Intel reveals first Lunar Lake laptop CPUs: everything you need to know

Do bully things travel to laptop buyers who wait? Today, Intel is revealing its archetypal 9 answers to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and AMD’s Strix Point laptop chips — and the institution claims the caller Core Ultra 200V lineup, formerly known arsenic Lunar Lake, tin conscionable oregon bushed them successful astir each way.

When the archetypal question of laptops vessel connected September 24th, they’ll person “the fastest CPU core,” “the world’s champion built-in GPU,” and “the champion AI performance,” according to Intel. Where Qualcomm versus AMD was a question of artillery beingness versus graphical performance, Intel claims its caller chips bash it all.

For example, Dell is conscionable present announcing a caller mentation of its flagship $1,400 XPS 13 laptop with Lunar Lake that’s fundamentally identical to the existent exemplary successful every different way: aforesaid chassis, aforesaid dimensions, aforesaid screen, aforesaid 55 watt-hour artillery pack. And yet, Dell says it present gets up to 26 hours of 1080p Netflix streaming astatine 150 nits of brightness, up from 18 hours previously.

That’s a 44 percent improvement, which is simply a elephantine leap for Intel, if true. (Never caput that the Qualcomm mentation of the XPS 13 quotes a somewhat longer beingness of up to 27 hours.)

Another example: Intel says an Asus Zenbook S 14 with Intel tin past aggregate hours longer than an Asus Zenbook S 16 with AMD successful bureau tasks, contempt the AMD laptop’s somewhat larger 78Wh artillery pack:

And connected gaming, Intel claims it’s yet pulling up of AMD and perfectly clobbering Qualcomm, with its Core Ultra 9 288V boasting 68 percent amended framework rates connected mean than the top-shelf Qualcomm X1E-84-100 successful a Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge and 16 percent amended framework rates than the AMD HX 370 spot successful the Asus Zenbook S 16.

You’ll privation to zoom successful connected these slides to spot however Intel claims your fave games mightiness tally astatine 1080p medium:

And that’s without utilizing Intel’s XeSS upscaling. With it, the institution claims adjacent ray-traced games are wrong scope of its integrated GPU, specified arsenic 45fps successful Cyberpunk 2077, 57fps successful Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, and 66fps successful Shadow of the Tomb Raider. (Intel didn’t supply solution and graphical settings for the ray-traced claims, though.)

On AI, Intel claims its caller machines connection acold faster show than Qualcomm erstwhile utilizing Adobe Premiere and Lightroom features, among different apps:

Like we’ve discussed previously, these Lunar Lake laptops should person fantabulous baked-in connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and a minimum of 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports to warrant speedy USB-C connectivity, charging, and up to 3 4K monitors.

But earlier you tally retired and preorder a Lunar Lake laptop, determination are a mates different things you should know.

Lunar Lake is conscionable for bladed laptops with 32GB oregon little RAM

Intel’s selling hides it well, but Lunar Lake isn’t the astir almighty laptop processor retired there. It’s not adjacent Intel’s astir powerful.

Every 1 of Intel’s 9 Core Ultra 200V chips has conscionable 8 CPU cores, 8 CPU threads, a maximum of 8 GPU cores, and up to 32GB of RAM, with nary mode to adhd much successful the future. One of Intel’s cardinal ratio improvements was getting escaped of abstracted representation sticks oregon chips, baking it into the CPU bundle instead. Intel besides did distant with hyperthreading, the method that fto CPU cores tally much than 1 thread.

And portion Intel says its eight-thread Lunar Lake chips tin bushed a 14-thread oregon 22-thread Meteor Lake spot astatine little wattage, last-gen Intel chips tin really propulsion up erstwhile fixed much powerfulness — arsenic does AMD’s HX 370. Here’s the descent that shows that:

Want much cores, much threads, and much RAM successful an Intel laptop? That’s what Intel’s Arrow Lake is for, and it whitethorn beryllium coming as soon arsenic October 10th.

You whitethorn not request — oregon privation — the astir almighty Lunar Lake chip

Remember erstwhile Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 meant antithetic numbers of CPU cores and threads? Lunar Lake throws that retired the window; it’s got less dividing lines than ever.

Here’s the easiest Intel decoder ring I’ve ever written, astatine slightest until Arrow Lake arrives:

As you tin spot below, your emblematic processor sanction volition beryllium thing similar “Core Ultra 7 258V.”

Wait for the reviews

Intel has made immoderate large claims that request to beryllium tested successful the coming weeks, arsenic laptops similar the Dell XPS 13 and Asus Zenbook S 14 marque their mode into reviewers’ hands — and erstwhile we tested Qualcomm’s and AMD’s large claims earlier this year, not each was what it appeared.

You should expect to spot a lot of Intel Lunar Lake laptops get announced existent soon — Intel confirms that Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI, and Samsung are each among the manufacturers gathering 80 antithetic laptops astir the Core Ultra 200V chips launching this week, and galore volition unfastened preorders immediately.

But you don’t request to jump, and they whitethorn get amended portion you wait. Intel says they won’t adjacent vessel with Microsoft’s ain Copilot Plus AI features similar unrecorded captions and Windows Studio Effects; those volition get arsenic a escaped update starting successful November, says Intel.