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at 00:00 on september 4th, beijing time, intel released a newsecond generation core ultra processor.

three months ago, tony attended a closed-door media promotion meeting for this processor. after several months of waiting, the second-generation ultra is finally officially unveiled to the public.

of course, tony also flew across half the world to come to the berlin press conference this time to bring everyone fresh first-hand information.

in terms of power saving, this generation of processors not only has improved performance, but more importantly, intel has made the x86 architecture processors approach or even surpass the battery life of arm processors.

this generation of processors uses the new generation lunar lake architecture, which is said to be the biggest architectural change intel has made on x86 processors. as an architecture specializing in thin and light notebook processors, its mission this time is to drastically reduce power consumption.

for example, intel has finally changed the entire power supply architecture this time, and the gpu also uses the new generation arc xe2 graphics card. the core has been reduced to 8 cores, but the performance is even stronger than before.

i want both power consumption and performance. is there such a good thing?

let’s talk about them one by one, starting with power consumption and battery life, which everyone is most concerned about.

intel was very confident at the scene this time, directly saying that it was the most efficient x86 processor ever, and when comparing it, it did not let anyone off the hook, not only the previous generation ultra processor, but also the latest hx 370 processor from old rival amd, and even qualcomm next door...

there is a reason why yingzi is so confident. anyway, i have the longest endurance on the ppt. what can you do to me?

of course, there must be a reason why the battery life has improved so much. the first is that the number of cores has been reduced from the previous very abstract 6+8+2 core level to only 4 performance cores and 4 energy efficiency cores, a total of 8 cores.

but with fewer cores, the performance is even better...because the ipc performance of the new e core (energy efficiency core) has increased by 68%, and the ipc of the p core (performance core) has increased by 14%.

as a result, under the same 9w power consumption rating, the performance of the new core ultra processor with 8 threads is 22% higher than that of the previous generation with 14 threads.

correspondingly, the overall per-thread performance improvement is almost doubled.

with stronger performance of each thread, the energy efficiency of the entire processor will naturally improve.

this is not the end. this time, the core ultra processor has made a decision that goes against its ancestors. its memory is also soldered directly onto the chip, just like apple's. . .

what does this mean? one of the reasons why the m series chips from geely have low power consumption is that the memory and processor are integrated together, which makes the processor more efficient in executing programs and reading and writing data.

when the memory and processor are close to each other, the data transmission efficiency is naturally high and the power consumption will be lower, which is why intel has also started to do so.

but tony has mentioned the disadvantages before, which is that the amount of memory you buy is the amount you want, and you don’t have to think about expanding it in the future. . . tony gets angry when he thinks about the price of apple’s memory, which is like gold, but you can’t do anything about it and still use a macbook with 8gb of memory. . .

what memory size is suitable for you? the larger the memory, the better. thank you.

however, there is one thing everyone can rest assured about, that is, the second-generation ultra processor is currently planned to have 16gb and 32gb options, and apple will not have 8gb.

in addition to major changes to the processor structure, intel also replaced the new pmic power supply architecture this time, which is also the reason why ultra's battery life took off this time.

the main feature of this new power supply architecture is that it can control the power supply to different modules separately, including memory. . .

this new architecture has indeed improved power utilization. even compared with the previous generation, the power consumption in daily use can be reduced by 30% to 50%.

according to intel's calculations, even if the power consumption of the 32gb of memory on the chip is taken into account, the power consumption of the second-generation core ultra processor can still be up to 50% lower than that of the previous generation. . . it's outrageous.

the result of this combination of punches is that the energy consumption performance of the new core ultra is directly on par with the qualcomm snapdragon x elite processor based on arm architecture. . .

no buddy, intel has really come to its senses this time...

previously, we expected windows laptops to be equipped with arm architecture processors, mainly because qualcomm's arm processors promised relatively good battery life performance, so even though there are still some program compatibility issues with windows arm, we tolerated it. . .

