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Intel announced three major new CPU families at CES 2025: the Core Ultra 200H series for thin and light “performance” laptops; the Core Ultra 200HX series for “enthusiast” laptops; and the Core Ultra 200S series for mainstream desktops.
This builds upon its Core Ultra 200K Series aimed at performance laptops and 200V Series for ultra-portable laptops, both released in 2024.
“Now Intel is on a mission to deliver great new AI PCs for the entire PC market that exceed the needs of a diverse range of customers,” said Josh Newman, VP of Intel’s Client Computing Group, in a pre-briefing session.
“This includes the most on-the-go road warriors to the performance-hungry designers and gamers, and everyone in between. And we do that at a range of system price points in OEM designs globally.”
However, while all the new families include an NPU, not all of them meet Microsoft’s criteria for Copilot+ PCs. So, before you buy a new laptop, whether for home or business use, you need to understand what each family delivers.
Intel announced five members of the Intel Core Ultra 200H Series, ranging from the 14-core Ultra 5 225H to the 16-core Ultra 9 285H. They’re all powerful chips, based around Intel’s Meteor Lake architecture rather than the efficiency-focused Lunar Lake that is the 200V series.
This means that the NPU isn’t as powerful, which is why in the following set of quotes from Josh Newman you’ll hear him focus on the GPU’s AI capabilities instead.
“This product builds on Meteor Lake with double-digit performance improvements on both single-thread and multithread workloads, more than 20% better graphics performance with a new XE GPU with XMX cores and up to 99 platform tops for amazing AI performance across all three engines.”
However, the vast bulk of those TOPS come from the new and powerful GPU, as shown in the screenshot below.
This isn’t to dismiss the 200H Series. It will be fast in both games and demanding tasks such as video editing, while the GPU will also help in creative apps that take advantage. But it doesn’t meet Microsoft’s criterion for an NPU that packs 40 TOPS.
If you’re looking for the next level of power, Intel also unveiled the Core Ultra 200HX Series at CES 2025. This is the most powerful mobile laptop chip Intel offers, packed with cores and designed to work in tandem with a discrete GPU. Think Nvidia RTX series chips.
But there is a but. I know of at least one major laptop manufacturer that has opted to go with AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chips as they similar performance whilst also packing a far more powerful NPU. The 200HX only includes Intel’s first-generation NPU, rated at 13 TOPs, while AMD’s offering hits 50 TOPS.
This will only matter if an app or game uses local AI processing, but there’s a decent chance this will increase to significant levels over the lifetime of a gaming laptop you buy in 2025. We shall see.
Here’s what Josh had to say. “These new HX processors will deliver great performance at a significantly better power and efficiency versus the prior generation of HX products,” he said.
“These products will be Intel’s first AI PCs for creator and gamer notebooks with the new integrated NPU… We’re really excited about the new Intel Core Ultra 200 HX Series products, and we’ll be announcing six new SKUs with up to 24 cores, all featuring an NPU.”
Finally, Intel announced four members in the Core Ultra 200U Series, the 225U, 235U, 255U and 265U. All use the same Arrow Lake architecture as the H and HX Series, but with only two Performance cores (P-cores) they won’t be anywhere near as fast.
But they should be power-efficient, with the bulk of their 14 threads coming from the Efficiency cores (E-cores). Note that these chips only include Intel’s modest first-generation NPU, rated at 13 TOPS, while the graphics acceleration will be modest compared to the H Series. This isn’t a good choice of laptop for gamers, but best suited to those on a modest budget who prioritise battery life.
