“For clarification, is this processor the Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 155H 16-Core processor? If not what is it, precisely? Does it have a number designation?”
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Yes this model contains the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, which (as of June 2024) is in the Core Ultra series of newest Meteor Lake laptop CPUs. This is the third from the top in that lineup. If you’re dead set on buying a laptop with an Intel CPU, I recommend this 155H CPU as the best value per dollar (and this particular Asus model does look like a good implementation). Why? Any lower CPU and they typically don’t give you enough memory. It still has 6 Performance cores just like the top-end Ultra 185H. Just clocked a bit slower. However, performance data shows that the total all-cores-running Compute Power of the 185H is only 25% higher than that of the 155H and by the time you get it into a laptop you’re gonna pay probably $200 more for the premium CPU. Plus that extra Compute Power is mostly in the Performance cores, and for typical users you’re probably going to use the P cores when gaming or running demanding apps - and even then the P cores in the 155H should be sufficient. The emphasis of the Meteor Lake CPUs is on long battery life - so far so good. By running 1-3 light apps on lower power Efficiency cores you can get a 12-15 hour battery life. Even with a medium intensity set of apps, if they are light enuf to fit on the 10 E cores, you still might get an 8-hour battery life. You do pay for this magic trick though. To accomplish this feat, on the Meteor Lake chips (and them only, not any older Intel laptop chips, and not on any AMD Ryzen chips at all) force you to run all your apps on an Efficient core(s) only initially. Only after each thread in your app “proves” that it is sufficiently CPU intense will the Intel-modified Windows Scheduler say “OK, if you insist, I guess I’ll give you a Performance core to run on.” I call this the Meteor Lake specific P-Core-Stingy Scheduler. By forcing most computing to be done on slower, electricity-sipping E cores, it is able to get significantly better battery life. But at the expense of, for the most part, not letting you use the faster electricity-guzzling P cores (that you bought and paid for) until your app is screaming to the Scheduler to give it a P core cuz it’s dying for more CPU. The net effect is that you’re paying a 2024 price but mostly getting 2020 caliber CPU core performance (the E cores are about equivalent to 2020 designs), however with the offset benefits of longer battery life plus the P cores are still waiting in the wings on the odd chance you might play a game or run a CPU-intense app. But some buyers have noted that Meteor Lake laptops just kinda feel a bit slow. If you’re upgrading from a 4-year old laptop tho, it won’t feel slow. Because I’m a Scheduler expert and don’t care much about battery life (but do care about performance), I call the P-Core-Stingy Scheduler “a bug.” Intel/Microsoft could fix this bug quite easily, simply by only putting the Scheduler into P-Core-Stingy Mode only if both running on an Intel Meteor Lake CPU and also currently running with the power cord disconnected. If you’re not currently on battery there is (currently) no reason to emphasize battery life over performance. If on power and/or on any other CPU, P-Core-Stingy Mode would be switched off, and the Scheduler would behave normally - that is, it would more-or-less dole out P cores first and only use E cores when P cores are used up. One more thing in favor of truth in documentation by Best Buy. For this Asus model (and all models with Intel CPUs actually), because the Show Full Specs (Processor section) only gives clock rates for Performance cores, the net effect borders on lying by Intel (or at least fibbing). They list a base clock of 1.4 GHz and a boost clock of 4.8 GHZ, but that is just for P cores. There probably should be separate clock frequencies for P cores and E cores. If there were, we would see that for E cores on the Ultra 155H, the base clock is 0.9 GHz and the boost clock is 3.8 GHz. The P-core only stats listed by Best Buy on behalf of Intel are quite misleading, making one think that not only do you sometimes get a boost clock of 4.8 GHz (which is actually true), but also that you never get a clock rate lesd than 1.4 GHz. Not true since when on an E core, sometimes you might get a clock between 0.9 and 1.4 GHz. Since Meteor Lake schedules you onto E cores perhaps 75% of the time for a typical user, most of the time you’re getting a clock rate of 0.9 to 4.8 GHz, actually. This misinformation in Best Buy’s Show Full Specs may not have mattered much for other Intel CPUs (other than that in general it paints recent Intel CPUs in a better light than deserved while AMD does not get that benefit), it ends up being somewhat of a truth in advertising problem for Meteor Lake CPUs, just because their threads are scheduled onto E cores more often than P cores, and E core clock rates are not listed. I would suggest Best Buy to list both Big-core and Little-core clock rates for Big.Little hybrid architectures, but the problem is a bit more nuanced than that. In fact, next month AMD will introduce Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 laptops that arguably do have a Big.Little architecture (in fact their 8 Zen 5c cores are quite literally “little” versions of their 4 Zen 5 cores), however unlike Intel P cores and E cores there are no architectural design differences between Zen 5 and Zen 5c. In fact, AMD (both on their product pages and also on Best Buy specs) identical base/boost clocks for the Big Zen 5 cores and Little Zen 5c cores. It would seem that AMD would actually prefer to down-play that the AI 370 is truly a Big.Little design - perhaps because in the past it has ragged on Intel for their P/E cores being a bad idea. So maybe AMD would actually prefer that BB keep a single set of clock rate stats (and certainly BB should consult with Intel and AMD before making any big change). Right now, for the new laptops with Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 CPUs, Best Buy lists the lower bound of the Little Zen 5c cores as its base clock, and the upper bound of the Bug Zen 5 cores as its boost clock. None of its literature lists separate clock rates for the Big/Little cores, and it will be a while until performance results come out.
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