Intel has introduced the brand new Core Ultra 200HX and 200H laptop computer chips right here at CES 2025. The HX elements are essentially the most attention-grabbing to PC players, because the chips almost definitely to energy your subsequent gaming laptop computer, so let’s get into these first.
There are six new HX fashions, with the highest Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX providing up eight Performance-cores (Lion Cove) and 16 Efficient-cores (Skymont) for a complete of 24 threads. Remember, there isn’t any Hyper-Threading on the Lion Cove P-cores used right here, so what you see is what you get. The 285HX encompasses a P-core Turbo of 5.5 GHz.
That equates to a rise in efficiency of roughly 5%, by Intel’s inside testing, for single-thread versus the final era Raptor Lake Refresh chips. It additionally reckons we’ll see an enormous uplift in multithreaded efficiency of round 20%, which bears out with the desktop chips.
The HX-series will run at a base energy draw of 55 W, although can ramp as much as 160 W when required. That’s a fairly chunky energy demand—that is a Turbo energy truly 3 W larger than the 14900HX. So we’ll need to see how that performs out in gaming laptop computer designs surrounding these chips.
That mentioned, Jim Johnson, SVP of Intel’s Client Computing Group, mentioned of the HX Series: “plus it is about 40% extra environment friendly than the our earlier era, leaving extra headroom for discrete graphics to to stretch its legs.”
“It’s type of a one-two punch.”
Which all sounds extra promising than perhaps the specs allude to, however Intel says we’ll discover out extra at a later date. Assumedly when some new GPUs come out, which is predicted to occur any day now.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | P/E-cores (threads) | Max GHz (P-core) | GPU cores | NPU TOPS |
| Ultra 9 285HX | 8/16 (24) | 5.5 | 4 | 13 |
| Ultra 9 275HX | 8/16 (24) | 5.4 | 4 | 13 |
| Ultra 7 265HX | 8/12 (20) | 5.3 | 4 | 13 |
| Ultra 7 255HX | 8/12 (20) | 5.2 | 4 | 13 |
| Ultra 5 245HX | 6/8 (14) | 5.1 | 3 | 13 |
| Ultra 5 235HX | 6/8 (14) | 5.1 | 3 | 13 |
What’s just a little extra attention-grabbing is that these chips help not less than one thrilling new reminiscence type issue, CAMM2. CAMM2 is a like system RAM, solely pancaked onto the motherboard for larger cooling. It’s nonetheless detachable, although, so might make for some attention-grabbing functions in gaming laptops particularly.
In phrases of built-in GPU efficiency, these usually are not geared up with the mighty highly effective GPU that we have seen in Lunar Lake or its opponents. Just 4/3 Xe GPU cores throughout this lineup, which will not be nice for gaming. These chips will, after all, be paired with discrete GPUs as an alternative.
When it involves AI efficiency, which I do know you are all clamouring to search out out about, the NPU throughout the HX-series is just able to a middling 13 TOPS. That’s not sufficient to bag any kind of Microsoft Copilot+ certification.
The H Series maxes out with fewer threads the HX Series, at simply 16 threads complete. The Core Ultra 9 285H has six P-cores (Lion Cove), 8 E-cores (Skymont), and a pair of Low-power E-cores. Yep, it is fairly a bit like Meteor Lake in that regard, although the newer structure nonetheless presents some advantages over Meteor Lake—15% single-thread and multithread versus Meteor Lake, in accordance with Intel.
It additionally has a specifically tweaked Xe GPU with extra AI acceleration. Quite a bit extra, actually, as much as 77 TOPS.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | P/E-cores (threads) | Max GHz | GPU cores | GPU TOPS |
| Ultra 9 285H | 6/8 (16) | 5.4 | 8 | 77 |
| Ultra 7 265H | 6/8 (16) | 5.3 | 8 | 75 |
| Ultra 7 255H | 6/8 (16) | 5.1 | 8 | 74 |
| Ultra 7 235H | 4/8 (14) | 5 | 8 | 74 |
| Ultra 5 225H | 4/8 (14) | 4.9 | 7 | 63 |
We’ll in all probability see a large mixture of chips within the next-generation of gaming laptops, between these new HX Series, H Series, V Series, after which AMD’s choices, together with the Ryzen AI chips.
As for the HX Series gaming laptops, prone to make up a variety of gaming fashions alongside a discrete GPU, these are coming in late Q1. 200H chips will flip up “early Q1”, which must be any day now.
We’ll see extra as CES 2025 unfolds. We’re on the present, so keep tuned for all that.
