Competitive single-core speed without the thermal penalty
Core Ultra 9 288V achieves 2901 single-core points at 30W, beating Ryzen AI 9 HX 370's 2833 points at 35W—a 2.4% advantage in efficiency. Lunar Lake features new Lion Cove P-cores, Skymont LP-E cores, Arc 140V GPU, and 48 TOPS NPU, targeting thin-and-light laptops with up to 120 AI TOPS platform performance.
- Core Ultra 9 288V scores 2,901 single-core points at 30W, beating Ryzen AI 9 HX 370's 2,833 points at 35W
- Eight cores and eight threads with 5.1 GHz P-core boost and 3.7 GHz E-core boost
- Includes Arc 140V GPU, 48 TOPS NPU, and 32 GB on-package LPDDR5X memory
- Launching September 2024 as part of Intel's Copilot+ PC initiative
- Multi-core score of 11,408 points trails higher-core-count Ryzen chips but matches 45W+ configurations
Intel's flagship Core Ultra 9 288V Lunar Lake CPU demonstrates competitive single-core performance at 30W TDP, outperforming AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in Geekbench tests ahead of September launch.
Intel's new Lunar Lake processors are coming in September, and early benchmark results suggest the company has engineered something genuinely efficient. The flagship Core Ultra 9 288V, tested in Geekbench 6, delivers single-core performance that rivals chips consuming significantly more power—a meaningful achievement in a market where battery life still matters.
The Core Ultra 9 288V runs at just 30 watts, a dramatic drop from Intel's previous generation Meteor Lake chips, which could draw up to 57 watts. Despite this constraint, the processor scored 2,901 points in single-core testing, placing it ahead of AMD's newly launched Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, which achieved 2,833 points while consuming 35 watts. That 2.4 percent advantage becomes more striking when you consider the power difference. At fixed 35-watt consumption, Intel's chip would theoretically pull ahead by roughly 5 percent—a meaningful margin in a category where every percentage point of efficiency translates to longer battery life.
The architecture supporting this performance is built on new foundations. The Core Ultra 9 288V packs eight cores and eight threads: four performance cores based on the new Lion Cove design and four efficiency cores using the Skymont LP-E architecture. Clock speeds reach 5.1 gigahertz on the performance cores and 3.7 gigahertz on the efficiency cores. The chip includes 12 megabytes of cache and comes paired with 32 gigabytes of on-package LPDDR5X memory running at 8,533 megatransfers per second. An Arc 140V GPU based on Intel's new Battlemage architecture handles graphics, while a dedicated neural processing unit delivers 48 trillion operations per second for AI workloads. Combined across all compute elements, the platform reaches 120 AI TOPS.
In multi-core testing, the picture becomes more complicated. The Core Ultra 9 288V scored 11,408 points, which positions it competitively against 45-watt Ryzen chips like the 7940HS and 8945HS, but trails the higher-core-count Ryzen AI 300 series processors, which pack ten or twelve cores. This is a straightforward trade-off: Intel chose to prioritize efficiency and single-threaded speed over raw core count, a sensible bet for the thin-and-light laptop segment where the Lunar Lake family is aimed. The full lineup includes seven additional SKUs, ranging from the Core Ultra 5 226V up through the Core Ultra 7 variants, each with slightly different clock speeds, cache configurations, and memory setups.
These processors mark the beginning of Intel's "Copilot+" PC initiative, the company's answer to the AI-accelerated computing wave sweeping through consumer hardware. The September launch will put Lunar Lake directly against AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series in a market segment that has grown increasingly important as laptop makers compete on battery endurance and AI capability. The single-core results suggest Intel has found a path to competitive performance without the thermal and power penalties that have historically plagued mobile processors. Whether that efficiency translates to real-world battery life, and how the new Battlemage GPU architecture compares to AMD's RDNA offerings, will become clearer once these machines reach reviewers' hands.
Notable Quotes
The Lunar Lake manages to outperform the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 by 2.4 percent at a lower power envelope, with potential for up to 5 percent advantage at fixed 35W consumption— Benchmark analysis
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does a 30-watt power limit matter so much for a laptop processor?
It's the difference between a machine that needs charging every four hours and one that lasts through a workday. Every watt of power draw translates directly to heat that needs to be dissipated, which means larger cooling systems, thicker chassis, heavier batteries. At 30 watts, you can build something genuinely thin and light without sacrificing performance.
But the multi-core scores are lower than AMD's chips. Doesn't that matter?
It depends on what you're doing. If you're writing documents, browsing, editing photos—single-core speed is what you feel. Multi-core matters for video rendering or data processing, but most laptop users never max out all cores. Intel bet that efficiency and snappy single-threaded performance would matter more than having two extra cores sitting idle.
What's the significance of the on-package memory?
It's a radical design choice. Instead of memory sitting on the motherboard, it's built directly into the processor package. That saves space, reduces power consumption, and lets the memory run faster because the connection is shorter. It's a constraint too—you get what Intel gives you, no upgrading later—but for a thin-and-light laptop, it's a smart trade.
These are "Copilot+ PCs." What does that actually mean?
Microsoft's way of saying the hardware is built for AI. The 48 TOPS NPU isn't for playing games or browsing the web—it's for running AI models locally on the device. Copilot+ is the marketing umbrella for machines that can do that without sending everything to the cloud.
So Intel is betting the future on AI performance?
Not just AI. They're betting on efficiency as the differentiator. AMD has more cores, higher clock speeds in some cases, but Intel's saying: we can give you what you need at half the power. In a market where everyone's chasing battery life, that's a real argument.