Intel officially unveiled its next-gen Lunar Lake laptop processor lineup in June, though we've known about the next-gen processors for a few months now. The company has yet to make an announcement about the desktop version.
A new X leak spotted by GSMArena claims that the desktop processors will be dubbed Arrow Lake and are expected to be unveiled on October 10.
When Intel announced the successor chips to Meteor Lake, they made some compelling changes to their processors. For one, the new laptop processors significantly increased the TOPs (Trillion Operations Per Second) from 11.5 to 48. Microsoft is requiring all Copilot+ PCs to achieve a minimum of 40 TOPs, which is why we saw so many ARM-based laptops announced at Microsoft’s Build event in May.
Intel claimed the new chips would be at least 60% more battery efficient and that Lunar Lake would power at least 80 laptops.
Interestingly, Intel has ditched HyperThreading in the Lunar Lake processors, which the company claims is faster and more efficient. If you’re not aware, HyperThreading is a feature created by Intel that allows a single processor to act as multiple virtual processors. According to the Arrow Lake leak, the desktop version will also ditch HyperThreading.
However, looking at user jaykihn0's charts, hyperthreading may not be necessary as the efficient cores seem much more robust than previous Intel chips. However, despite Intel's claims, this seems to be a bit of a bigger power monster. We'll be testing this out whenever we get a desktop running Arrow Lake to test.
There will be 14 models under the Intel Core Ultra brand with a mix of high-performance and efficient cores. They also vary in terms of power for the TDP from 35W to 125W.
All chips appear to feature Turbo Boost 2.0, which slightly increases single-core performance. Several other aspects, including Thermal Velocity Boost, appear to be getting upgrades. We recommend checking out the leaked X charts, which break them down in much more detail.
A separate leak shared by Extreme Tech spotted a GeekBench listing, which appears to show an Arrow Lake benchmark. The GeekBench test shows a single-core score of 3,219 and a multi-core score of 19,433. The Arrow Lake CPU being tested is said to be a Core Ultra 7 265KF. In comparison, the Raptor Lake Core i7-14700KF has scores of 3,006 and 19,614.
It seems that the lack of HyperThreading is not a hindrance for the new chips, but the gain seems negligible. However, this is supposed to be a new socket and tile-based design, so we don't know exactly what Intel will be able to get out of these chips.
And, to be on the safe side, this is just a single-chip test. It's not hugely exciting, but we'll know more as more chipsets are tested and more benchmarks are revealed.
Intel hasn't had a great summer between recent layoffs that have seen R&D budgets destroyed and the fact that Qualcomm practically owns the new AI PC market with its Snapdragon X chips.
And that's not to mention the ongoing issues with Raptor Lake chipsets. The next generation of Intel chips is reportedly not prone to the oxidation issues that plagued the 13th and 14th generation of Intel chips. Despite a patch being released last month, several Intel chip owners are still left with permanently damaged or degraded chips. Time will tell if the Lunar/Arrow Lake chips will avoid these issues.