Intel Core Ultra 7 256V

The Intel Core Ultra 5 256V is an upper mid-range Lunar Lake family processor. This is an SoC for use in tablets and laptops of the slimmer kind that was unveiled in Autumn 2024. It sports 4 new Skymont E-cores and 4 new Lion Cove P-cores running at up to 3.7 GHz and 4.8 GHz respectively, along with the new Arc 140V iGPU and 16 GB of on-package LPDDR5x-8533 RAM. A new 47 TOPS neural engine, Thunderbolt 4 and PCIe 5 SSD support are included as well.

The only difference between this chip and the Ultra 7 258V is the amount of on-package, non-replaceable RAM: 16 GB vs 32 GB respectively.

Architecture and Features

Lunar Lake is built using the Foveros technology (stacking several dies on top of each other and next to each other), just like Meteor Lake was. The new chips make use of the enormous BGA2833 socket interface. Of the 8 cores, not a single one is Hyper-Threading-enabled which is the opposite of what AMD currently does with its Zen 5/5c chips.

Intel claims Lion Cove cores bring a 14% IPC improvement over Redwood Cove. For Skymont and Crestmont, the difference is much higher at 68%. Several tweaks and improvements are present here, such as the Low Latency Fabric that is supposed to make small data transfers between cores/caches a lot faster. The 256V has a very healthy 12 MB of level 3 cache; elsewhere, it has 4 PCIe 5 and 4 PCIe 4 lanes for connecting various kinds of devices, including NVMe SSDs at up to 15.75 GB/s. Thunderbolt 4 support is onboard by default, as is support for CNVi WiFi 7 + BT 5.4 cards from Intel. The 47 TOPS "AI Boost" neural engine is present along with technologies such as Threat Detection to make AI-enabled applications such as the Windows Defender more powerful.

Intel is predicted to get short of on-package RAM in subsequent CPU generations.

Performance

Based on the time we've had with 2 systems powered by the 256V, the chip's multi-thread performance is as good as that of the Core Ultra 7 165U and the Core i7-1360P. Please note that both systems had a higher long-term TDP power target than the Intel-recommended value: 30 W and 32 W vs 17 W.

Generally speaking, the 288V, 268V, 266V, 258V, 256V are faster than the 238V, 236V, 228V and 226V due to the difference in their last-level cache size (8 MB vs 12 MB) as well as clock speeds. However, the difference in performance between the slowest Lunar Lake chip, the 226V, and the fastest chip, the 288V is fairly small at around 10% to 15%. It depends on the TDP figures of the laptops being pitted against each other more than on anything else.

Graphics

The Arc Graphics 140V is here to replace the Arc 8 iGPU. Its 8 Xe² architecture "cores" run at up to 1,950 MHz and it also has 8 ray tracing units at its disposal. The adapter is DirectX 12 Ultimate-enabled and able to HW-decode a long list of popular video codecs such as h.266 VVC, h.265 HEVC, h.264 AVC, AV1 and VP9. Three SUHD 4320p monitors can be used simultaneously with this iGPU.

All 2023 and 2024 games are playable at 1080p on low graphics settings or higher with this iGPU. We got well over 30 fps in Ghost of Tsushima and almost 40 fps in Baldur's Gate 3. This means the Radeon 780M gets left behind while the Radeon 890M reigns supreme.

Power consumption

This 2nd generation Core Ultra processor is supposed to consume 17 W when under long-term workloads. The Intel-recommended short-term power limit for the chip sits at 37 W.

Codename	Lunar Lake
Series	Intel Lunar Lake
Series: Lunar Lake Lunar Lake Intel Core Ultra 9 288V 3.3 - 5.1 GHz 8 / 8  12 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 7 268V 2.2 - 5 GHz 8 / 8  12 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 7 266V 2.2 - 5 GHz 8 / 8  12 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 7 258V 2.2 - 4.8 GHz 8 / 8  12 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 7 256V « 2.2 - 4.8 GHz 8 / 8  12 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 5 238V 2.1 - 4.7 GHz 8 / 8  8 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 5 236V 2.1 - 4.7 GHz 8 / 8  8 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 5 228V 2.1 - 4.5 GHz 8 / 8  8 MB L3 Intel Core Ultra 5 226V 2.1 - 4.5 GHz 8 / 8  8 MB L3
Clock Rate	2200 - 4800 MHz
Level 1 Cache	1.4 MB
Level 2 Cache	14 MB
Level 3 Cache	12 MB
Number of Cores / Threads	8 / 8 4 x 4.8 GHz Intel Lion Cove P-Core 4 x 3.7 GHz Intel Skymont E-Core
Power Consumption (TDP = Thermal Design Power)	17 Watt
TDP Turbo PL2	37 Watt
Manufacturing Technology	3 nm
Max. Temperature	100 °C
Socket	BGA2833
Features	LPDDR5x-8533 RAM, PCIe 5 + PCIe 4, USB 4, AI Boost NPU (47 TOPS), Thread Director, PSE, Threat Detection, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES, AVX, AVX2, AVX-VNNi, FMA3, SHA
GPU	Intel Arc Graphics 140V (300 - 1950 MHz)
NPU / AI	47 TOPS INT8
Chip AI	115 TOPS INT8
64 Bit	64 Bit support
Architecture	x86
Announcement Date	09/03/2024
Product Link (external)	ark.intel.com

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