after all, not being able to play games on a business trip is only a small problem, but it is really a headache to find a charger everywhere on a business trip. but if intel can make the energy efficiency of x86 processors the same as qualcomm's arm, then...

speaking of this, we have to mention a small climax at the press conference. intel prepared a separate ppt page for qualcomm, which meant "we originally wanted to show a comparison of game performance, but found that many games on qualcomm notebooks simply can't run."

then the audience started to applaud and cheer.

now that we are talking about game performance, let’s talk about gpu.

to be honest, tony didn’t plan to have high hopes for intel’s graphics card. after all, amd’s integrated graphics card is so powerful. . .

however, this time the gpu of the second-generation ultra processor has also been upgraded to an xe2 graphics card, which not only supports vector engines, but also supports hardware-level ray tracing.

but after all, it is a thin and light laptop, so we don’t expect ray tracing or anything like that. the main thing is to look at the game frame rate.

but this time, yingzi did perform well, catching up with amd's latest hx 370, with an average game frame rate 16% higher.

but everyone can just do this for fun. for thin and light laptops, power consumption and image quality must also be considered. another thing is that intel also has its own xess that can be used, which is similar to amd's fsr and can improve the frame rate, but it still depends on the actual user experience of different games.

i saw a real machine comparison exhibited by intel on site, and the game running was dota 2.

the result of saving bandwidth is: the second-generation ultra 7 has the same game frame rate as amd, but lower power consumption than amd; the second-generation ultra 9 has the same power consumption as amd, but higher frame rate than amd. it has advantages over amd in both directions.

so at this pace, intel may also enter the handheld game console market. i did see an msi handheld game console equipped with the second-generation core ultra at the scene, and it looked pretty good.

if you are interested in this part, we can test it for you when we get the real machine in a while.

finally, there is the old topic of ai. this time, intel still uses a "hybrid" approach. the cpu, gpu and npu can provide 5tops, 67tops and 48tops of computing power respectively, adding up to 120tops, which is 2.5 times the computing power of the m3.

of course, in this part of the running points, intel still began to ruthlessly mock qualcomm x elite, these software you can't run at all brother...

so to sum up, the second-generation intel core ultra processor has strong performance in all aspects, whether it is ai or games, but the power consumption is greatly reduced and the battery life is very long. is it really a hexagonal warrior of thin and light laptops?

so, intel, what's the price?

as we said at the beginning, this time intel, like apple, soldered the memory and processor together.

but not only that, intel's memory this time is LPDDR5X-8533 the specifications and frequency are indeed quite high, but the price is definitely not cheap...

plus this time i usedtsmc 3nm the cost of the entire processor is estimated to be quite high.

there have been precedents for this kind of thing. some time ago, the price of a laptop computer using qualcomm's x elite processor was a bit abstract...

anyway, i hope yingzi and major laptop manufacturers can reconsider the prices. as long as they are not too outrageous, i think the new laptops in the next period of time will still be very powerful.

oh, by the way, the naming of the processors has changed again this time. this batch of processors will generally be called intel core ultra 200v series. if you are interested, you can look at the pictures yourself. anyway, i can’t tell them apart for the time being. . .

finally, this article was actually completed by tony on site using a macbook air m1 without plugging in a charger.

tony is not a heavy macbook user. he usually only uses it when he is in the studio or on a business trip. the reason is very simple: its battery life is too long. . .

welcome to enjoy this 7-core basic computer that i have used for 4 years:

so tony’s expectations for this generation of ultra processors are actually very simple. he wants to achieve an off-the-shelf experience similar to that of the macbook air, have long battery life while also taking into account some performance, and also have the powerful software ecosystem of x86. that’s enough.

of course, we will start the review as soon as we get the new machine at the end of the month. friends who are thinking of buying a thin and light laptop recently should be patient, because a large number of new products with new processors will be available to you soon.