Intel says Lunar Lake laptop graphics are getting a huge boost from Xe2

Integrated graphics are still nowhere near as powerful as discrete laptop graphics card, but they’re getting shockingly beefy these days. For example, AMD laptops with their “APU” configurations are the heart of the Steam Deck and its gaming handheld competitors.

And now, Intel says the new Xe2 integrated graphics on upcoming Core chips are a step above the competition. Xe2 graphics will be built into Lunar Lake devices, laptops with Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs coming later this year and into 2025.

We’ve been hearing about this refreshed graphics architecture for months, and some of the same tech will go into the next-gen “Battlemage” Arc discrete graphics, too. But at IFA 2024 in Berlin, Intel is finally ready to talk hard numbers.

Intel says that the new Xe2 graphics will give thin-and-light laptops a 31 percent improvement in frame rates over previous Intel designs (Core Ultra 9288V versus Core Ultra 155H) and an 80 percent improvement over Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X1E. (That second metric is perhaps a little unfair, since Snapdragon processors are an entirely different architecture and effectively a first-gen product. No one’s buying a Snapdragon laptop for gaming, at least not if they’ve done their research well.)

But perhaps the biggest gauntlet thrown down is the claim of a 16 percent improvement over AMD’s Ryzen 9 HX 370, its new flagship Zen 5 laptop platform. These are the processors that will be going head-to-head in some of the most premium laptops available this cycle.

As VideoCardz.com notes, the benchmark tests shared by Intel are exhaustive, but also might be a bit selective. The presentation slides cite frame rates from over 40 popular games running at 1080p on “medium” settings. And to Intel’s credit, they also shared a few where AMD beat out the Xe2, notably Counter-Strike 2 and GTA V. But they also have a lot of games in the mix that aren’t exactly benchmark staples, like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Civilization VI.

To me, it seems that Intel is picking and choosing at least a few of its examples for Xe2, including games that run particularly well with the company’s XeSS upscaling tech. Half of the games Intel compared versus Snapdragon wouldn’t even run on an Arm-based system. But that’s me being curmudgeonly.

It’s worth pointing out that Intel might be tuning Xe2 with Steam Deck-style handhelds in mind. So far, almost all of these devices have been running on low-power AMD APU setups, which are modified laptop platforms tuned to output decent graphics at low power. The MSI Claw is an exception, and the Claw 8 upgrade due later this year will be the first one to use a Lunar Lake processor and Xe2 graphics.

Whether you go with Intel or AMD, it looks like the new crop of laptops will have some impressive gaming options even if you can’t afford (or just don’t want) a discrete graphics card. That’s good news for anyone who wants to squeeze in a few rounds of Fortnite before catching a flight.