The Core Ultra 200V generation of Intel x86 processors is here and they claim to deliver ultimate power efficiency for thin and light laptops. These are the first Intel processors to be manufactured by TSMC, using the N3B (3nm) process for the compute tile and N6 for the platform tile. Thanks to its revised structure, Intel claims Core Ultra 200V series laptops can offer 20+ hours of battery life with productivity usage.
The nine (9) new chips codenamed Lunar Lake are available in Core Ultra 5, 7, and 9 configurations. All of them feature 8 CPU cores with 4x performance (P-cores) and 4x efficiency cores (E-cores) all with 8 threads and no hyperthreading.
Intel claims you get 50% power savings compared to the outgoing Meteor Lake processors. The Lion Cove performance cores come with a 14% improvement over the ones in Meteor Lake while the Skymont efficiency cores double the performance of their predecessor.
The baseline Core Ultra 5 version features 4.5 GHz (P-core) and 3.5 GHz (E-core) clock speeds, 8MB L3 cache, 17W base power (8W minimum) and 37W max turbo power.
Intel Core Ultra 200V series lineup
The highest-end Core Ultra 9 288V brings 5.1 GHz (P-core) and 3.7 GHz (E-core) clock speeds, 12MB L3 cache, 30W base power (17W minimum) and 37W max turbo power.
One of the peculiar features with Lunar Lake processors is the memory on package RAM. The new chips come with 16/32GB dual channel LPDDR5x-8533 memory and you won’t be able to add more memory down the line. Intel claims the built-in RAM approach allows for greater power efficiency and lower power consumption.
Lunar Lake chips also come with Intel’s new Xe2 built-in GPUs with up to 67 TOPS (tera operations per second) and claims of 1.5x improvement in performance over the outgoing Xe GPU found in Meteor Lake chips.
Intel Core Ultra 9 288V with Arc 140V GPU vs. Core Ultra 7 155H
AI tasks will be handled by the updated neural processing unit (NPU) with up to 48 TOPS on the 6x Gen4 version.
In terms of I/O and connectivity, Intel Core Ultra 200V supports PCI-Express 5, Thunderbolt 4, USB4, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and Gigabit Ethernet.
Laptop makers including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI, and Samsung will announce new Lunar Lake devices starting today with the first wave of sales scheduled for September 24.
