Lunar Lake: Intel’s New Chips Deliver Huge Gaming Boosts and AI Power

Intel launched its new Core Ultra 200V series processors, called Lunar Lake, today at IFA in Berlin, set to launch September 24th.

The new CPUs promise noticeable improvements across the board, making them arguably a giant leap for anyone in the market for a new laptop. They offer up to 30% faster gaming performance, 20 hours of battery life, and a big boost in AI capabilities.

The Lunar Lake chips follow Intel’s Meteor Lake processors and are made with a new design. They have a new Arc GPU ( Intel Xe2 Graphics based on BattleMage, to be exact) with up to 8 cores and a faster 6-core unit for AI tasks. The CPU cores are improved for better power utilization. Intel says they are ahead of AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips in CPU and AI tasks, and if the numbers shown are to be believed, they are a force to be reckoned with in mobile.

But what is potentially most impressive for many is the big improvement in battery life. Intel says laptops with Lunar Lake can last up to 20 hours. This is a big jump from the 10-12 hours that most ultrabooks last now, with even the best Metor Lake laptops coming nowhere close to 20 hours of regular use. This change is due to better CPU cores and several chip power-saving features.

Thanks to Intel Xe2 Graphics, Lunar Lake delivers a huge graphics boost, meaning gamers can finally play AAA titles on ultrabooks at more than low settings. The new Arc GPU is up to 30% faster than the last one seen in Metor Lake. This puts it on par with entry-level gaming GPUs. As a result, slim gaming laptops will perform better than before. Intel also emphasized that Lunar Lake is fully x86 compatible. This is a jab at Qualcomm, whose chips can only run a small number of games, with many simply not starting, and the ones that did give a sub-par performance.

On the AI front, the new Lake NPU is much more powerful. It can handle up to 48 trillion operations per second on the top-end Core Ultra 9 model, which means it can handle more complex AI tasks. Microsoft plans to harness this power with an update to Windows 11 that will add AI capabilities to the system, with new CoPilot+ hitting non-Qualcomm CPUs in a future update.

As Intel mentioned, the update is expected to arrive in November. It will add support for AI-powered features, such as automatically resizing windows and using voice commands. This update will also let the new AI Copilot assistant work directly on Lunar Lake systems for better speed. As I mentioned above, Copilot only works well with Qualcomm chips, but Intel is partnering with Microsoft to make it available for x86 systems, too.

Unfortunately for those hoping that these new chips would usher in a range of budget laptops, all these new features and good performance come at a price. Lunar Lake has a special design with integrated RAM. This requires custom motherboards, which makes it more expensive for laptop manufacturers. So don’t look for Lunar Lake laptops under $1000. Most will be in the $1200 to $3000+ range.

For people who want the best laptop experience with modern features, Lunar Lake seems very good. Laptops with the new chips should be available from 24 September from popular brands including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI and Samsung. With Intel’s new launch, the laptop market is about to get a lot more fun. Stay tuned to CGMagazine as we test the new laptops as we get closer to the 24th of September launch date.

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