Intel Lunar Lake CPU benchmarks reveal good power efficiency and GPU performance — Core Ultra 7 268V results show regressions in multi-core performance

Third-party benchmarks of Intel's new Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) CPUs are finally cropping up, giving us our first look at the processors' performance. Vietnamese tech review outlet ThinkView on YouTube benchmarked the Core Ultra 7 268V against AMD's competing Ryzen AI chips.

The Lunar Lake chip was benchmarked in Cinebench R23 and 3DMark TimeSpy against the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme , AMD's handheld gaming flagship. The Cinebench results were separated into single-core and multi-core results, with the multi-core results benchmarked at four different power targets: 15W, 20W, 28W, and 38W, to test each chip's multi-core efficiency.

The 268V did not fare well against its AMD competition, getting completely outpaced in the multi-core results at all four power levels. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 was roughly 57% faster at the 15W power target, 66% faster at 20W, 60% faster at 28W, and 54% faster at 38W. The Z1 extreme was 14% faster than the 268V at 15W, 46% faster at 20W, 35% faster at 28W, and 45% faster at 38W.

Bear in mind that these multi-core results are rough estimates of the actual results since they were published on a difficult-to-read graph. So, take these results as general estimations of performance.

The same cannot be said of the single-threaded results, both in terms of accuracy and the performance of the 268V. The Lunar Lake chip scored 2,054 points, five more than the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. Apple's M3 silicon was also benchmarked and was 10% slower than the 268V scoring 1,932 points.

ThinkView also tested the 268V, HX 370, and M3 chips in terms of performance per watt to check power efficiency. In this test, the 268V scored 137 points, the HX 370 97.5 points, and the Apple M3 292 points. In other words, the 268V was 40% more efficient compared to the HX 370, but it couldn't even come close to the M3's efficiency, where the Apple chip outpaced the Lunar Lake chip by over 2x.

In the graphics department, the Core Ultra 7 268V showed strong results in 3DMark's TimeSpy graphics benchmark, outpacing its AMD counterparts. The 268V scored 3,715 points, 5% higher than the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370's score of 3,526 points and 23% faster than the Z1 Extreme's score of 3,017 points.

Thinkview's performance results reveal that Lunar Lake features strong graphics and single-threaded performance, as well as good single-core efficiency compared to AMD's counterparts. However, multi-threaded performance takes a big hit, with the AMD chips often being 50% faster.

Intel launched Lunar Lake a few weeks ago, so the corresponding laptops should be on shelves by now.