Just over a year ago, Intel Core Ultra formed a complete rethink in what a chipset should be — moving towards being an all-in-one piece of silicon with choices made on what to put emphasis on between CPU, GPU and AI performance via the NPU.
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So far, we’ve seen Intel Core Ultra 200V impress in thin and light laptops like the Asus Zenbook S14. And now at CES 2025, Intel is taking it to the next level with the debut of 200U for budget-end systems, 200HX for bleeding edge gaming systems, and 200H for a nice middle ground.
Ultra 200H > V
Not a fan of using Apple terminology to describe Intel CPUs (and I doubt Intel is either), but think of Intel Core Ultra 200H as the M4 Pro to the 200V’s M4. It’s the same all-in-one system on a chip but turned up to 11.
| Chip name | Cores and threads | Max speed (gigahertz) | GPU cores | GPU TOPS |
| Intel Core Ultra 9 285H | 16 cores / 16 threads | 5.4 GHz | 8 | 77 |
| Intel Core Ultra 7 265H | 16 cores / 16 threads | 5.3 GHz | 8 | 75 |
| Intel Core Ultra 7 255H | 16 cores / 16 threads | 5.1 GHz | 8 | 74 |
| Intel Core Ultra 7 235H | 14 cores / 14 threads | 5 GHz | 8 | 74 |
| Intel Core Ultra 5 225H | 14 cores / 14 threads | 4.9 GHz | 7 | 63 |
This is the performance set of chips that introduce next-gen Lion Cove and Skymont cores for improved performance and power efficiency. Alongside this, integrated graphics are taking another step forward with a new Arc GPU.
Intel is touting this for “performance thin and light” laptops, and is claiming double digit performance improvements over single and multi-core workloads, more than 20% better GPU performance, and up to 99 total platform TOPS of AI performance.
Intel Core Ultra in gaming laptops is no longer a red flag
Let’s move over to Intel Core Ultra 200HX, where you’re seeing six new CPUs:
| Chip name | Cores and threads | Max speed (gigahertz) | GPU cores | NPU TOPS |
| Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX | 24 cores / 24 threads | 5.5 GHz | 84 | 13 |
| Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX | 24 cores / 24 threads | 5.4 GHz | 4 | 13 |
| Intel Core Ultra 7 265HX | 20 cores / 20 threads | 5.3 GHz | 4 | 13 |
| Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX | 20 cores / 20 threads | 5.2 GHz | 4 | 13 |
| Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX | 14 cores / 14 threads | 5.1 GHz | 3 | 13 |
| Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX | 14 cores / 14 threads | 5.1 GHz | 3 | 13 |
You may remember that I’ve not had the best relationship with Intel Core Ultra in gaming laptops (looking at you, Asus ROG Zephyrus G16), because the way Intel’s chips handled power efficiency created a bit of an onboard argument with Windows 11’s power management settings and the power plan of the laptop itself.
That made it a bit of a lucky dip as to whether you’re going to get the maximum performance out of that dedicated GPU, or whether the CPU was going to go low power and bottleneck the whole thing.
Fortunately, it looks like Intel has addressed this with the 200HX series, which the company claims itself is for “creator and gaming notebooks.” Yes, there’s the NPU on-board here, and yes there is still the lower power consumption. But team blue is touting maximized control with “more overclocking features and data-lanes than ever.”
And when you take a look at the number of GPU cores and NPU TOPS, the decision Intel made here is to work in tandem with a dGPU for maximum performance (Intel themselves confirmed you can see gaming systems coming in the next couple months).
Intel Core Ultra 200U looks a bit sus to me
You may have noticed that Intel also announced another CPU line, the budget end power efficient Intel Core Ultra 200U. It is built on Arrow Lake, so I’m anticipating it does have an NPU. However, even Intel itself doesn’t seem too keen to talk about it.
When we get more info, I’ll be sure to update this part of the article. But given the company doesn’t want to tell us about it, I’m definitely a little suspicious of whether this one will actually be worth getting, or if it's just something to fill a segment.
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