Following a spectacular debut at Computex, the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (codenamed Lunar Lake) will be officially unveiled on September 3.

This will be the first day of IFA 2024 and will be streamed live on Intel's website. Prior to this, Intel promises "groundbreaking x86 power efficiency, outstanding core performance, a quantum leap in graphics performance," and "unmatched AI computing capabilities."

These are truly lofty claims for the upcoming Copilot+ PC, but will it live up to its promise: Snapdragon X Elite started the Arm revolution on Windows, but can x86 keep up?

Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 will be a (thankfully) dramatic update to the underwhelming Series 1, focusing on maximizing AI performance, improving graphics, and upgrading battery life.

These will come in the form of three key improvements in this major redesign of the silicon architecture:

This is the ultimate question. We have already tested the first x86 Copilot+ PC laptop with the Asus Zenbook S16 and are currently testing the ProArt P16. We are also currently testing the ProArt P16. And while it is certainly an improvement over what one would expect in the x86 space, it doesn't come close to the great balance of performance and power efficiency achieved by Arm like the HP Omnibook X.

Intel has achieved a better balance between performance (P) and efficiency (E) cores this time around, with NPUs significantly scaling from Intel Core Ultra's 11.5 TOPs to over 45 TOPs for the various small AI-based tasks performed at the core of Windows. Theoretically, power efficiency when executing these tasks should improve.

However, even with the improvements, it seems difficult to get around the old power inefficient x86-based CPUs. Time will tell.

Chip launches work a little differently than other categories. Just because someone announces a launch does not necessarily mean that it will be immediately available in the notebook segment. For example, the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series was technically announced at Computex, but it took until the end of July before it was available in laptops.

Therefore, given the normal speed of past Intel turnarounds (launch in October/November, laptops arriving shortly after CES), we expect that we may start seeing Intel-based Copilot+ PCs by the end of the year. See Tom's Guide for updates!