Intel claims x86 architecture isnt done yet, not by a long shot.
Intel first helped bring us the term AI PC less than a year agowith its Meteor Lake chips.
Intel calls its Core Ultra 200V lineup the most efficient x86 chips available.
Intel’s Lunar Lake chips are more powerful and far more efficient, though the question is if they’ll equal the same battery life as ARM.Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
The key measurement is a claimed 40% reduction in PHY power compared to last years Meteor Lake.
It should use between 41% and 33% less power on Microsoft Teams or YouTube.
In some productivity tasks, the power efficiency may be even higher.
Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
Theres a wide selection of chips this time.
The Lunar Lake lineup includes lower-power Intel Core Ultra 5 up to a top Core Ultra 9 288V.
The Ultra 9 288V has a top 5.1 Ghz speed and a 12 MB cache.
Intel promises Lunar Lake can render scenes in Blender twice as fast as Meteor Lake. Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
Unfortunately, theres no Hyper-Threading integrated this time.
Intel claims this leads to better power efficiency.
Intel is also dividing up its ARC-integrated GPU for the first time.
Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
If you go for an Intel Core Ultra 5, you get a 130V GPU.
Anything Intel Core Ultra 7 and above gets a 140V GPU.
The lower-end chips only get a 5x Gen4 NPU at a 40 TOPS.
Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
The chips with a 6x Gen4 NPU get 47 or more TOPS.
Well hear about OEMs new Lunar Lake laptops in the next few days.
The chips are on preorder now, and they should be available Sept. 24.
Intel promised customers that these latest mobile chips wont have the same issues.
On Tuesday, Robert Hallock, VP of Intels client computing group, said the NPU is more powerful.
TOPS is a value derived through a simple math equation that includes a few parameters like speed and accuracy.
We should also point out that NPUs were not new with the advent of the AI PC.
Theyve been part of phone designs for years.
Now, app developers depend equally on all three aspects of modern CPUs, even for AI tasks.
AI clip segmentation in Adobe Premiere relied more on CPU than NPU.
As for gaming performance, Intel claims its chips have better integrated graphics capabilities than Strix Point or Snapdragon.
Microsoft and Qualcomm were the first in line to tell consumers the first Copilot+ PCs werent gaming machines.
That also misses the core comparison point between the two chip architectures.
ARM PCs promise better optimization, leading to battery life exceeding 15 or 20 hours.
Intel would need to break 10 hours to truly be impressive, so well have to wait and see.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
The Framework 13 now feels like a laptop that’s more than a modular, repairable novelty.
It’s now a machine that’s a joy to both build and use.
However, some of our most-anticipated tech for the month won’t arrive until April.
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