• 2 days ago
Transcript
00:00I've picked the wobbliest table but let's give this a go. This is a box but
00:05inside here we have the new Core Ultra Series 2. If my camera's gonna switch
00:10focus there. That is it. This is the new system on a chip that will be powering
00:15next-gen laptops coming out in the next few weeks in fact you can even pre-order
00:19some of them today. I've just had a quick hands-on with ones from Samsung, Asus,
00:23Acer, MSI, LG, Dell and they all come with these either new Core Ultra 7 or Ultra 9
00:29processors. Now I've actually just come out of a presentation from Intel. I'm here
00:32in Berlin at IFA. Intel flew me out here. Nothing sponsored but they brought me
00:36out here and this was a technical briefing so I'm not gonna bore you to
00:39death with all the slides but I'm gonna give you the highlights and tell you why
00:42maybe you would want to consider this stupid table. Why you might want to
00:45consider buying a new laptop with one of these new chips. So Intel first revealed
00:50this new Lunar Lake architecture a few months back at Computex where I also was
00:54but now we've been able to get hands-on literally we have some benchmarks and
00:58just a better idea of how it performs against AMD's recently launched Ryzen AI
01:02chips as well as the Snapdragon X Elites. Although not much was mentioned about
01:06Apple's chips with the M3 and upcoming M4. Broadly in the Q&A afterwards they
01:11said that this will be comparable with the M3's and actually should beat it in
01:14AI performance but nothing about M4 yet. So everything in this video is what
01:18Intel has provided me. Their data, their benchmarks. I will of course do all my
01:21own testing when I can get a sample back in the studio but for now how much
01:25faster is this? Is this actually gonna be a big deal? Well let me jump right to
01:29the end of Intel's presentation and show you the overall numbers versus last
01:33gen's Meteor Lake which only launched back in sort of December January so not
01:36that long ago but we're talking 18% faster CPU, 30% faster GPU, 50% more
01:42efficient, triple the AI performance, double performance per watt. This new
01:46architecture in these premium thin and light laptops is all about efficiency.
01:50It's about giving you better performance but also using much less power so we
01:54also get longer battery life because I think for most of us battery life
01:57especially in these kinds of laptops is possibly the most important thing but
02:01the numbers I'm hearing in terms of battery life even from Dell with the new
02:04XPS 13 with the Lunar Lake chip 24 hours of average use or something these are
02:10the kind of numbers that we saw from Snapdragon powered laptops but of course
02:14without any of the app compatibility issues and actually just to jump ahead
02:16a little bit there was a bit of a snigger in the room when Intel were
02:20demoing, there's a wasp, go away, were demoing some gaming benchmarks
02:25because while it was faster across the board of course versus last gen but also
02:29versus AMD's offering when they brought up the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite
02:34benchmarks it couldn't even run half the games obviously that is a big limitation
02:38with the ARM based architecture we get with Snapdragon they are still terrific
02:41chips and actually we saw a big increase in efficiency and battery life but at
02:45this stage it does kind of feel like all those Snapdragon advantages, Copilot Plus,
02:49AI, better efficiency, running cooler and quieter, that's all they met or exceeded
02:54by these new chips which is very interesting it's been a hell of a year
02:58for laptops. So there are actually nine different SKUs of this new Intel Core
03:02Ultra Series 2 and if you're wondering what the V suffix means here no one
03:07knows someone actually asked and they said it doesn't really stand for
03:09anything so the technical name is the Intel Core Ultra 200 V with the specific
03:13model numbers in there but for consumers what they will see when they actually go
03:17and buy the laptops is this Intel Core Ultra Series 2. Importantly though this
03:21is meant for higher-end premium expensive thin and light laptops like
03:25your Dell XPSs and your ZenBook S14s. They are still gonna sell the current
03:28Meteor Lake chips the Intel Core Ultra 100 series like the 155H, 165H but
03:33that'll be a more affordable option and they also suggested we'll be seeing more
03:36UNH series chips and of course we've also got Intel's Arrow Lake
03:40architecture which is basically a higher power higher performance version of this
03:43coming later on although I can't really talk about that yet. But all models of
03:46the new Core Ultra 200 series have 8 cores although with different clock
03:49speeds there are two different ARC graphics models we've got the 130 V and
03:53the 140 V. The MPU ranges between 40 and 48 tops although importantly they all
03:58hit the minimum requirement for Windows Copilot Plus and we also have 16 or 32
04:03gigs of built-in memory and actually this is the first time we're seeing
04:06integrated memory onto the chip outside of Apple Silicon so you either have 16
04:10or 32 which is great in that it reduces power use and so actually does give us
04:15better performance for the RAM. The downside is it's not upgradable so if
04:18you want 64 gigs of RAM in your Lunar Lake 200 series thin and light laptop
04:22you're out of luck. So without getting too nerdy and boring you all to death
04:26let's just break this down simply we've got the CPU, the GPU, the memory, the AI
04:31and the other bits like the Meteor engine built into this SoC, the system
04:35on chip. Now the CPU, the processor, it has 8 cores same as the Meteor Lake but
