Leaked Lunar Lake's Ultra 7 chip debuts in Geekbench database — impressive performance from low-power chips

Two new Intel Lunar Lake results have cropped up on the Geekbench browser (as spotted by @BenchLeaks on X), featuring the upcoming Core Ultra 7 268V with four non-Hyper-Threading P-cores and four E-cores. If we take these results at face value, the new CPU's performance in Geekbench is a mixed bag. It boasts superior single-core performance but not enough multi-threaded juice to defeat Intel's Meteor Lake Core Ultra 7 parts. That's a solid result, though, as Lunar Lake is designed for lower-TDP thin-and-lights and compact notebooks than the higher-tier Meteor Lake processors.

Two listings featuring the Core Ultra 7 268V have appeared on Geekbench; the first reveals a score of 2,713 points and 10,036 points for the Lunar Lake chip in the single and multi-core benchmarks. The other shows a slightly better single core but a slightly inferior multi-threaded score of 2,739 and 9,907 points, respectively. 

For simplicity's sake, we will use the average of both scores to better compare the chip to other chips further down the article. Our simple calculation results in scores of 2,726 and 9,972 for the Lunar Lake part, in single and multi-threaded workloads.

Compared to the Ultra 7 268V's outgoing Meteor Lake-based predecessors, its performance in Geekbench is mixed. The chip is 15% faster in single-core performance compared to the Core Ultra 7 155H, but it is 19% slower in Geekbench's multi-core benchmark. Our Ultra 7 155H result was taken from an HP Spectre laptop sporting a single-core score of 2,356 and an 11,926 multi-core score. There are certainly inferior scores in the Geekbench browser, but we found this one in particular to be a good balance between the fastest and slowest Core Ultra 7 155H results in the online results.

It will be interesting to see if this behavior exists in subsequent benchmarks and with production-ready devices packing Intel's Lunar Lake chips. One of the biggest changes Intel has made is removing its Hyper-Threading technology from its Lunar Lake chips in an effort to boost power efficiency. In addition, the Ultra 7 268V only has four E-cores, while the Core Ultra 7 155H has eight. 

Intel will rely entirely on its substantially faster E-cores in Lunar Lake to combat the architecture's E-core deficit compared to Meteor Lake and even Raptor Lake / Alder Lake. Intel's upcoming Lunar Lake chips come with upgraded E-cores based on the Skymont architecture, sporting up to a 68% IPC gain compared to Meteor Lake's Crestmont LPE cores.

Again, it'll be very interesting to see if Intel's new E-core architecture can rectify Lunar Lake's disadvantage in core count compared to Meteor Lake. However, we must note that a major focus of Intel's Lunar Lake is reduced power consumption for thin-and-lights, so it still impresses in the multi-threaded tests if you take into account the comparative thread counts and target TDPs (reported default of 17W for most models, with 30W peak). In contrast, Meteor Lake processors are designed to scale to higher TDPs. Intel has yet to introduce its successor for the higher-powered 45W/115W Meteor Lake chips.

In conclusion, Geekbench is only one benchmark (and this is a leak), so we'll have to see how Lunar Lake performs in other benchmarks/apps before we get a clearer picture.