Lunar Lake performance cores are “the fastest yet,” says Intel

Intel Lunar Lake processors arrive with an architectural overhaul compared to Meteor Lake. It marks the historical absence of Hyper-Threading technology, in addition to new efficient cores eliminating the LPE-Core of the Core Ultra 100. The new performance cores, Lion Cove, are “the fastest, period,” according to Intel.

Compared to Meteor Lake processors, Lunar Lake processors offer 4 MB of L2 cache on the efficient cores, double the previous generation. The performance cores have 18 MB of L3 cache.

Communication between these different areas of the Intel Core Ultra 200V processors will be up to 40% faster than the Core Ultra 100. Between efficient and performance cores, latency is around 55ns, dropping to between 23 and 26ns with communication between the same category of cores. According to Intel, this is enough to be 30% faster than AMD Strix Point.

For the owner of Lunar Lake mobile CPUs, the performance cores are the fastest on the mobile market, period. Comparing the top-of-the-line Core Ultra 9 288V SKU with the AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 and two high-end SKUs from Qualcomm, the new processor is up to 61% faster, depending on the productivity application.

Despite using its new top-of-the-line mobile CPU, the comparison with rivals does not involve the highest level within AMD and Qualcomm’s latest lineup for notebooks, it is worth noting.

Intel Lunar Lake vs. Rivals

Combining the performance and efficient cores, Lunar Lake, which are all equipped with 4+4 cores, deliver between 2 and 3 times more performance per thread, ranging from 9W to 28W, compared to different configurations of the Meteor Lake generation.

In different applications, Lunar Lake cores can deliver up to 92% more performance, as in Handbrake, compared to the AMD and Qualcomm rivals mentioned above.

There is a focus on energy efficiency with the Core Ultra 200V and an example of this is the 68% jump in IPC with the efficient cores compared to Meteor Lake. This evolution is much smaller considering only the performance cores (14%).

Intel Lunar Lake mobile processors are already available in notebooks from ASUS, MSI, Samsung, Acer, LG and Dell in select models. Availability in more models will be expanded in the future.