Mark the date down folks, Intel’s next-gen Core Ultra 200V series processors will be coming in September 24.
Either known as “Intel Core Ultra (Series 2)” or Intel Core Ultra 200V, they will carry the baton from the Meteor Lake Core Ultra CPUs, and as usual, improved computing performance in terms of the CPU cores as well as the iGPU are to be expected where “decent” or “moderate” can be used to describe them but the main ace card on Team Blue’s sleeve is the vastly enhanced power efficiency ratio.
The way they did it is to compare a sample system running a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC and a given chassis against a similar one but with a Core Ultra 200V chip and all we know is that the better battery life metric comes from the Procyon Office Productivity test and a Microsoft Teams call simulation.
However, this is still just official numbers and only time can tell when retail units could be shipped to reviewers for a deeper look and test across more applications. But hey, this is still a piece of good news for x86 to kill the infamous “all-time loser in CPU power efficiency” joke.
The baseline architecture is still the same for Lunar Lake as they use the “tile” arrangement to get multiples of silicon chiplets together into a large chip through Intel Foveros packaging technology yet there’s one little catch where they cut the original 4 function tiles down to 2 in this generation. You might also be interested to learn that they are manufactured by TSMC fully this time around.
Speaking of chip design, apparently, they have revised and given the Core Ultra 200V series a new NPU so that they meet the Microsoft Copilot+ PC requirement which requires a stronger TOPS number than before.
Before we proceed, here’s the full SKU list.
Although technically listing only 9 SKUs for the moment, Intel has expressed that they are trying to implement RAM into the CPU package, essentially turning it into an Apple M series SoM-style variant that can lead to even stronger power efficiency performance and potential reduction in motherboard PCB sizes (But of course, there’s the argument of non-upgradable memory which is fair).
And look at that – 4x Lion Cove P-cores and 4x Skymont E-cores for all tiers? That’s something unorthodox even for Intel. Therefore, a reduction in physical cores is a given here which means Lunar Lake probably won’t break the multicore performance ceiling when it comes to fighting against Meteor Lake.
But still, we can’t wait to see the flagship Core Ultra 9 288V in action with its 5.1GHz boost clock and overall power-performance ratio.
As for the iGPU section, ‘Arc 140V/130V’ is the new name that runs the next-gen Battlemage architecture said to be 31% faster than Meteor Lake’s iGPU, 68% against Snapdragon X Elite’s Adreno, and 16% faster than Ryzen AI 9 HX 370’s Radeon 890M.
Aside from providing better experiences in games, of course, how can we forget various AI-optimized engines and technologies in case one wants some serious juice in their local AI application while disregarding the NPU when a charging brick and wall socket is nearby to give all the power it needs.
Ready to nab one? Then you shall see brands launching their offerings starting September 24 with some of them already opening preorders right now.
