Intel Core Ultra 7 256V

The Intel Core Ultra 7 256V is an upper mid-range processor in the Lunar Lake family. Unveiled in autumn 2024, this SoC is designed for tablets and slim laptops. 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 also included.

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

Architecture and Features

Like Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake uses Foveros technology, which stacks dies on top of and alongside one another. The new chips use the enormous BGA2833 socket interface. None of the 8 cores supports Hyper-Threading, unlike AMD's current Zen 5/5c chips, which support simultaneous multithreading.

Intel claims Lion Cove cores deliver a 14% IPC improvement over Redwood Cove. Skymont's improvement over Crestmont is much higher, at 68%. Other tweaks and improvements include the Low Latency Fabric, which is supposed to make small data transfers between cores and caches much faster. The 256V has a very healthy 12 MB of level 3 cache, along with 4 PCIe 5 and 4 PCIe 4 lanes for connecting various devices, including NVMe SSDs at up to 15.75 GB/s. Thunderbolt 4 support is included as standard, as is support for Intel CNVi WiFi 7 + BT 5.4 cards. The 47 TOPS "AI Boost" neural engine is included alongside technologies such as Threat Detection to make AI-enabled applications such as Windows Defender more powerful.

Intel is expected to move away from on-package RAM in subsequent CPU generations.

Performance

Based on our time with 2 systems powered by the 256V, the chip's multi-threaded performance is on par with that of the Core Ultra 7 165U and the Core i7-1360P. Please note that both systems had long-term TDP targets above Intel's recommended value: 30 W and 32 W versus 17 W.

Generally speaking, the 288V, 268V, 266V, 258V and 256V are faster than the 238V, 236V, 228V and 226V due to their larger last-level cache (12 MB vs 8 MB) and higher clock speeds. However, the performance difference between the slowest Lunar Lake chip, the 226V, and the fastest, the 288V, is fairly small at around 10% to 15%. The gap depends more on the TDP settings of the laptops being compared than on anything else.

Graphics

The Arc Graphics 140V replaces the Arc 8 iGPU. Its 8 Xe² architecture "cores" run at up to 1,950 MHz, and it also has 8 ray tracing units. The adapter supports DirectX 12 Ultimate and hardware decoding for a long list of popular video codecs, such as H.266 VVC, H.265 HEVC, H.264 AVC, AV1 and VP9. This iGPU can drive three SUHD 4320p monitors simultaneously.

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

Power consumption

This 2nd-generation Core Ultra processor is designed to consume 17 W under sustained workloads. Intel's recommended short-term power limit for the chip is 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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