Intel declares Core Ultra 200HX Plus CPUs for high-end gaming laptops

Intel has a pair of recent flagship CPUs coming to a wide range of expensive gaming laptops: the Core Ultra 9 290 HX Plus and Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus. The Arrow Lake Refresh chips sport 24 cores / 24 threads and 20 cores / 20 threads, respectively. Like Intel’s just lately introduced desktop CPUs, the brand new Plus fashions for laptops are “pushed further for enthusiasts,” and likewise function the Intel Binary Optimization Tool that may enhance native efficiency “in select games.”

Intel’s Josh Newman states that the brand new chips “deliver meaningful, real‑world performance gains so users can experience smoother gameplay, faster creation workflows, and more responsive workstation performance.”

There aren’t a ton of particulars to date in Intel’s reference supplies (just like the efficiency of the 270HX Plus) however with what Intel claims is an 8 p.c improve in gaming efficiency, it’s solely a modest acquire for the flagship 290HX Plus over the last-gen Core Ultra 9 285HX. For somebody with a four-year-old processor just like the “Alder Lake” Core i9-12900HX (16 cores / 24 threads), Intel claims a 62 p.c uplift in 1080p gaming on excessive settings.

It’s an identical story with inventive apps: Intel’s slide deck and charts declare the 290HX Plus scores 7 p.c greater than the 285HX on Cinebench 2026 single thread efficiency, and 30 p.c greater than the i9-12900HX.

Intel doesn’t have any equal checks or claims for the Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus.

The 290HX Plus charts present check outcomes on an MSI Titan 18, a gaming laptop computer costing practically $6,000. I reviewed the Titan 18 with Intel’s 285HX chip and an RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, and it was a formidable (if additionally gigantic and outlandishly costly) laptop computer for 4K gaming.

The new Arrow Lake Refresh chips will even have “up to 900MHz boost to the die-to-die frequency” for lowering system latency by rising the pace of the CPU / reminiscence controller hyperlink. There’s no phrase on when new laptops with the 290HX Plus and 270HX Plus chips will launch, however Intel defers to OEMs like Asus, Acer, MSI Alienware, Lenovo, HP, and Razer to launch new fashions quickly.