Intel’s 1st Gen Core Ultra processors perform more like a refresh even though they feature its latest architectures and process nodes. Phoronix tested the Core Ultra 7 155H and the Ryzen 7 7840U across numerous Linux workloads and got definitive results. The AMD Phoenix chip managed to one-up its Meteor Lake rival across an overwhelming majority of the benchmarks while drawing less power.
Content Creation: Rendering
In Linux-based rendering benchmarks like LuxCoreRender, the Ryzen 9 7840U maintained a lead of 20-40% over the Core Ultra 7 155H
Even in Intel’s Embree path tracer, the Ryzen 7 7840U leads by 23-25% over the Core Ultra 7 155H, with a lower power consumption to boot. The average power draw is roughly the same, but the 155H suffers from higher peaks, which may be resolved using software/firmware optimizations.
Blender is one of the most popular rendering tools out there. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840U continues its winning streak as the Core Ultra 7 155H is 35% slower in the Barbershop scene. The power-consumption monitor shows similar averages for the two chips, but the 155H again suffers from worse peaks than its rival.
Video Encoding
Video encoding behaves similarly to rendering, granting the Ryzen 7 7840U a moderate to heavy lead over the Core UItra 7 155H. In Kvazaar 2.2, the Phoenix chip is 30% faster than its Meteor Lake rival, encoding the output file nearly 5 seconds faster.
SVT-AV1 1.8 increases the delta between the two processors to 36%, as the 7840U outputs the Bosphorus 4K file 8 seconds earlier than the 155H.
It’s the same story with uvg266. The Ryzen 7 7840U finishes its workload 4 seconds faster than the Core Ultra 7 155H.
The Core Ultra 7 155H registers its first win in 4K x265 (HEVC) encoding, finishing a mere second before its Ryzen rival. Unfortunately, the victory is shortlived as the 7840U retakes its lead in 1080p encoding.
Audio Encoding
Audio encoding continues the Ryzen domination, granting the 7840U marginal leads over the Core Ultra 155H in FLAC and LAME encoding.
The nominal performance deficit is offset by the higher power consumption of the Core Ultra 7 155H. Unlike previous tests, the average and peak draw are both higher than the 7840U.
Machine Learning and AI
In PyTorch, the Ryzen 7 7840U is twice as fast as the Core Ultra 7 155H with smaller and larger batch sizes. With batch size set to 1, the former averaged 20 batches per second, while the latter was limited to 9.52.
Setting the batch size to 32 doesn’t change much, as the 7840U averaged 12.54 batches per second, up from 6 batches on the 155H.
TensorFlow behaves similarly, granting the Ryzen 7 7840U a 52% advantage over the Core Ultra 7 155H. The former produces the output 7 seconds faster than the latter. Furthermore, it also maintains a lower power draw than the Meteor Lake chip, averaging 31.7W. The 155H averages 34W with several spikes to 56W.
Python and PHP Scripting
The Core Ultra 7 155H is faster than the Ryzen 7 7840U in PyBench and PHPBench. It managed two wins, leading the octa-core Phoenix chip by 7% and 17%, respectively. This is the only segment where Meteor Lake recorded definitive victories over the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U.
Overall, it’s an overwhelming victory for AMD, winning 80% or 295 out of 370 benchmarks. The Core Ultra 7 155H is left with 295 losses and 75 wins, a winning rate of 20%. With all tests combined, Ryzen 7 7840U holds a 28% lead over the 155H.
