If you’re wondering why you need Intel’s latest Core Ultra laptop processors, code-named Lunar Lake, the answer isn’t a simple one. But if you want to buy a Lunar Lake laptop, however, you’ll probably understand the differences between the various chips almost immediately. Intel unveiled what it’s calling the Core Ultra Series 2 at a launch event in Berlin on Tuesday. In total, there are nine new Lunar Lake processors, which will begin shipping inside laptops from PC makers like Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo very soon: September 24. Preorders begin now. A few months ago, Intel unveiled the guts of the new Lunar Lake architecture, offering a sneak peek into how much performance it will offer and how much power it will consume. Today we have a better idea: Intel is promising about a 30 percent improvement in terms of gaming over last year’s Meteor Lake chip, while consuming less power — with some hard numbers to back it up. That’s a nice one-two punch for those people who want longer-lasting laptops without giving up too much performance. What you’ll probably appreciate, though, is a relative return to simplicity. For the last several years, simply describing a laptop processor meant trying to explain a tangled web of cores, threads, clock speeds, caches, and GPUs — with twists and tweaks all over the place. Instead, all of the Lunar Lake chips begin with “2” to describe them. They all end in “V.” They all contain the same number of performance cores, efficiency cores, and threads. Jumping up to a faster Lunar Lake model number means adding 200MHz or so in clock speed, with a corresponding increase in GPU performance. That’s about it. And yes, these new Core Ultra Lunar Lake chips are (mostly) qualified to be called Copilot+ PCs, with NPUs cresting 45 TOPS of AI performance and above. But Intel is taking a much less breathless, more realistic approach to AI than before. Further reading: The best laptops for any budget Intel’s Core Ultra (Series 2) Lunar Lake processors Intel refused to call Meteor Lake a 14th-gen Core chip; in the same vein, Lunar Lake isn’t a 15th-gen Core chip, either. Instead, both chips are confined to the Core Ultra brand — though Intel isn’t really playing up the Core Ultra Series 2 moniker, either. Intel vice president Josh Newman, the general manager of product management, told reporters that Intel will still sell Meteor Lake chips to customers, leaving both Core Ultra chips in the market for now. The new “V”-series designation is a new twist, too. Robert Hallock, a vice president in Intel’s Client Computing Group and general manager of AI marketing, said that the “V” designation was in response to customers who wanted a unique designation for Lunar Lake. You will eventually see familiar “S,” “U,” and “H”-series chips, on a “similar architecture, but different product,” Intel executives said, probably implying a version of the Arrow Lake chip that’s due sometime this fall, too. All of the new Lunar Lake chips contain four P-cores and four E-cores, with the same number of threads for each. They’re differentiated in two ways: first, they either have 16GB or 32GB of DRAM, embedded right in the chip package themselves. But otherwise, they just have incremental improvements in CPU and GPU clock speed, up and down the stack — just like the way they used to be. Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) models numbers and features. Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) models numbers and features.Mark Hachman / IDG Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) models numbers and features.Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG Naturally, Intel isn’t releasing the prices of the new Lunar Lake chips., as they’re sold directly to laptop makers. But Hallock said that the overarching principle was to offer partners and customers as close to the full capabilities of the Lunar Lake architecture to every customer, and let the price of the end product dictate the performance that customer will buy. That might sound somewhat obvious — but again, it hasn’t always been this way, especially recently. The only subtle wrinkle to Intel’s chip lineup is that not all of the Lunar Lake chips will be Copilot+ capable, which is a slight surprise. Instead, some of the slower Lunar Lake processors dip below 45 TOPS, which has been the informal dividing line between what is a Copilot+ PC and what isn’t. Intel is still tweaking the NPU by adjusting the frequency and the number of NPU units, producing the Core Ultra 7 258V (47 TOPS) and the Core Ultra 7 266V (48 TOPS). It just won’t tell us what it’s doing. (I asked.) Intel’s prior Core Ultra processor, Meteor Lake, shipped on Dec. 14, 2023, after Intel discussed the Meteor Lake architecture and announced its clock speeds and model names, too. But there was one key issue: Yes, the 14th-gen Core Ultra chips ushered in the AI PC — but without sufficient TOPS to let them be used as a Copilot+ PC. Inside Intel’s newest Core Ultra, Lunar Lake Intel’s Lunar Lake chip changes in a few significant ways from its earlier chips. (For those of you who have been following our earlier coverage and wish to jump ahead to how performance differs, please do so. Otherwise, this section will recap some of the key features of the Lunar Lake architecture, using more details