Intel Slugs AMD, Qualcomm With Core Ultra 200V Chips For Commercial Laptops
At CES 2025, Intel fights with AMD and Qualcomm in the AI PC arena with the launch of the Core Ultra 200V series for commercial thin-and-light laptops as well as four other chip lines due for commercial systems in different form factors.
At CES 2025 on Monday, the semiconductor giant announced that the Core Ultra 200V series, previously code-named Lunar Lake, will go into more than 30 commercial thin-and-light laptop designs from over 10 OEMS, including Lenovo, HP Inc. and Dell Technologies.
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“With Intel Core Ultra 200V processors, we're enhancing the business end-user experiences by enabling longer better life, AI innovation for every business persona and superior performance that delivers business productivity,” said David Feng, vice president and general manager of client segments in Intel’s Client Computing Group, in a briefing.
These PCs will also come with Intel’s vPro management and security platform, which will support new security capabilities from ISVs ranging from CrowdStrike to TrendMicro as well as new integrations with Microsoft Intune, Omnissa and other PC management tools.
“With Intel vPro platform, we're raising the bar for IT by providing the tools to manage [operating system] transition with confidence, keep devices secure in a modern work environment, and make it easier than ever to manage device fleets with innovative solutions,” Feng said.
Other Core Ultra 200 Chips To Hit Different Form Factors
The Core Ultra 200V launch was among several other chip series Intel revealed for commercial PCs at CES 2025. The other lines consist of the Core Ultra 200U and Intel Core Ultra 200H series for thin-and-light laptops, the Core Ultra 200HX series for performance notebooks, and the Core Ultra 200S series for desktops and workstations.
These other Core Ultra chips all share the same Arrow Lake microarchitecture that was introduced in the Core Ultra 200S chips for consumer desktops last fall, albeit in different configurations and designs depending on the requirements for each device segment.
All of these Arrow Lake-based chips are expected to become available in systems starting this month with the exception of Core Ultra 200HX, which is scheduled to hit systems late in the first quarter, and Core Ultra 200H, which is due to launch earlier in the quarter.
“With Intel Core Ultra 200 series processors, we're bringing [an] unmatched portfolio of exciting products to all commercial personas and form factors, to help business end customers enjoy the productivity gain brought by these AI PCs, and to provide the resilient, secure and easy to manage commercial PC lineup to IT,” Feng said.
Core Ultra 200V Pitched For ‘Next-Gen AI PC’ Experiences
With the Lunar Lake microarchitecture sporting a far faster neural processing unit (NPU) than Arrow Lake, Intel is promoting the Core Ultra 200V processors, which debuted in consumer laptops last fall, for “next-gen AI PC” experiences.
Intel said these experiences will include AI applications and features from more than 200 ISVs as well as Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features. However, while the Core Ultra 200V chips meet Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC technical requirements, the features are only available to Windows Insider Community testers for now. General availability is not yet known.
The Core Ultra 200V processors feature four performance cores, four low-power efficiency cores, eight GPU cores based on Intel’s Xe2 architecture and 32GB of on-package memory in a power envelope that can be configured from 8 watts to 30 watts. The NPU can perform up to 48 trillion operations per second.
For connectivity, the chips support Intel Wi-Fi 7 with wireless speeds up to five times faster than the previous generation, Intel Thunderbolt 4 with up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth that can be used for PC-to-PC sharing, among other things, and Intel Bluetooth 5.4.
How Core Ultra 200V Compares To Other Chips
Intel is calling the Core Ultra 200V processors an “unprecedented refresh opportunity” for commercial PCs, saying that they can enable up to 20 percent more productivity, two times longer battery life and five times faster Wi-Fi than a three-year-old PC.
“2025 is the year of refresh driven by innovation, and we’re working closely with Microsoft to accelerate the enterprise transition to Windows 11 and harness the benefits of AI between Microsoft experiences and the broad Intel AI ISV ecosystem,” Feng said.
While Intel did not say how much faster the Core Ultra 200V chips are than the last-generation Core Ultra 100 “Meteor Lake” processors on standard benchmarks and applications, it did claim that the new generation is anywhere from 14 percent to two times faster for AI features in various applications ranging from Tableau to Distinct AI.
When it came to the competition, Intel showed that the Core Ultra 200V processors are mostly faster than AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite series.
In handpicked benchmarks, Intel said the Core Ultra 7 268V is 33 percent faster on PugetBench Premiere Pro, 29 percent faster on Procyon Photo, 25 percent faster on CrossMark for productivity, 11 percent faster on WebXPRT 4 for Chrome and 6 percent faster on Procyon for Office productivity than the Snapdragon X Elite-X1E-80-100.
Compared to the Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360, the Core Ultra 7 268V was shown to be faster on all benchmarks except Procyon Photo, where the two chips tied, according to Intel.
In AI benchmarks, Intel said the Core Ultra 7 268V could deliver faster performance in all but one benchmark versus competing chips from Qualcomm and AMD across the NPU and GPU. When comparing NPU performance in the Geekbench AI test using the 8-bit integer format (int8), the Snapdragon X Elite-X1E-80-100 won out by less than 2 percent. The NPU in the Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 barely lost in the Procyon AI computer vision format using the int8 format.
Intel also claimed that the Snapdragon X Elite chip and, to a lesser extent, the Ryzen AI chip could not run all AI benchmarks across all listed formats for the NPU and GPU. These included the Procyon AI and Geekbench AI tests for the GPU on Snapdragon X as well as the Geekbench AI test for the NPU on Ryzen AI.
To demonstrate the battery life capabilities of the Core Ultra 200V series, Intel performed two sets of tests across laptops with chips from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. One test measured battery life for a video call showing nine simultaneous video streams on Microsoft Teams. The other used the UL Procyon Battery Life Office Productivity benchmark, which simulates Microsoft 365 application usage.
In the Microsoft Teams test, Intel said the Core Ultra 7 268V could enable up to 10.5 hours of battery life while the Snapdragon X Elite-X1E-80-100 and Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 could only deliver up to 9.2 hours and 6.1 hours respectively.
In the UL Procyon test, Intel said the Core Ultra chip could enable up to 20.3 hours of battery life while the Snapdragon X Elite-X1E-80-100 and Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 could only deliver up to 18.5 hours and 13.5 hours respectively.