As the dust begins to settle on AMD’s first batch of Zen 5 processors, the spotlight slowly moves on to Intel Lunar Lake. While the company’s new CPU architecture should see its Core Ultra 200V processors pull ahead of current generation stock, it’s arriving hand-in-hand with the brand’s Xe2 GPU architecture. Ahead of launch, Team Blue has made a bold claim about the generational improvements we can expect in terms of graphics performance.
Lunar Lake processors (Core Ultra 200V) will arrive later this year alongside their Arrow Lake siblings (Core Ultra 200/K/T). While Intel positions the latter are more performance-oriented, the former aims to deliver the best CPUs to smaller devices. In addition to ultrabooks, Core Ultra 200V will power handhelds like MSI Claw 8 AI Plus, making Xe2 a key part of the series’ capabilities.
In a recent episode of Talking Tech on the Intel Technology YouTube channel, company fellow Tom “TAP” Petersen shared an in-depth look at Xe2. While much of the information discussed is a repeat of Computex, Petersen does share a new and exciting performance estimation for Lunar Lake graphics.
“You know, we can talk about XMX instructions, vector instructions, and all the work we’ve done on our pixel backend, or all our work on our caching structure, but what really matters and people care about most is what’s the delivered experience. And I think a good baseline for Lunar Lake is about 1.5x prior generation.”
To be clear, Petersen is specifically referring to Lunar Lake graphics performance. Curiously, he refers to a 1.5x increase as a baseline, which may indicate we should expect an even larger leap further up the Core Ultra 200V stack.
Intel is yet to formally reveal Lunar Lake SKUs, but alleged specifications have already leaked. If true, Core Ultra 200V processors will arrive with either Arc 140V or 130V graphics. Potential benchmarks for the former place its performance in the same ballpark as a mobile Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. However, we’ll need to wait until the chip launches before making any definitive comparisons.
With the above in mind, we shouldn’t have long to wait. Intel will reveal its Core Ultra 200V series on September 3, 2024. Laptops and handhelds sporting the chips will follow shortly after, if Acer is to be believed.
If Xe2 stands up to scrutiny as integrated graphics for Lunar Lake, it’d spell potentially great things for Intel Battlemage graphics cards. With a larger die and more power at their disposal, Team Blue could finally gain a foothold in the GPU space where its Alchemist cards failed to do so.
Could Lunar Lake be the beginning of a turnaround in Intel’s fortunes? We’ll have to wait and see.
For more on Lunar Lake, check out leaked Core Ultra 5 288V benchmarks in addition to Core Ultra 9 288V results. The flagship makes for particularly exciting reading, as it gives AMD’s top Ryzen AI 300 series processor a run for its money.