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

Intel is offering a pair of new flagship processors for a variety of expensive gaming laptops: the Core Ultra 9 290 HX Plus and the Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus. The Arrow Lake Refresh chips feature 24 cores/24 threads and 20 cores/20 threads, respectively. Like Intel’s recently announced desktop processors, the new Plus models for laptops are “pushed further for enthusiasts” and also feature Intel’s Binary Optimization tool that can improve native performance “in certain games.”

Intel’s Josh Newman says the new chips “deliver significant, real-world performance gains so users can experience smoother gaming, faster creative workflows, and more responsive workstation performance.”

There aren’t many details so far in Intel’s benchmark materials (like the 270HX Plus’s performance), but with what Intel claims to be an 8% increase in gaming performance, it’s only a modest gain for the flagship 290HX Plus over the last-gen Core Ultra 9 285HX. For someone with a four-year-old CPU like the Core i9-12900HX “Alder Lake” (16 cores/24 threads), Intel claims a 62% increase in 1080p gaming at high settings.

It’s a similar story with creative applications: Intel’s slideshow and charts claim the 290HX Plus scores 7% better than the 285HX on Cinebench 2026 single-threaded performance, and 30% better than the i9-12900HX.

Intel has no testing or equivalent claims for the Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus.

The 290HX Plus graphics show test results on an MSI Titan 18, a gaming laptop costing almost $6,000. I reviewed the Titan 18 with the Intel 285HX chip and an RTX 5090 laptop GPU, and it was a formidable (although also gigantic and extremely expensive) laptop for 4K gaming.

The new Arrow Lake Refresh chips will also have “up to a 900 MHz increase in die-to-die frequency” to reduce system latency by increasing the speed of the CPU/memory controller link. It’s unclear when the new laptops with the 290HX Plus and 270HX Plus chips will launch, but Intel is relying on OEMs like Asus, Acer, MSI Alienware, Lenovo, HP and Razer to launch new models soon.