Key Takeaways:

• Intel is back(!) with a really good, really efficient core design.
• Intel’s tiled SoC with TSMC N3B compute tile and N6 I/O tile works really well
• We’re at a point where performance and efficiency among all major PC silicon providers is more or less equal, moving the differentiation from silicon to actual device and OEM software.

I’ve had a few days with the Asus Zenbook S 14 powered by Intel’s new Core Ultra 7 (Series 2), specifically the 256V SKU. For reference, the PL1, long term power draw, minimum is 17W and maximum is 22W. Asus didn’t give PL2 numbers, peak boost, but this SoC supports 37W for peak boost.

So this sets the scene for Intel Lunar Lake in this specific Asus machine, but, how does it perform? In our in house Battery Benchmark, the Asus Zenbook S 14 scored 15 hours 45 minutes on the balanced battery mode. For context of relative performance, in Geekbench the machine scores 2,661 single core and 10,245 multi-core. You can find the chart with some comparisons to other new laptops powered by Snapdragon X Elite and AMD’s Zen 5, but simply: battery is fantastic, performance is close but still slightly behind. Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus 10-core machines will likely outperform in CPU bound workloads, in GPU workloads Intel will have the lead, but all around it is neck and neck.

I haven’t had time to test out GPU performance in games or GPU heavy tasks quite yet, but speaking to a few tech journalists and reviewers who have spent more time with these systems, it’s great. Right now it seems Intel’s claims on Lunar Lake at their IFA press conference have been very fair to not only the competition, but conservative in their own numbers. Part of this is up to the OEM and how they decide to tune the cooling and power on the system, but the sheer silicon performance is there.

I think anyone would be happy with this machine or frankly any Lunar Lake powered machine. I’ve only had this laptop for a few days but it’s something I’d be happy to continue using. The fans rarely if ever turn on, it never gets hot, and somehow Windows feels smoother and faster than any x86 laptop I’ve used before.

I think this is a good sign for Intel, with the trouble the company has been in recently, and as Creative Strategies CEO Ben Bajarin has said before, Intel’s recovery is all about product. This is the good product. The tiled architecture on the TSMC fab is great, but this isn’t all TSMC. With the tiled architecture, packaging is just as important as the actual silicon fabrication node. All Lunar Lake chips, and likely future chips, are done with Intel’s in house packaging. Design, assembly, and packaging is all Intel, with TSMC for the node.

Given everything I’ve seen with Lunar Lake from Intel’s claims to actual units and production performance, I have no doubt Intel will be setup well for the future. As Panther Lake hits the market next year and Intel is able to swap from the TSMC node to Intel Foundry 18A, they’ll be able to start increasing the margin on their chips with a US production line for both fabrication and packaging, frankly I think they are setup well for the future. It may be difficult for Intel to regain trust from OEM partners, ISAs, and enterprises when it comes to client platform performance after years of failing expectations and Qualcomm and AMD coming in hot with 2 amazing chips, but I believe they can do it.

This space is about to become a lot more interesting.

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