Lunar Lake Blazes Past Meteor Lake: 50% Performance Leap

Reports indicate that Intel’s next-generation Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors may forgo hyper-threading technology. While Arrow Lake’s status remains uncertain, the omission of Lunar Lake, which is tailored for low-power platforms, is considered a logical step to mitigate increased power consumption.

According to sources like Bionic_Squash, the upcoming Lunar Lake is expected to deliver a 50% performance boost over Meteor Lake-U, as evidenced by multi-threaded scores in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5.4.5.

Lunar Lake-MX is anticipated to be an 8-core processor, featuring four cores based on the Lion Cove architecture for Performance-cores (P-Cores) and four based on the Skymont architecture for Efficiency-cores (E-Cores). Arrow Lake employs the same architectural cores but is designed for higher power consumption in mid-to-high-end platforms. Although Intel has yet to disclose full details about Lunar Lake, it has positioned it for low-power devices such as ultrabooks, succeeding Meteor Lake-U.

Meteor Lake-U boasts a configuration of 2P+8E+2LP-E with a Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 15W, whereas Lunar Lake features 4P+4E cores without hyper-threading, with an adjustable TDP of 17-30W. Additionally, Intel is preparing an 8W variant for fanless devices, promising a 50% improvement in multi-thread performance at this specification level, making its performance highly anticipated.

Beyond a more powerful CPU, Lunar Lake will also include a faster Neural Processing Unit (NPU), tripling the speed compared to its predecessor, Meteor Lake. Moreover, the new processors will upgrade the GPU architecture to Xe2-LPG, enhancing 3D gaming performance. Intel is expected to launch Lunar Lake this year, though devices incorporating this processor are likely to hit the market next year.