A month before the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, Intel unveiled its 14th Gen Core processors dubbed Metro Lake and the new chips look to help raise the company’s competitive profile in a way that it hasn’t done in a few years.
At Intel’s topically named AI Everywhere event on Thursday, the company rattled off the specs and details to its 14th Gen Metro Lake lineup that consist of a new naming scheme and a slight alteration to the traditional tiering of chips. Instead, the customary “Core i” prefix for its chips will be replaced with the Core Ultra moniker signifying the largest architectural shift for Intel’s processor technology in nearly 40 years.
Intel’s new Core Ultra Processors are said to be the company’s “most power-efficient processors and ushers in the age of the AI PC.”
Intel hopes to achieve its claims with a system on a chip that includes 3D Performance Hybrid Architecture, a 4 Compute Tile that houses up to 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores alongside 2 low power cores all reading up to 22 threads.
Ultra Core processors will also support Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+), and up to 64GB LPDDR5(x)-7467 or 96GBGB of DDR5-5600 memory systems while pushing up to 5.1GHz of Max Turbo.
Aside from some of the boastful power/performance improvements that Core Ultra are supposed to bring to PCs in 2024, Intel is fully behind AI and added a dedicated NPU with n-Stream execution in these new chips. The NPU aboard the Core Ultra chips will be tasked with handling “low-power AI acceleration and CPU/GPU offload,” which can range from implementing real-time background blur in conference calls (application independent) to running more efficient Stable Diffusion-like AI models on Ultrabook light laptops.
Two other significant changes coming to Intel’s 14th Gen chip lineup are the removal of a P-tier of processors and improved integrated graphics. Intel has historically maintained a buffer processor between its ultra-high-end H-Series processors and its consumer-grade chips in the U-Series. The P (Performance) Series chips have been removed from this line up leaving Intel to offer a simplified H and U option for purchase in 2024.
The second significant change in Core Ultra processors is the integrated Arc GPUs. While Intel typically reserves its Arc GPU for only a select few H-Series processors while handing everyone else their low-end Iris Xe graphics chips, this year SoS offering should pair real nicely alongside the low power units in the new SoC for a better balance of performance and battery for content creators or graphics editors.
Intel took a victory lap during its presentation when comparing its latest chip to the likes of Qualcomm, Apple, and AMD, where the Ultra Core processors saw 2x faster graphics scores than its predecessor, higher FPS ratings during gaming, 3x the power efficiency than last year’s chips.
Intel is also claiming that its Core Ultra will enable 3 AI accelerators in the area of video editing workflows by cutting video processing time by 56% when compared to previous gen chips. Users will also be able to tackle generative AI locally on devices which should pair nicely with Microsoft’s big AI push with Windows 12 next year. Lastly, having the AI accelerators onboard these Core Ultra chips also means they should be 2.5x more efficient when dealing with AI workloads alongside the dedicated NPU resulting in significant battery gains when in use.
All of this is great news for computer buyers in 2024 but more importantly, helps Intel tread water with competitors that were previously leaving the company in the dust such as AMD and Apple as well as new challenger Qualcomm’s Elite X chips.
Intel debuted its Core Ultra chips in both reference devices as well as PCs from MSI, Acer, Samsung, Lenovo, and Asus.
MSI will launch its Prestige 16 AI Studio laptop that weighs 3 and a half pounds, a Core Ultra 9 185H chip, and NVIDIA 4070 mobile GPU. The 16-inch Prestige AI Studio will start at $1,899 with MSI offering a smaller 13-inch AI Evo for $1,049 later in the year.
Samsung already announced its Galaxy Book 4 lineup last week and it will also house these new Intel Core Ultra chips in various configurations.
Ace’s Swift Go 14 and Predator Triton Neo 16 will be among the first laptops to receive Core Ultra 7 155H chips for the OEM. Starting at $1,499 the Predator Triton will come configured with up to 32GB of LPDDEX RAM and 12.5 hours of battery life.
Lenovo will release three laptops with Intel’s latest chip in the 12th Gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the newest ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, and the budget friendlier IdeaPad Pro 5 starting at $1,149.99. The ThinkPad’s will be a bit more costly with the convertible X1 starting at $2,639 and the flagship X1 coming in at $2,989 with limited configurations in 2024.
Asus’s ZenBook 14 will come with Core Ultra 7 chips and Intel’s new Arc GPUs powering a new OLED panel for $1,299.99 and additional configurations will be made available later in 2024.
We’ll have to revisit this early conversation as we get our hands on devices after CES to evaluate how flattering these early notes are from Intel.