04:40actually 4 fewer than the 12 core AMD Ryzen AI chips although surprisingly
04:45Intel do claim that this is still the fastest processor in this category
04:49actually beating performance from AMD while using less power and with fewer
04:53chips which is very impressive of course we'll have to do our own testing as well
04:57but we have 4 P cores and 4 E cores each with their own new architecture and in
05:01terms of power draw Intel say the full range will be between 9 and 37 watts
05:07which is much lower than before Intel's last-gen Core Ultra 9 the 185H was a much
05:11higher 57 watts. We're talking double the performance per watt versus Meteor Lake
05:16so for example in Cyberpunk here it runs 40% faster and uses 20% less power
05:21that's a huge improvement. Going back to battery life briefly and the combination
05:25of having the memory on the chip removing hyper threading the efficiency
05:28improvements with the architecture these new Lunar Lake chips should beat both
05:32Snapdragon and Ryzen in battery life for most tasks. Then we have the graphics
05:37and this guy comes with the second-generation Intel Arc Xe 2
05:41integrated graphics and we're looking at a 30 to 60 percent boost over the
05:45previous gen. Have a look at this they've set up an f1 2024 demo with Intel versus
05:51AMD they did have a separate test which included the Snapdragon chip but right
05:55now that only supports f1 22 not the most recent two years of games anyway
05:59Between AMD's Ryzen AI codenamed Strixpoint and also Intel Lunar Lake at 1080p with high
06:04settings and with their respective upscaling FSR and XDSS for Intel there
06:09is a big difference in frame rates and even without the upscaling tech Intel
06:12say the Xe 2 is around 15% faster than the latest Ryzen integrated graphics and
06:17again going back to Snapdragon gaming well it's not their strong suit let's
06:21just say. Okay so I'm in this performance review zone and let me just show you a
06:26couple of benchmarks we've got some games over here this is Shadow of the
06:29Tomb Raider and we've averaged 73 FPS at 1080p I believe with medium settings
06:36cyberpunk we've got 61 FPS average and then over here in the 3d mark syllabi
06:46more interesting though is if I just go over here and squeeze past a plant have
06:51a look at this little demo so we've got the efficiency the wattage used let me
06:57drop the brightness here a little bit of the new Core Ultra 9 288 V the slightly
07:02lower power Ultra 7 258 AMD's competitor and the Snapdragon chip okay so we've
07:07got live FPS's and the wattage they're using the Ultra 9 is getting the best
07:13performance and using either similar or less power than the rival systems a
07:20particularly the Ultra 7 actually and we've got a little demo here I mean to
07:25be fair they are giving us real live results this is pretty genuine stuff you
07:31can see here we've got live frame rates power draw for the different chips I
07:38think the truth is not many people are buying these thin and light laptops to
07:43play games on although it's nice to have the option but of course integrated
07:46graphics are used for everything for video editing for 3d rendering for for
07:51boosting the AI performance it's not just about gaming where a fast integrated
07:55GPU comes in it's all combined and actually speaking of AI we do now have a
07:59much faster MPU up to 48 tops or trillion operations per second off
08:03performance which is a bit of an arbitrary number but we're looking at a
08:0658% boost in AI performance over Meteor Lake I still maintain that the MPU
08:12performance all this AI stuff is future-proofing your laptop and I think
08:15within a year two three years pretty much every app most applications will
08:19somehow utilize an MPU to either speed up your workflow or just improve
08:23efficiency saving your battery life there aren't that many use cases for a
08:27dedicated fast MPU locally right now the vast majority of AI features are still
08:31cloud-based but as these laptops are sold as the hardware comes out more
08:36devs will optimize their programs and apps to take advantage of it so
08:39basically your laptops gonna get better over time so let's wrap up where are we
08:42now what questions are there still to be answered well number one these are
08:45all Intel's benchmarks and numbers we need to test it for ourself a against
08:49Meteor Lake so much faster it is against AMD's Ryzen against Qualcomm's Snapdragon
08:53chips but also against Apple's M3 and likely soon-to-come M4 chips in terms of
08:58laptops you can actually buy Intel say that over 20 brands are working on 80
09:02different designs utilizing this chip so starting from today in fact with I
09:05believe the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro you can actually pre-order but we're
09:09gonna see a trickle of new laptops over the next few weeks but I did also see
09:12the MSI Claw 8 which is using one of these chips now what we're seeing here
09:17is a bit of a prototype model and actually it won't be launching until
09:19early 2025 so there is still some way before that actually launches but I am
09:23excited for the Claw 8 and to see what that boosts in efficiency and
09:26integrated graphics can do for a gaming handheld but what do you reckon are you
09:30excited for this and if you've got any questions at all let me know in the
09:33comments below as I get trapped on the table I'll do my best to answer and
09:36fingers crossed within a week or two I'll have some full reviews for you so
09:39stay tuned for that thanks for watching guys I'll see you next time right here
09:42well probably back at home on the tech chat

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