The on-again off-again story of the arrival of Intel Meteor Lake processors has been an at times confusing one to follow but the short version is that the company’s new CPU architecture is only being used in laptops and other mobile devices, not desktops. To that end, we’re finally close to the stage where you can buy the company’s latest silicon – with its new chiplet manufacturing process – via a new range of Intel Meteor Lake laptops.
Intel Meteor Lake was supposed to be the next big thing for Intel with a completely new manufacturing process that, a bit like AMD has done with its recent Ryzen CPUs, splits up the processor into several smaller chips/tiles that are manufactured separately then combined to form the CPU. However, manufacturing difficulties have meant Intel wasn’t able to hit the sort of performance needed to compete with the likes of the AMD Ryzen 7800 X3D, so instead Intel launched its new Intel 14th gen chips, crowned by the Intel Core i9 14900K, using an older architecture.
As well as bringing several potential advantages in terms of manufacturing efficiency and the ability to create many different variants of its CPUs (due to the chiplet design), the new Meteor Lake architecture can include much more powerful graphics. The Arc Alchemist-based integrated GPU on what’s known as the GFX-Tile is supposedly on par with entry-level discrete GPUs, such that new laptops should be able to offer genuine gaming performance without the need for bulky extra graphics chips.
Also notable about the new Intel Meteor Lake CPUs is that they’re the first to see Intel switch over to its new naming scheme. Instead of Intel Core i5-14600K, the new naming scheme would have the same chip be called the Intel Core Ultra 5 14600K, for instance. Not exactly a revolutionary change, but a notable one, considering the ‘i’ naming scheme has been around for well over a decade.
Image credit: Wccftech
The first laptops listed that include the new silicon, then, are those from MSI, with the MSI Prestige AI Evo range recently being listed on Newegg, though the listings have since disappeared. When they were there, they stated that the new laptops would be available in 16-inch and 13-inch configurations and include both Core Ultra 7 155H and Core Ultra 5 125H variants.
In terms of the processor specs, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H features a 6+8+2 config, where the ‘6’ refers to six Performance cores, the ‘8’ is eight Efficiency cores and the ‘2’ is two more Efficiency cores but housed on the SoC ’tile’ of the processor, rather than alongside the other cores. The clock speeds of the chip are 3.8GHz base and 4.8GHz boost, with TDP varying between 28W and 35W. The CPU also includes 24MB of L3 cache.
Image credit: Wccftech
Back to the laptops, the base configuration was priced at $1049 US, according to wccftech, and includes a 13.3-inch QHD OLED display along with 16 GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory, and a 512 GB NVMe SSD. The laptop weighs 2.18 lbs and includes WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, two Thunderbolt 4 (Type-C) ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A Port with 65W PD charging through the USB Type-C ports. There were three variants listed on Newegg before they disappeared.
Official launch dates for the laptops are December 14th with availability set for December 18th. We have no doubt that the launch will also involve offerings from many other manufacturers, so keep an eye out for new laptop reviews here to see if these new models make it onto our best gaming laptop guide.