Intel Meteor Lake BIOS update delivers double-digit performance boost - Core Ultra laptops now more efficient

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An issue affected the power draw of Meteor Lake laptops until Intel identified the problem and provided a BIOS fix to OEMs.

The 2024 Asus Zenbook 14 with Intel 14th Generation Meteor Lake CPUs
(Image credit: Asus)

Early adopters of laptops featuring Intel's new Core Ultra laptop processors have enjoyed noticeable performance and efficiency improvements after a simple BIOS update. Golden Pig Upgrade and UltrabookReview were among the first to get their hands on a Meteor Lake-based laptop and their separate testing suggests there are double-digit performance gains to be had from updating from the earliest firmware versions.

The aforementioned reviewers independently confirmed a certain issue with the CPU power delivery, resulting in lower performance during tests. UltrabookReview's Andrei Girbea shared an HWiNFO log indicating that the CPU power draw wasn't enough to perform at its full potential. Golden Pig Upgrade made the same conclusion independently in his review.

Shortly after some early tests and reviews had been published, Intel sent a firmware patch to OEMs who subsequently rolled out new BIOS files to reviewers. Both reviewers mentioned above have already completed some re-tests and concluded that the new BIOS fixes the noted issues, facilitating better benchmark results.

The performance improvements observed

(Image credit: Golden Pig via bilibili)

Golden Pig identified the issue with the Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and mentions in the comments section of his video that there was a power scheduling problem that reduced the CPU performance while benchmarking. Intel's freshly patched BIOS was observed to correct this issue via an updated PCode. You can see an informative analysis and before / after BIOS update comparison of the Core Ultra 7 155H from Golden Pig Upgrade, above.

UltrabookReview's Girbea also received the patched BIOS and updated his review with the new results, which you can check out below.

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Intel Ultra 7 155H CPU with patched BIOS (Cinebench R23)
Intel Ultra 7 155H CPU with patched BIOS (Cinebench R23)(Image credit: Ultrabook Review)

In the comments of his review, Girbea said that his Zenbook 14 was shipped with BIOS 201. After the review, he received the BIOS 203 from Asus and retested it, showing many improvements during benchmarking. He stress-tested the notebook with Cinebench R23 while recording data with HWiNFO. The logs show that the Core Ultra 155H CPU with the updated BIOS drew a 50-watt peak during the 10-minute benchmark loop. 

During its best run in Performance Mode, CPU power draw was around 35 watts and gradually dropped to 28 watts after 5-6 minutes. The temperature was around the higher end of 70 degrees Celsius while maintaining 40dB fan noise levels.  The Cinebench R23's result showed a 12.26% improvement, achieving a score of 13873 points.

All in a day's work with pre-production samples

Usually, companies like Intel and AMD provide platform-optimized BIOS files for OEMs to roll out with. However, pre-production models may still need to be ironed out after being received by the reviewers. Intel identified the issue after the review was posted and rolled out a patch to respective OEMs who provided the BIOS to the reviewers testing these Meteor Lake notebooks. 

Speaking of pre-production review unit woes, Girbea mentioned an existing issue where XeSS didn’t work where it should while testing certain games under certain settings and hence will update the review once more, when he finds the cause of this.

The notebook reviewed by Girbea was an Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405MA with an Intel Evo-certified Core Ultra 155H CPU and Intel Arc iGPU, it featured 32GB LPDDR5-7500 memory and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. A model with this specification can be ordered for $1,299.99 with a one-year warranty.

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Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Contributing Writer

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh has been in the Indian PC hardware community since the early 2000s and has been building PCs, contributing to many Indian tech forums, & blogs. He operated Hardware BBQ for 11 years and wrote news for eTeknix & TweakTown before joining Tom's Hardware team. Besides tech, he is interested in fighting games, movies, anime, and mechanical watches.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    7840HS still winning in efficiency under 35W if you believe that Cinebench graph, but at least it's no longer a slaughter.
    Reply
  • Nyara
    usertests said:
    7840HS still winning in efficiency under 35W if you believe that Cinebench graph, but at least it's no longer a slaughter.
    Mostly matching now. Largely equivalent products for 28-35W range. Pick up cheapest among the two, basically. AMD still has the lead in 25W sub and Intel on power limit release/relaxed.

