New laptop processors for mobile workstations prioritise CPU performance over AI capabilities
Intel has introduced new ‘Arrow Lake’ laptop processors, which should make their way into mobile workstations later this year. This includes six Intel Core Ultra 200HX series processors for high-performance laptops, and five Intel Core Ultra 200H series processors for mainstream thin-and-lights.
Intel’s new processors prioritise general processing performance over AI capabilities. Compared to last year’s ‘Lunar Lake’ Intel Core Ultra 200V series, the new chips feature significantly more CPU cores, but come with a much less powerful Neural Processing Unit (NPU). With 13 TOPS compared to 48 TOPS, the NPU falls short of meeting the requirements for Microsoft Copilot+ compatibility.
The integrated GPU in the Intel Core Ultra 200HX is also less powerful than the one that comes with the Intel Core Ultra 200V. This suggests that in a mobile workstation, Intel’s flagship laptop processor is most likely to be paired with a discrete GPU, such as Nvidia RTX.
Key features of the Intel Core Ultra 200HX and H series mobile processors include up to 24 cores – eight Performance-cores (P-cores) and 16 Efficient-cores (E-cores) – for HX-series and up to 16 cores – six P-cores, eight E-cores and two low-power E-cores – for H-series.
According to Intel, the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processors offers up to 41% better multi-threaded performance, as tested in the Cinebench 2024 rendering benchmark, compared to the previous generation Intel Core i9-14900HX processor.
