Intel Core Ultra 200H, 200HX Chips Pose the Question: To AI or Not to AI

I was going to write up Intel’s CES 2025 announcements with a list of my takeaways. But it turns out I only really have a single thought about the raft of new mobile processors, led by its Arrow Lake-architecture 200HX and 200H series, at least until we can test them to attain clarity: WTF? 

The fragmentation of the lines between gaming/creating and the rest isn’t new, nor is the AI performance vs. everything else. Or business vs. consumer. But Intel typically launches them separately any time of the year that is not CES; for instance, the AI-flagship Core Ultra 200V series (Lunar Lake architecture) in September 2024 or the desktop gaming flagship Core Ultra 200S series (Arrow Lake architecture) in October. 

As usual, though, at CES Intel announced a mix of processor lines, which really drove home the increasing fragmentation between the AI-optimized chips and the rest. I expect it all to normalize within the next few years as we stop thinking of AI as separate from the rest of the capabilities the way we eventually stopped thinking of a “multimedia PC” as a singular type of system over 25 years ago.   

But the interim remains confusing and isn’t helped by Intel’s calling any chip with an NPU an “AI PC,” even if the NPU is barely useful. The hardware demands and use cases of AI have spiked significantly in the year since Intel launched its Meteor Lake processors (the Core Ultra 100 series) at an event where it popularized “AI PC” — and the Arrow Lake NPU performs only slightly better than that Meteor Lake NPU. Even if you take into account the AI performance of the sum of its silicon parts (the metric referred to as “platform TOPS,” which combines the theoretical performance of the CPU, GPU and NPU).  

Intel noted that laptops with the 200V series chips and prebuilt desktops with the 200S chips will be shipping before March.

Intel also made a slew of business-slash-commercial chip announcements plus a ton of no-AI-support-at-all Core 200-series processors, all with the expected hard sell on why your business needs chips with AI support.  

Watch this: CNET’s Best Laptops of 2024

02:37

Where confusion reigns

The HX series has long been Intel’s flagship creating-and-gaming mobile CPU, but it’s always lagged a generation in core technologies and has also always been intended to work with a discrete GPU — a separate graphics chip from Nvidia or Intel — so Intel never bothers putting its latest graphics technology in this class of processors. 

But now, in addition to the modest integrated graphics in the new generation of 200HX series mobile CPUs, it also has the anemic last-gen 13.1 TOPS NPU as well, just like the Arrow Lake desktop CPUs. Sure, you can get much better generative AI performance out of a good discrete GPU, but the meh NPU brings the overall platform performance down compared to what it might have been — it goes only as high as a total of 36 platform TOPS, which could potentially affect things like heavy mixed video workloads (like streaming while using gen AI). And even these systems may turn off the discrete GPU when on battery, so you’d end up stuck at the lower performance level for AI. 

The new HX chips have a much lower maximum power draw than their 14th-gen predecessors, maxing out at 57W, which targets them at thinner, more power efficient but still enthusiast-centric laptops. This is a notable switch from what what was almost universally considered a “desktop chip for mobile.” On the flipside, the V series’ integrated GPU performs like “discrete-level graphics” (which is a terrible and confusing way to put it), and those chips don’t seem to support discrete GPUs; that’s essentially a chip intended to compete with the Apple M4 Pro. So which would you want?

That brings me to the 200H series (Arrow Lake-H), the traditional thin, light and optional-discrete-graphics chip line. It has the weak NPU of the HX but the most Xe graphics cores, so the integrated Arc GPU can at least compensate a bit (with up to 63-77 GPU TOPS and 99 platform TOPS, depending upon the chip). It has a higher power envelope than the HX (up to 60W), but downshifted general processor performance relative to the HX. In other words, it’s likely to be the best balance if you want a laptop that doesn’t require you know what you want it for in advance. Except possibly saving money. 

All this means that manufacturers will be making decisions about configurations they offer that you won’t necessarily love; that’s nothing new, the additional considerations may fry your brain. It does mine.

The HX series are expected to ship in March, with the H slated for beforehand.