    It seems Intel 4 process roughly matches TSMC 4nm process, too, which makes promising Intel's coming 20 and 18 processes coming later.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Nyara said:
    Mostly matching now. Largely equivalent products for 28-35W range. Pick up cheapest among the two, basically. AMD still has the lead in 25W sub and Intel on power limit release/relaxed.

    It seems Intel 4 process roughly matches TSMC 4nm process, too, which makes promising Intel's coming 20 and 18 processes coming later.
    AMD has full 780M graphics in a "15W" TDP chip (7840U/8840U), whereas Intel is using a half-sized graphics tile for their "15W" Core Ultra 7 165U and friends. Are thin laptops going to use a power limited Meteor Lake-H just to get the extra graphics performance?

    I'd like to see Meteor Lake-U with 4 Xe cores go up against 7640HS/7640U/8640U/etc. with 760M graphics. If not the 740M models.

    Intel picked its new node names to align directly with TSMC. It's good news for consumers if they are comparable. Although TSMC is bragging and saying N2 will beat Intel 18A (instead of matching 20A).
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    Good to see. Still underwhelmed but it is still early in the products life cycle so we could see more improvements in the coming days. I truly hope we do as I want to keep competition as fierce as possible.
    Reply
  • Nyara
    usertests said:
    AMD has full 780M graphics in a "15W" TDP chip (7840U/8840U), whereas Intel is using a half-sized graphics tile for their "15W" Core Ultra 7 165U and friends. Are thin laptops going to use a power limited Meteor Lake-H just to get the extra graphics performance?

    I'd like to see Meteor Lake-U with 4 Xe cores go up against 7640HS/7640U/8640U/etc. with 760M graphics. If not the 740M models.

    Intel picked its new node names to align directly with TSMC. It's good news for consumers if they are comparable. Although TSMC is bragging and saying N2 will beat Intel 18A (instead of matching 20A).
    Even if TSMC N2 were to beat Intel 18A, their N3 is still a mess in terms of yields and production volume and things looking worst for N2.

    Intel once it gets a process running it can effectively manage the whole supply line perfectly and mass produce fast and handle yield differences flexible through its product line, so Intel's availabilty will make TSMC tremble, and everyone dependent on it.

    Assuming Intel can avoid further delays, yes, that is the big unknown still.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    I like how the CPU on this thing was using 3-5w during normal use like web browsing with 4k video, netflix, typing test, youtube per HWinfo monitoring in the linked review from this article.

    It looks like the SOC is adequate for most tasks with the dCPU and dGPU (just using those monickers because that is how Intel says they work-like a nvidia dGPU in a laptop with an iGPU as well.) being woken up just for intensive ones. 3-5w is easily in the fanless range so the laptop should usually be silent for most users.

    The combination of typically running silent with long battery life and the ability to crank up the performance (and power use) on a whim seems pretty luxurious.
    Reply
  • Nyara
    rluker5 said:
    I like how the CPU on this thing was using 3-5w during normal use like web browsing with 4k video, netflix, typing test, youtube per HWinfo monitoring in the linked review from this article.

    It looks like the SOC is adequate for most tasks with the dCPU and dGPU (just using those monickers because that is how Intel says they work-like a nvidia dGPU in a laptop with an iGPU as well.) being woken up just for intensive ones. 3-5w is easily in the fanless range so the laptop should usually be silent for most users.

    The combination of typically running silent with long battery life and the ability to crank up the performance (and power use) on a whim seems pretty luxurious.
    People says a lot of dumb stuff about the e-cores, but this has been exactly my experience as well with my i5-13600KF, 2-6W use virtually all the time, with an energy efficient RX 6600 doing 2-6W with most tasks as well. I literally run my rig 0 RPM on the fans all the time in my alluminium case.

