[CES 2025] Intel Expands Core Ultra 200 CPU Lineup With HX, H, U & 65W Desktop Series

Intel has brought its fair share of announcements for CES 2025, mostly focusing on the launch of new laptop Arrow Lake processors (officially Core Ultra 200HX / 200H series), along with other lineups such as the Core Ultra 200U and 200S (Desktop) 65W series. Here’s the quick overview.

Intel Core Ultra 200 Series Lineup

Core Ultra 200HX Series

The upcoming high-end gaming laptops will likely see this family of Core Ultra 200HX series processors powering them – leading the pack is the Core Ultra 9 285HX with 8P+16E cores, followed by 8P+12E for CU7 processors and 6P+8E for CU5 processors. As these are based on the new Arrow Lake architecture, hyperthreading is no longer present, though multi-core performance is still aplenty.

This lineup will also introduce PCIe 5.0 SSDs to the laptops for the first time, just in time for storage makers to figure out a way to keep the heat contained in these power-hungry chips that generates plenty of heat under heavy workloads. DDR5 support is also now uprated to 6400MT/s (or 8400MT/s for LPDDR5X packages), with support for the new user-replaceable CAMM2 memory standard. Expect some gaming laptops to come equipped with optional Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity as well.

Per Intel’s claims, the top chip is 20% faster than the 14th Gen models like the Core i9-14900HX; it also claims the chip is 50% faster in multi-core than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 by over 50% at similar power levels (~50W), while against AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 it is 25% faster. Single-core, meanwhile, nets up to 5% gen-on-gen improvement.

Core Ultra 200H Series

Moving on to the direct replacement of the Core Ultra 100H (Meteor Lake) series processors – the Core Ultra 200H series is also based on Arrow Lake architecture, though the key difference here being the inclusion of LP E-cores, first seen on Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) processors. The triple-cluster setup maxes out with the Core Ultra 9 285H and Core Ultra 7 models with 6P+8E+2LPE cores (the former being the sole model with 45W PBP/TDP), while the Core Ultra 5 models feature 4P+8E+2LPE cores.

The PCIe topology indicates that the 8 PCIe 5.0 lanes are likely assigned to discrete GPUs, so SSDs should stick to PCIe 4.0 variants – not exactly bad news, since PCIe 4.0 SSDs are much more mature, consumes less power in general, and the performance difference outside of synthetic testing is near indistinguishable. Laptops with this class of CPUs can pack up to 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports, while Thunderbolt 5 support is optional. Meanwhile, RAM support remains identical to HX-series counterparts.

Core Ultra 200U Series

Intel didn’t directly address the Core Ultra 200U lineup in the keynote, and the spec sheet likely explains why. Based on the core count and thread count, this looks highly similar to that of the Core Ultra 100U (Meteor Lake-U) series, especially given that the P-core comes with hyperthreading – a feature no longer present on the newer Lion Cove P-core architecture.

It does look like the lineup is simply a refresh of Meteor Lake, but in this case they support faster DDR5 speeds. Notably, there’s very little difference between the four chips listed here, with clock speeds being the sole specification that varies between the models.

Core Ultra 200S (Desktop) 65W Series

Over at the desktop segment, Intel has also announced the full lineup of non-K series processors for desktop PCs and OEMs. All models listed here runs on 65W PBP (processor base power, or known as ‘PL1’ in older terms), though CU7 and CU9 models can momentarily boost up to 181 watts, with the rest capped at 121 watts.

Boxed retail units will include a basic cooler upgraded from the original Laminar RH1/RM1 serving three generation of Core processors, with the Core Ultra 9 using the new Laminar RH2 cooler that features RGB, while the rest of the Core Ultra processors will be sticking to the smaller Laminar RM2 cooler instead.

Pokdepinion: The model numbers do get confusing at times.