In summary:
- PCWorld reports that Intel quietly launched new Arrow Lake Refresh mobile processors, the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and Ultra 7 270HX Plus, targeting gaming laptops.
- These chips feature a significant 900MHz boost in die-to-die frequency plus advanced connectivity including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and Thunderbolt 5 support.
- The flagship Ultra 9 290HX Plus delivers impressive performance gains, offering 62% faster gaming than the Core i9-12900HX and 8% improvement over the Ultra 9 285HX.
Intel quietly revealed the mobile version of its “Arrow Lake Refresh” processors on Tuesday, adding both the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and Ultra 7 270HX Plus in a bid to capture the gaming laptop space.
Last week, Intel debuted its Core Ultra 200S Plus series for desktop PCs, trying to overcome a somewhat mediocre launch of its older “Arrow Lake” chips. Intel’s two new Arrow Lake Refresh chips offer the same upgrades: a 900MHz increase in die-to-die frequency between the memory controller and CPU, as well as the Intel Binary Optimization Tool, a still somewhat unknown way of optimizing game code so that it runs better on Intel processors.
Intel also said that the platform will include discrete (not integrated) Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and Thunderbolt 5. The latter technology means that the older 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 technology will likely continue being our preferred technology for the best Thunderbolt docks.
Here are the details of the two new mobile chips:
- Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus: 24 cores (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores, up to 5.5GHz), 36MB Smart cache
- Intel Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus: 20 cores (8 P-cores, 12 E-cores, up to 5.3GHz), 30MB Smart cache
It appears that Intel will keep selling its older Arrow lake-HX chips, as the company showed the two platforms fitting together in the same product hierarchy.
Intel said that the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus delivers 8 percent faster gaming performance than the Core Ultra 9 285HX, along with 7 percent faster performance in single treaded applications. Intel also used the circa-2022 Core Ultra i9-12900HX as a benchmark for gaming comparisons, claiming that gamers would see 62 percent faster gaming performance and about a 30 percent increase in single-threaded performance. It will face a strong performance from its own Panther Lake productivity chips, which games quite capably from its own integrated GPUs.
The gen-over-gen upgrade is also slightly muddied by the IBOT tool, which can offer substantial performance gains. In the chart below, IBOT is designated by a small asterisk next to the game’s name.
Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus-powered systems will be available from our OEM partners throughout the year, beginning today. PC vendors include Acer, Asus, Colorful, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Maingear, Mechrevo, MSI, Origin, Puget and Razer.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.