Intel Core Ultra 7 256V: Lunar Lake CPU makes impressive Geekbench debut alongside Core Ultra 7 268V

Even though Intel is yet to officially unveil individual Lunar Lake CPU models, an earlier leak showed off a total of nine SKUs, with just one bearing the Core Ultra 9 moniker. One of them, the Core Ultra 7 256V, a middle-of-the-stack offering, has just shown up on Geekbench with some interesting performance numbers.

It scores 2,608 and 10,506 in Geekbench 6.3's single and multi-core tests, respectively. The former is just 16% short of the last-gen flagship Core i9-14900HX (3,028) at a fraction of the TDP. It also matches AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (2,816) in single-core performance. Furthermore, the Core Ultra 7 256V's multi-core showing is quite impressive for a CPU with 4P and 4E cores, lagging behind the Strix Point flagship by just ~2,000 points.

On to the actual, CPU, Geekbench confirms a 4+4 configuration with its base clock set at 2.02 GHz and boost clock at 3.3 GHz. There is still some scope for improvement, as the P cores can supposedly boost up to 4.8 GHz. Even the E cores can go as high as 3.7 GHz on this model. Then again, this probably won't perform to spec because it probably isn't retail-ready silicon. Besides, Lunar Lake laptops aren't scheduled to hit shelves until late September, so Intel has some time to fine-tune them.

Given all of Lunar Lake has the same 8-core CPU and LPDDR5X 8,533 memory, their Geekbench performances might be all over the place. For example, the aforementioned Core Ultra 7 256V and the Core Ultra 7 268V's Geekbench scores are mostly identical, with the latter scoring 2,713 and 10,036. One can attribute this to the CPU boosting to 4.8 GHz- just 200 MHz shy of its 5.0 GHz boost.