Intel Core Ultra 5 125H Processor Review: Kickstarting the AI PC Era

Introduction: A Fresh Start for Intel with Core Ultra Series

We’re a few months removed from Intel’s formal launch of the new Core series of processors during their AI Everywhere event back in December 2023 which introduces us to a new naming convention, a new architecture, a new semiconductor package, integrated AI acceleration and much more. We’ve now gone through CES 2024 and Intel Vision 2024 which showed us further developments in the AI space, something Intel really wants to be at the forefront of and that starts with users getting to know their new processors.

Intel names their new family of client processors the Core series and is segmented with the Core and Core Ultra Processor series. In this review we’ll be talking about the Intel Core Ultra family in general and we’ll take a look the CPU’s performance, thermals and power draw as well as focus on what AI offers for the end-user.

“We are ushering in a new age of AI PC” – Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO during Intel Innovation 2023

We have a lot to unpack here, many of which we already discussed in details in previous articles. I’ll be linking to those articles in their respective segment but will also add-in some fresh new take now that time has passed.

Speaking of time, I’ve been asking for samples of the new Intel Core Ultra units from laptop partners but thankfully my prayers have been heard with our test unit for this review. We’ll be focusing mainly on the CPU for this review but just to note, we’ll be testing with the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3405M) equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU.

Codenamed Meteor Lake, Intel’s Core and Core Ultra series CPUs are both made with a disaggregated SoC architecture, splitting the die into multiple “tile” units making it possible for Intel to slot-in changes without changing the entire packaging. So before we dive into more details, here’s a brief summary of what’s new with Intel Core Ultra processors.

The Current Status of AI: How It’s Affecting Client Computing with the AI PC Revolution

Nearly all of us have heard of ChatGPT. While it is debatable which service kicked-off the AI revolution, it is very clear that we’re at the cusp of a new era. While Back2Gaming is primarily a gaming site and gaming’s utility for AI is different, the fact that we’ve already touched on machine learning prior is just an example of how AI varies in form. Whether its machine-learning, deep-learning, large-language model, generative AI or natural language processing and so much more. You’ll hear all these buzzwords around when talking about AI and people are just starting to lump them all together.

In the first installment of my series of articles (The Rise of the AI PC) covering the current AI landscape, I talked about how software is the key mover in this space but with cloud AI primarily the biggest contributor of widely-used AI tools, concerns about overreliance on paid applications and security have been a talking point.

Microsoft’s pivot to bring Copilot to local PCs spearheaded by Intel’s AI PC initiative promises to bring Copilot to local. While that simmers,  leave it to vendors to offer first-party solutions for AI assistants and other software tools to make these services free and more accessible for your Intel Core Ultra-powered AI PC.

Meteor Lake SoC Architecture, Arc Graphics and Intel 4

As mentioned above, the Meteor Lake Soc architecture features multiple tile units performing specialized tasks all coming together to become the Meteor Lake SoC. The dies are bound together by Intel’s Foveros packaging technology and one of the key features of this approach is it is now easier for Intel to offset changes on the package without changing the entire SKU.

Compared to monolothic dies of the Intel Core i3/i5/i7/i9 days, the Intel Core Series 1 and Intel Core Ultra processors are made by multiple vendor partners which allows greater flexibility on what can be placed on the die. Intel’s compute tile is fabbed on Intel’s own Intel 4 node while the other tiles could come from Intel’s other partners e.g. the Arc Graphics tile fabbed on TSMC N6.

Speaking of Intel’s Arc Graphics, the Intel graphics division has been slowly carving out its space in the discrete GPU market and to this day, Intel Arc Graphics’ driver team has been pushing the first 1st-generation further and further. That said, Intel Core Ultra processors are equipped with Intel Arc Graphics which even before the component below has been announced, has already had its XMX extensions busy with XeSS: Intel’s own game-upscaling technology available for all vendors but works fastest on Intel Arc Graphics.

The neural processing unit or NPU joins the CPU and GPU as compute resource dedicated for AI workloads. The Intel Core Ultra is rated for up to 34 TOPS of combined resource performance, with the NPU contributing accelerated neural processing at very low power.

Combined, the CPU, GPU and NPU form to build what Intel dubs as the AI PC. In collaboration with Microsoft, the AI PC defines a computing experience above all else and should adhere to a few basic standards including the need for an NPU. Microsoft, along with hundreds of vendors are working closely with Intel to develop applications that will benefit users that take advantage of their AI PC platform powered by Intel Core Ultra processors.

IO and Connectivity

Intel Core Ultra processors support Thunderbolt 4 and WIFI-6E enabling high-speed connectivity with devices for faster workflow.

