Intel’s next-generation Core Ultra 9 288V ‘Lunar Lake’ CPU has made an appearance on Geekbench, showcasing its impressive performance, particularly in single-core tasks. However, the multi-core performance appears to lag behind AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 ‘Strix Point’ APU, which boasts significantly higher scores. The Lunar Lake CPU features a higher PL1 power setting of 30W, 32GB of on-package memory, and integrated Xe2-GPU graphics based on the new Battlemage architecture.
Intel’s next-generation desktop processors, codenamed Arrow Lake, are set to arrive later this year. According to recent leaks, these chips will feature a new naming scheme, the Intel Core Ultra 200 series. They will also reportedly lose support for hyperthreading, a technology that allows each physical core to execute two threads simultaneously.
Arrow Lake CPUs will be the first desktop generation to follow Intel’s new naming scheme. This includes the Core Ultra 200 K-series, which encompasses the unlocked versions of CPUs with a processor base power (PBP) of 125 watts, as well as the locked Core Ultra 200 non-K variant that maxes out at 65 watts. Intel is also introducing the Core Ultra 200 F-series, which will include both 125W and 65W variants, and the Core Ultra 200 T-series, which focuses on energy efficiency.
While the new naming scheme is the most noticeable change, the loss of hyperthreading is also significant. This means that even though the CPUs may have the same number of cores, they will have fewer threads. This could have a noticeable impact on performance in certain applications.
Despite these changes, the upcoming Arrow Lake CPUs are expected to offer significant performance improvements over their predecessors. They are said to use the same chiplet design that we’ve already seen in Meteor Lake, which could bring interesting results performance-wise when paired with a chiplet design in a desktop CPU.
