Intel Core Ultra 200V guide: Lunar Lake specs and release date

Intel has officially just launched a new range of chips for gaming handhelds and thin-and-light gaming laptops, proudly claiming that it now has the “fastest built-in GPU” for these products. Formerly codenamed Lunar Lake, the new lineup of Intel Core Ultra 200V chips integrate CPU cores, up to 32GB of RAM, and a new Intel Arc Xe2 Battlemage into one package, meaning there’s no need to for manufacturers to make room for memory modules and separate CPU and GPU chips.

The new Intel chips were unveiled at the IFA show in Berlin, and the company says that over 80 machines are already lined up to use the new Core Ultra 200V chips, from over 20 different manufacturers. These not only include new contenders for the best gaming laptop in the thin and light category, but the new MSI Claw 8 AI+ will also be taking a shot at the best handheld gaming PC with one of the new chips too.

Of course, Intel is making a big deal about the AI capabilities of these new chips, as they all have an integrated neural processing unit (NPU), but the Core Ultra 200V range also looks set to offer decent gaming performance. In fact, Intel is making bold claims about the new integrated GPU, saying it’s not only significantly faster than the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X1E-84-100, but that it also beats the new AMD Ryzen 9 HX 370, with its integrated Radeon 890M GPU.

Intel Arc 140V GPU

The Lunar Lake GPU is the first outing for Intel’s new Battlemage Xe2 architecture, and in this case it comes with eight Xe 2 cores, which are the big over-arching building blocks of Intel’s GPUs, a bit like Nvidia’s Streaming Multiprocessors and AMD’s compute units. Each Xe2 code contains eight of Intel’s vector units and eight of its XMX matrix cores too. The latter are for AI calculations, a bit like Nvidia’s Tensor cores, for accelerating Intel’s XeSS upscaling tech to improve frame rates. There are also eight hardware ray tracing cores in the GPU.

During the launch at IFA, Jim Johnson, Intel’s senior vice president and general manager of the Client Business Group, claimed that “the average performance lift of each core is about 30%,” when compared to Intel’s previous-gen Meteor Lake GPU, which is used in the MSI Claw handheld. However, he also added that “in many games, for example, Cyberpunk, Spider-Man, Hogwarts Legacy, we’re seeing performance improvements of up to 50%. The crowning achievement of Xe2 is simple – it’s the fastest built-in GPU in the industry.”

To back up this point, Johnson claimed that Intel had tested nearly 50 games on the Core Ultra 200V GPU, and compared it to the performance of the AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 and Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X1E-84-100. On average, Johnson claimed that the Lunar Lake GPU was over 68% faster than the Qualcomm chip, and 16% faster than the AMD chip. He also pointed out that 23 of the test games also wouldn’t even run on the Qualcomm chip, as it uses the Arm architecture.

Testing at 1080p, Johnson claims the Core Ultra 200V’s Arc 140V GPU can run Diablo 4 at an average of 66fps, compared to 39fps on the Qualcomm chip, and it can also run Doom Eternal at 71fps and Cyberpunk 2077 at 39fps. Intel also says the new chips are much more power-efficient than the competition when it comes to gaming, with Johnson demonstrating the three above chips running Dota 2.

In this particular test, there’s less than a 10fps difference between the performance of all three chips, and the performance goes back and forth, but the Intel Core Ultra 200V chip notably only consumes 29.1W in the screenshot below, compared with 42W for the AMD chip, and 58.8W for the Qualcomm chip. If these numbers stand up to scrutiny, we could genuinely be looking at decent gaming performance on a thin-and-light laptop or gaming handheld, as well as decent battery life.

Of course, the big question here is compatibility and driver support, given that we experienced several issues in our Intel Arc A770 review, and the MSI Claw was plagued by problems when it was first released. Johnson addressed this to a certain extent, saying “gaming is more than just performance. Our investment in drivers and day zero game compatibility are a huge part of the experience for our customers.”

Intel Core Ultra 200V CPU

The other big part of the equation is, of course, the CPU, and Intel is making some bold claims here too. All the CPUs in the new Core Ultra 200V lineup have the same core configuration, with four P-Cores for performance and four low-power (LP) E-Cores to pick up extra threads in the workload without driving up the power draw.

The new P-Cores use the same core architecture as the Intel Arrow Lake desktop CPUs that are expected to arrive by the end of 2024. Intel says that these performance-focused cores are, on average, 14% faster than the equivalent cores in Intel’s current Meteor Lake laptop CPU architecture. Based on Intel’s new Lion Cove core, Intel says the new P-Cores improve the instructions per clock (IPC) by 14% compared to Intel’s current thin and light laptop chips, and ups the performance per Watt by 15%.

The bigger deal, however, is the E-Cores. Johnson says Lunar Lakes “E-Cores deliver almost double the performance” of the equivalent cores in Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs. Bear in mind that we’re talking about LP E-Cores here, rather than the higher-power E-Cores found in Intel’s desktop chips, but that’s still potentially a big generational improvement.

Intel says it’s increased the instructions per clock (IPC) of these LP E-Cores by over 68% compared to its current laptop chips, and again makes big claims about the power efficiency. Lunar Lake is “ the most efficient family of x86 processors ever,” says Intel, saying that the power draw of the overall package is up to 50% lower than that of the current Core Ultra 7 165HG.

Intel Lunar Lake Specs

These are the Intel Core Ultra 200V specifications:

Intel Lunar Lake release date

The Intel Core Ultra 200V release date is Tuesday, September 24, 2024, with pre-orders for devices starting from September 3, 2024.

Of course, we only have Intel’s claims at the moment, and the proof will be in the pudding. We’ll have to wait until we have one of the new Core Ultras 200V laptops in our hands for benchmarking, as well as the MSI Claw 8 AI+, to see whether Intel’s new Core Ultra 200V can really deliver on its promise. In the meantime, check out our guide to the best thin and light gaming laptops, if you’re looking for a super-portable machine right now.