Thunderbolt 4 provides up to 40Gbps of bandwidth with daisy-chain support as well charging.

If you want to learn more about Meteor Lake, my deep dive into the architecture covers the fundamentals of the architecture in more details. You can read more about that in this Technical Overview of the Meteor Lake Architecture.

Test Units and Methodology

Intel’s first-generation of Core Ultra processors follows the same tiers as they have previously used U- and P-series for ultracompacts and H-series being more performant SKUs. The current product stack is below including the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H specs which we’re reviewing today along with the rest of the Series 1 family:

The top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 185H together with the Core Ultra 7 164U and Core Ultra 5 134U are expected to arrive this first half of 2024. The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H being a 45W TDP part and has a similar 115W PL2 .

For our testing, we’ll be looking at the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H. What is the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H then? This is a  foundational SKU will be the starter unit for the Intel Core Ultra-H class of CPUs and should be sufficient for users looking for an efficient high-end part. Featuring 4 Redwood Cove P-cores and 8 Cresmont E-cores with another 2 E-cores located in tile’s Low Power island that handles light tasks for very low power use.

You’ll notice that Intel’s NPU engine count is the same across the board. The NPU can assist in AI workloads or handle them by itself. This will depend on the application developers intent and as we’ll see later, the NPU varies in dedicated performance versus say the CPU or GPU. The variances in TOPS rating for each SKU is heavily dependent on the CPU and GPU cabilities so despite featuring similar neural compute engine counts, the performance numbers may differ.

Moving on to our performance testing, we have SKUs from Intel’s recent generations including an Intel Core i5-12500H with a 45W TDP, as well as an Intel Evo from last-generation with the Intel Core i7-1355U rated for 15W TDP and lastly our Intel Core Ultra 125H with a 28W TDP. The TDP values are important as these CPU will perform vastly different depending on their target power envelope.

Battery Life and Temperatures

We start all test off with a battery life test to see how long the battery will last under office usage.  We use Procyon Microsoft Office battery test which fires up Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Excel and cycles through various tasks, idles for a bit and then repeats over and over again until the laptop cuts off. Depending on your laptop and when power saving kicks in, there may be some battery left once the test cuts off which is anywhere from 10% to 2%.

Intel Evo laptops are designed to have all-day battery life under normal working scenarios. Our battery life testing simulates this and shows us that even if you’re tied in front of your computer for a long-time doing office tasks, the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H has excellent battery life, exceeding even a 15W CPU by more than 2 hours.

Temperature Workload

As with most modern Intel CPUs, their PL1 and PL2 boost draws can give wildly varying readings on different designs. Our load focuses on the loading the CPU alone with AVX instructions and capture 10-minute readings for our CPU.

The chart below will show the PL1/PL2 bursts of the CPU but as this is a heavy task, its going to show the steady power draw that these CPUs will offer. As listed, the Intel Core  Ultra 5 125H is within its intended TDP rating.

This chart is best put into context with our next chart as the opening spike of the CPU boost will send the readings to higher temperature but once the CPU goes to its base clock speed, things will calm down.

The chart above shows the relationship between Temperature and Power but also boost clocks. The initial spike in temperature is caused by the boost clock of the Intel Core Ultra processors which help in giving quick tasks that quick shot in the arm. On systems that have larger cooling potential the boost could be maintained longer.

Ok now on to some benchmarks starting off with Microsoft Office.

Office Productivity

Potentially the most used desktop software next to Windows OS is Microsoft Office. . This tests the responsiveness and system performance of the system when doing  common office-users tasks, such as copying, pasting, cutting, adding images, resizing, saving, etc..

Microsoft currently offers an online version of Copilot for a fee that operates within certain Microsoft Office applications. In the future, Intel’s AI PC initiative hopes to bring this to a more personal level removing the need for monthly fees and/or exposing sensitive data to the cloud.

Photo and Video Editing

Last year, Puget Systems released their modernized benchmarking suite under the Pugetbenchmark for Creator name. This benchmark allows reviewers, creators and companies like Puget Systems to provide a performance score for a specific multimedia or creative application without too diving much into details. This makes communicating performance much easier especially when speaking with a non-technical audience. The score is now based off the geomean performance rather that from a reference system.

For digital artists and video professionals working in the field, having the most performance is ideal and we can see Intel’s gen-over-gen here somewhat with the Intel 12th-gen i5 45W CPU performing alongside the 15W 13th-gen Core CPU for Photoshop.  Still, the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H pulls away with a significant lead in Photoshop while completing the benchmark workload faster at 37 minutes with the 13th-gen at 39 minutes and the 12th-gen Core at 43 minutes.

