If you'd rather avoid generative AI in favor of pure computing power, Intel may just have the right chip for your next gaming laptop.
Thursday, Intel released the next chips hitting the Intel Core Ultra 200 family, the 200S and 200HX desktop chips. The company also offered some early details on the 200H mobile processors expected early next year.
The "Arrow Lake" Intel Core Ultra 200S, Intel Core Ultra 200HX, and Intel Core Ultra 200H processors favor high power efficiency, stronger multi-thread performance, and better graphics. The Intel Core Ultra 200S chips are intended for desktops and will launch this month, but we do have info on the 200HX, and 200H processors that will becoming early next year.
These chips will likely wind up in the next wave of gaming laptops and workstations, so let's get into what Intel's "Arrow Lake" can do for laptops.
Intel Core Ultra 200 H architecture rundown
The Intel Core Ultra 200H processor features integrated Intel WiFi 7 support, integrated Thunderbolt 4 support, Bluetooth 5.4 support, PCIe Gen 5 connectivity, DDR5 support, all in Foveros 3D packaging. Intel's Platform Marketing Manager Greg Boots referred to the Core Ultra 200H chip as a "standout platform for those who need premium portable graphics and AI capabilities" during a hardware briefing on Arrow Lake at IFA Berlin 2024.
The Intel Core Ultra 200H uses the same Lion Cove performance P-cores and Skymont efficiency E-cores as the other Intel Core Ultra 200 series chips. The exact core count hasn't been confirmed, though we will likely get more details about the Intel Core Ultra 200H chip in the coming months.
The main standout of the Intel Core Ultra 200H mobile processor family is its new Xe with XMX integrated GPU. This graphics tile offers four times the AI throughput of the Intel Core Ultra 100 "Meteor Lake" processor and supports the BFP16, FP16, int8, and int4 AI datatypes. It also offers twice the ray tracing capacity of the Meteor Lake Xe GPU with two traversal pipelines for RTU ray tracing workloads, and also has twice the cache size for an 8MB L2 cache.
The Intel Core Ultra 200H features an Intel AI Boost 3 NPU which offers up to 13 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of AI performance. The entire chipset offers up to 99 TOPS of AI computing power, with up to 77 TOPS on the GPU, 13 TOPS on the NPU, and 9 TOPS on the CPU.
A representative for Intel tells Laptop Mag that the Intel Core Ultra 200H chips are expected to launch around CES 2025 in January.
Intel Core Ultra 200HX architecture rundown
The Intel Core Ultra 200HX processor features integrated Intel WiFi 6 support, integrated Thunderbolt 4 support, Bluetooth 5.3 support, PCIe Gen 5 connectivity, DDR5 RAM support, all in Foveros 3D packaging. Manufacturers can upgrade the Core Ultra 200HX chipset to support Thunderbolt 5 and BlueTooth 5.4. Intel's VP of the Client Computing Group Josh Newman claimed Arrow Lake will "bring the AI PC to the desktop and mobile markets” when discussing the chipsets at IFA Berlin 2024.
With 16 Skymont efficiency E-cores and 8 Lion Cove performance P-cores, the Intel Core Ultra 200HX processor offers a multi-thread performance increase of about 10% over the Intel Core i9-14900K chip. The Intel Core Ultra 200HX also sees an increase of up to 30% more power efficiency compared to the Intel Core i9-14900K desktop chip.
Intel has made it easier to overclock the Intel Core Ultra 200HX chip with the new Intel eXtreme Tuning Utility with AI tool that offers granular core clock controls, a dual base clock, tile-2-tile and fabric overclocking, DLVR bypass, and AI recommendations for helping set the best clock speeds to optimize your CPU.
The Intel Core Ultra 200HX also features a larger GPU than the Intel 14th-gen chipsets. The new Xe GPU offers twice the graphics compute resources with higher clock frequencies, better architecture efficiency, and full Direct X 12 Ultimate support built in at the silicon level. The new Xe GPU features 4 Xe cores with 64 Vector engines, 1 Geometry pipeline, 4 samplers, 2 pixel backends, 4 ray tracing units, and a 4MB L2 cache.
Lastly, the Intel Core Ultra 200HX offers an Intel AI Boost 3 NPU with up to 13 TOPS of AI performance, with a total of up to 36 TOPS across the platform. Intel rates the "Arrow Lake" chips with up to 8 TOPS on the GPU, 13 TOPS on the NPU, and 15 TOPS on the CPU.
A representative for Intel tells Laptop Mag that the Intel Core Ultra 200HX chips are expected to launch around CES 2025 in January.
Arrow Lake drops the NPU in favor of CPU: What does that mean for laptops?
Intel's Core Ultra 200 series chips first launched in September with the Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" series of laptop processors. The Core Ultra 200V series of chips focused on AI performance and power efficiency, thus taking a bit of a hit to pure CPU power. Intel's Core Ultra 200 "Arrow Lake" series takes an opposing stance. These processors focus on power efficiency, enhanced graphics, and multi-thread performance, and have a less-powerful NPU based on the Intel Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" architecture.
The Intel Core Ultra 200H series of chips will launch for mobile, and we'll likely see it hit gaming laptops and workstations in the future. Though the more high-end desktop-replacement laptops will likely opt for the Intel Core Ultra 200HX desktop processor variant for increased performance.
We've seen that trend hold in the past, all the way up to last-gen, and there isn't much reason to expect that to change in the future.
While NPU performance is helpful for getting the most out of your laptops battery, a lot of AI is still programmed to run through the GPU. And "Arrow Lake" has some solid GPU AI performance, plus better integrated graphics performance than the Intel 14th "Raptor Lake Refresh" series. So you can still run generative AI on an "Arrow Lake" Intel Core Ultra 200H or HX system. You'll just get worse battery life than the Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" systems, though power efficiency should still be better with the Intel Core Ultra 200H and HX compared to the previous generation. So that should get you som extra battery time.
So for the folks confused that "Lunar Lake" didn't come in any gaming laptops, that's because "Arrow Lake" was coming just a few months later.
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