Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus CPUs Bring Faster Gaming And A New Optimization Tool

Intel is adding a couple of Plus models to its Core Ultra 200HX series lineup for laptops, and while the press release doesn't explicitly designate the new CPUs as Arrow Lake Refresh, terminology it used for its desktop-bound Core Ultra 200S Plus models introduced last week, that's essentially what these new parts are. And like their desktop counterparts, Intel's Core Ultra 200HX Plus models promise to deliver a gaming boost.

There are two SKUs that comprise the Core Ultra 200HX Plus: Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, which Intel says delivers up to 8% faster gaming performance and up to 7% faster single-threaded performance than the Core Ultra 9 285HX, and the Core Ultra 7 270HX.

According to Intel, users upgrading from older platforms will see as much as a 62% gain in gaming and up to 30% faster single-threaded performances, figures which are based on comparisons to the Core i9-12900HX based on Alder Lake.

The Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus ascends to flagship status in Intel's mobile lineup and it consists of 24 cores and 24 threads, including 8 performance cores clocked at 2.7GHz to 5.5GHz, and 16 efficient cores clocked at 1.8GHz to 4.7GHz. It also features 40MB of L2 cache and 36MB of L3 cache.

Intel's Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus, meanwhile, sports 20 cores and 20 threads, which consists of 8 performance cores running at 2.4GHz to 5.3GHz and a dozen efficient cores clocked at 1.8GHz to 4.7GHz. It features 36MB of L2 cache and 30MB of L3 cache.

"With the introduction of the Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus series, we’re pushing mobile computing performance even further for the gamers, creators, and professionals who demand the best. With higher die-to-die frequencies and our new Intel Binary Optimization Tool, the new Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and Ultra 7 270HX Plus deliver meaningful, real‑world performance gains so users can experience smoother gameplay, faster creation workflows, and more responsive workstation performance," Intel says.

One of the improvements Intel is touting is up to a 900MHz boost to the die-to-die frequency versus the Core Ultra  7 285HX and Core Ultra 7 265HX. The upshot of speeding up the CPU/memory controller by almost a gigahertz is lower latency, which in turn benefits gaming.

Outside of gaming, Intel claims up to a 6% boost for productivity and content creation chores. The figures in the graph above are representative of an MSI Titan 18 laptop configured with a Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor and a GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, versus a previous generation model with the same GPU and a Core Ultra 9 285HX.

The other interesting part about Intel's refresh is support for Intel's new Binary Optimization Tool, which it first unveiled with its Core Ultra 200S Plus models last week. Intel describes this as a "first-of-its-kind optimization technology leveraging Intel’s 40-year history in workload optimization to increase processor instructions per cycle (IPC) and user performance, even if the workload has been optimized for another x86 processor, a game console, or an earlier architecture."

What this does is detect slow code in running applications and replaces the functions in memory with ones that are more optimized for its architecture. So if a developer optimizes a game or other code for AMD or Arm, the Binary Optimization Tool can step in, and do so without skipping any work. The caveat is that only some games and applications are currently supported, though the list will grow over time.

Several of Intel's hardware partners have already announced or will soon unveil new configurations leveraging the new Core Ultra 200HX Plus models, including companies like Acer, ASUS, Dell (and Alienware), HP, Lenovo, Maingear, MSI, Puget, Razer ,and others.