Premiere Pro is a different beast and the Intel Core i5-12500H didn’t complete the benchmark as its GPU couldn’t complete the glitch GPU effect during the final stretch of the benchmark hence the DNF.  Once again, the Intel Core Ultra 125H pulls away from from its Intel Evo sibling with over a 50% lead.

Render

Cinebench 2024 is the latest version of Maxon’s software to gauge system for use with their Maxon Cinema4D software. This new version features modern improvements from the software and now brings back GPU rendering. The new test is a very taxing one and puts significant load on most workstations. If you’re looking for a universally comparable benchmark, Cinebench is an easy go-to. For batch testing, you can try my Cinebench Batch Testing Tool.

While I seriously never took Cinebench 2024 as a laptop benchmark because of its workload positioning, it is still a decent reference point in determining performance between processors. That said, this chart serves more as a reference particularly for single-threaded performance.

AI Benchmarks and NPU Boost

Running AI and machine-learning tasks can still be done on the CPU and as most infrastructures will tell you, its still faster on the GPU. Intel’s NPU or neural processing unit is a dedicated unit on the silicon designed for working with really, really big math across big data.

Intel seems to be running the NPU as a backdrop for lighter AI models and applications and then relying on the total platform TOPS for more advance computation. Selecting where to will be based on the app itself and as of this moment, we’re limited to canned benchmarks as our source of performance figures. This will most likely change in the future as more and more partners deliver on their commitment to work with Intel to spark the AI PC revolution.

Performance gen-over-gen is obviously impressive but there’s something missing here and that’s power draw. Intel mentions the performance to be purpose-built for AI tasks but at very low power. As evidenced above, we see the NPU and GPU go head-to-head but the comparison below will show us clearer just how good the power effiency is on Intel’s NPU.

This chart shows the first 10 minutes of running Procyon AI Computer Vision benchmark and we can see that the NPU is significantly drawing less power than either the CPU or GPU but still manages to get significant scores. Imagine the NPU and GPU working in tandem for rapid tasks while your CPU focus on a main application, that’s looking to be the direction of where the AI PC is going.

There is still some load on the CPU but one thing about this is that you also have to factor in how long a tasks run. While these kinds of workloads wouldn’t see much action in the current landscape of the AI PC, much lighter AI apps and models can definitely see much more use with Intel’s Core Ultra CPUs and the NPU engines.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

We’ve anticipated this paradigm shift when Pat Gelsinger first announced IDM 2.0 and their goal to take back process leadership is well on its way but nut just that, its also going to be a new landscape for CPU as not only is Intel debuting the new Core Series branding, but also entering this new world where AI isn’t just buzzword that people will forget next year or it’s too early. AI is already in palms, but we need to pull it out of the cloud and make it personal.

The jury is still out for Intel Core Ultra and based on our benchmarks, its easily the best recommendation if you’re looking to get a mainstream laptop that has great battery life and great performance. Battery life easily crosses the half-day mark on our test unit so those who are always out and about can definitely take advantage of this for their work needs. Photographers and artists would appreciate the longer battery life and improved performance amd video professionals will appreciate the performance gains that the Intel Core Ultra processor bring to the table especially if we’re comparing ultraportables for previous generations.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H is is the entry model of the family when it comes to the mainstream offering and easily has the best balance of performance and battery life. Sure, the Intel Core 5 125H would normally be paired with a mainstream graphics card that would favor those looking for a more all-around AI PC. But the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H can also be seen as standalone processors for gaming handhelds or ultrathin notebooks.

Its not as cut-and-dry as it sounds, it will ultimately be based on your needs and I’ve always advised people that an upgrade should always be worth the amount you want to pay to get back your time. And that’s the AI PC is looking to bring into the new era of computing. If you have a My Documents folder (I’m Windows 98 old lol), filled with files and you never bother to sort things but still have this superhero-like to find everything, anywhere… well not everyone’s like that so if you need to sort through the mess, this is where the future of AI is headed and its not that far off. Intel and Microsoft is committed to bring local Copilot on Windows that will leverage Intel’s NPU.

This, coupled with various other NPU porting projects will catapult usage exponentially which is the reason Intel is pushing the industry to develop faster with Intel Core Ultra as the take-off point into what can be. If you’re in the market right now for a new PC or laptop, the Intel Core Ultra processor is definitely something to look out for. Look for the Core Ultra badge and select Intel Evo versions with Intel Core Ultra. Talk to your favorite dealer, concept stores or online retailer to know more.