The Core Ultra 200V generation of Intel x86 processors is here and they claim to offer the 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 that the Core Ultra 200V series laptops can deliver 20+ hours of battery life with productivity use.
The nine (9) new chips codenamed Lunar Lake are available in Core Ultra 5, 7 and 9 configurations. They all have 8 CPU cores with 4x performance (P-cores) and 4x efficiency cores (E-cores), all with 8 threads and no hyperthreading.
Intel claims you’ll get 50% power savings compared to the current Meteor Lake processors. The Lion’s Cove performance cores are 14% better than Meteor Lake, while the Skymont efficiency cores offer twice the performance of their predecessor.
The baseline Core Ultra 5 variant has 4.5 GHz (P-core) and 3.5 GHz (E-core) clock speeds, 8 MB L3 cache, 17W base power (8W minimum) and 37W max turbo power.
Intel Core Ultra 200V Series Lineup
The highest-tier Core Ultra 9 288V brings 5.1 GHz (P-core) and 3.7 GHz (E-core) clock speeds, 12 MB L3 cache, 30W base power (17W minimum), and 37W max turbo power.
A special feature of the Lunar Lake processors is the memory on package RAM. The new chips come with 16/32GB dual channel LPDDR5x-8533 memory and you will not be able to add more memory later. Intel claims that the built-in RAM approach allows for greater power efficiency and lower power consumption.
The Lunar Lake chips also feature Intel’s new Xe2 built-in GPU, capable of up to 67 TOPS (tera operations per second), and is claimed to offer a 1.5x performance improvement over the existing Xe GPU in Meteor Lake chips.
Intel Core Ultra 9 288V with Arc 140V GPU vs Core Ultra 7 155H
AI tasks will be handled by an updated neural processing unit (NPU) with up to 48 TOPS on the 6x Gen4 version.
In terms of I/O and connectivity, the 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 be announcing new Lunar Lake devices starting today, with first sales on September 24.
