp at the back of the laptop. I guess that means it was moving the heat pretty well, but the size constraint make the laptop too hot for my liking.

Speaking of 3DMark, the 4080 is +37% compared to the 6800M, but the 185H is a measly +5%. The G16 is probably getting returned again.

I'd like to stay in the 15-16" range, but MSI's Raider 18 appears to have the price/performance I'm looking for. As a bonus, the Raider has a 7945HX3D, which I expect to spank both the 185H and 5980HX. At least the Raider should have beefier cooling.
 

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The point of Meteor Lake is performance-per-watt. It was never intended to be an overall performance leader. There's a reason Intel skipped Series 1 for desktop.

The i9 185H is almost a joke of a product because it's essentially the same design as the i7 155H with only a +300Mhz boost clock for the cost of 50% more power consumption. The 185H is pretty much a marketing tool to get people to shell out hundreds of more dollars because "Bigger number go faster!". The reality is there's not much of a difference between it and the 155H.

I think the 155H is a fine processor. Most people buying these laptops care more about battery life than fps numbers, so this is what this product was designed for. Not everyone wants to *gasp* stay plugged to the wall, even while gaming. And compared to AMD's own mobile CPU offerings, the 155H is no slouch:

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Because Series 1 is a year old now, I noticed a lot of these previous model year laptops are being discounted during Black Friday this week. The TDP for the Series 1 is low enough that you don't need an Alienware sized laptop to stuff high end components into (the i9 being questionable), so in an indirect way Series 1 has made ultrabooks more appealing even to gamers.

Also, if you happen to get a laptop configured with Arc graphics, it's not bad either. Certainly, better than anything Intel offered before. Arc is just slightly behind AMD's own integrated graphics, which is something Intel has been waaaay behind on. Of course, discrete graphics, especially from Nvidia, will be the no-compromising way to go for gaming.

If you ask me, Intel Series 2 is the underwhelming product right now.
 
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