    And when more power is needed it gets to it right away without affecting the basic stuff nor the basic stuff affecting my performance with the heavier stuff or gaming. Multitasking is extraordinary smooth, optimized and power efficient and the e-cores impact for it is felt right away compared to other CPUs I work with that lacks them.

    Now the i5-13600KF is not very power efficient once it gets constantly heavier demanded (though undervolt helps a lot), but Meteor Lake and future Intel products will, specially non-k & mobile.
    Reply
  • sebastienbo
    Is this problem only affecting 155h? Or also 165h?

    The article is really not clear about that...
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    usertests said:
    Intel picked its new node names to align directly with TSMC. It's good news for consumers if they are comparable. Although TSMC is bragging and saying N2 will beat Intel 18A (instead of matching 20A).
    Has TSMC came up with a competing tech to Intel's Backside power delivery that comes with Intel 18A or 20A? If not, hard to take their claims seriously
    Nyara said:
    Now the i5-13600KF is not very power efficient once it gets constantly heavier demanded (though undervolt helps a lot), but Meteor Lake and future Intel products will, specially non-k & mobile.
    Are you using Windows 11? I am on Windows 10 and I need to force my PC in a lowpower mode for it to properly use the low power e-cores on my 13900. Otherwise my P-cores do the majority of the driving, system is responsive, but a bit power inefficient.

    The meteorlake tiering of compute cores and how well it appears to work on the laptops is really admirable. Only wish it would natively work in the old desktop space without forcing upgrade to Microsofts latest OS. I need to try undervolting my CPU, unsure it will let me or not as I am using a H670 board and have a non-K cpu.
    Reply
  • Nyara
    cyrusfox said:
    Has TSMC came up with a competing tech to Intel's Backside power delivery that comes with Intel 18A or 20A? If not, hard to take their claims seriously

    Are you using Windows 11? I am on Windows 10 and I need to force my PC in a lowpower mode for it to properly use the low power e-cores on my 13900. Otherwise my P-cores do the majority of the driving, system is responsive, but a bit power inefficient.

    The meteorlake tiering of compute cores and how well it appears to work on the laptops is really admirable. Only wish it would natively work in the old desktop space without forcing upgrade to Microsofts latest OS. I need to try undervolting my CPU, unsure it will let me or not as I am using a H670 board and have a non-K cpu.
    Maybe it is a specific problem with the 13900? I am using Windows 10 too and 100% power.

    The system uses 1 p-core only, and it is reserved for burst activity as needed, like when I shift-alt to a video it will use my p-core by around 20% briefly. My e-cores constantly move 10-60% usage and largely varies by use by background tasks. Main task does not use e-cores until after 1 minute or so the p-core handled it, as in the CPU "learns" what is happening and realize task is low demand and move it to e-core use instead.

    If my activity requires 60%+ use in most e-cores then the other p-cores start getting use. Also the same if the only p-core working gets saturated, the other p-cores will light up to help it.

    On heavier tasks my e-core use stays consistent and dedicated to the background tasks as usual, while my p-cores goes from 0% to anything my heavier task is demanding and goes back to 0% after the main task is done using them, so there is a lot of efficiency moving until you hit about 50% total use, then your energy consumption skyrockets (like from 35W when 45% used to 150W at 100% used)

    About undervolting, you can undervolt with any Intel motherboard and any chip, including non-K, 13rd gen Intel is the 2nd most benefited by the practice after X3D AMD chips, just tutorial for your specific motherboard company bios. Give it a try, I was able to reduce my consumption by 20% while not losing performance by part, and got a temperature drop from 90C to 75C while reducing my air cooler from 1800RPM to 1400RPM, and I got a bit bad silicon lottery as most people was able to reduce by 25%-35% my same CPU without performance lose.
    Reply