Intel refreshes non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time

Intel’s Core Ultra laptop processors have been its flagship products since it retired the old generational branding and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding a few years ago. Core Ultra Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3 processors are those with the latest CPU and GPU designs and latest manufacturing technology.

Intel also offered non-Ultra Core processors, but these were never particularly interesting, mainly because the Series 1 and Series 2 chips were based on Intel’s older Raptor Lake architecture. Raptor Lake was the codename for the 2023 13th generation Core family, and most versions of Raptor Lake were the same silicon used for the 2022 12th generation Core processors.

But Raptor Lake’s name and renaming apparently couldn’t last forever. Intel’s new non-Ultra Core Series 3 processors are new silicon, a throwback to the days when high-end and mid-range Intel chips could be expected to include many of the same advancements despite their differences in performance.

These new chips are codenamed “Wildcat Lake” and while there are some commonalities with the Core Ultra Series 3 (aka Panther Lake) processors, the non-Ultra processors use a simpler design with much less computing power.

Each chip uses two silicon tiles: a compute tile that includes a processor with up to two Cougar Cove P cores and four Darkmont E cores; an integrated GPU with one or two latest generation Xe3 GPU cores from Intel; and (typically) an NPU capable of performing up to 17 trillion operations per second (TOPS). A separate platform controller tile built on an unspecified non-Intel process provides up to two Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity, and six PCIe 4.0 lanes for external connectivity. All chips support up to 48GB LPDDR5X-7467 or up to 64GB DDR5-6400, and use a base power level of 15W and a maximum boost power level of 35W.