of the Xe2 GPU as a transition into performance.) As referenced above, the key adjustment from a laptop perspective is Intel’s decision to build in the system DRAM inside the chip package itself. We’ve become used to PCs shipping with RAM slots, which can be upgraded with more memory over time. Laptops also include this feature — but fewer are internally accessible, and some laptops come with memory soldered to the motherboard itself. Intel is betting that those of you buying productivity laptops with Lunar Lake chips inside won’t care about upgrading the memory, and that either 16GB or 32GB will be sufficient. Further reading: Intel’s Lunar Lake laptops won’t let you upgrade your RAM, and that’s fine Otherwise, Intel has continued down the path of aggressively reducing power. While Meteor Lake introduced efficiency (E-cores) and low-power E-cores, Lunar Lake’s E-cores are simply all E-cores, if that makes sense. Lunar Lake’s E-core performance is basically double that of Meteor Lake, Intel executives have said. And, given that there are four E-cores in Lunar Lake, versus two low-power E-cores in Meteor Lake, you might say (as Intel does) that multithreaded E-core performance has almost quadrupled in a generation’s time. And then there’s one of the more higher-profile changes: no more hyperthreading. For decades now, Intel’s Core chips have been able to run two threads per processor core, increasing performance. But Intel has said eliminating the SMT feature helps Intel optimize for performance per watt and performance per area — and that’s the overarching mantra for Lunar Lake. AI, of course, is one of the key thrusts for Intel and its competitors. How important it is an interesting question, especially because AI encompasses both AI processing in the cloud (such as Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot) and the on-chip AI processing that chipmakers love to talk about. How much the onboard NPU will be used isn’t really clear. But what Intel’s marketing team cares most about is that the “NPU4” core now produces up to 48 TOPS, meaning that laptop makers can now add a Copilot+ sticker (and its related Windows features) to Lunar Lake laptops. Finally, Lunar Lake has added what Intel calls the ‘Xe2? GPU, the long-awaited variant that should show up in the upcoming discrete “Battlemage” graphics cards for desktops. Our earlier story goes into more detail about the actual architecture of the Xe2 GPU, including the updated ray-tracing unit, the eight 512-bit vector engines and the eight 2,048-bit Xe Matrix Extension engines. Intel’s estimates of its media-engine performance. Intel’s estimates of its media-engine performance.Intel Intel’s estimates of its media-engine performance.Intel Intel What’s new here is what Intel wouldn’t tell us before, including the clock speeds and memory. The Lunar Lake product matrix reveals that you’ll be able to choose from an Xe2 GPU with either 7 or 8 Xe2 cores, with clock speeds ranging from 1.85GHz to 2.05GHz. While it’s not a perfect metric, TOPS is also helpful to understand the range of GPU performance. The slowest Ultra 5 226V chip produces 53 TOPS between its CPU/GPU/NPU, while the fastest Core Ultra 9 288V produces 67 TOPS. How fast is Lunar Lake? Here’s what Intel says So how fast is Intel’s Lunar Lake chip? That might not be the right question. Qualcomm has been earning praise for its power-sipping Snapdragon chips. AMD’s mobile Ryzens have aimed mainly at performance. And Intel? They’re trying to cut power without giving up a strong legacy of processing performance. “I’m sure I sound a bit like a broken record, but Lunar Lake is all about energy efficiency,” Hallock said. Lunar Lake was conceived as a 9W CPU, but “OEMs wanted more,” he said. So Intel pushed higher, pushing the total TDP options up to 35W. Intel cut the Lunar Lake package power by 30 percent, but made each thread much more efficient — each processor thread in Lunar Lake is two to three times more powerful than Meteor Lake. Put another way, Intel believes that the Core Ultra 9 288V cuts power by 34 to 50 percent versus the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H (Meteor Lake) in terms of web browsing and productivity apps; in games, it cuts power by 11 to 35 percent while performance soars to 68 percent. Intel claims substantial gains in both battery life and performance versus Meteor Lake. Intel also believes that it is far more efficient than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite, too. Lunar Lake delivers comparable performance to the Snapdragon X Elite at 40 percent lower power, with four fewer cores, Hallock claimed. Intel clearly feels that has the goods to lead in terms of power and battery life, and leaned on the benchmarks to prove it — the company showed off many more benchmarks than I could fit in this article. We’ve included a representative sample, however. Intel believes that it can beat Qualcomm and AMD on both performance and battery life. Intel said that it worked with an unnamed PC laptop maker, who plans to release the same laptop using both a Snapdragon X Elite as well as a Core Ultra variant, with the only differences coming in the motherboard and processor. That’s proof, executives said, that the Core Ultra can top the Snapdragon in a head-to-head test. In that example, the notebook with the Intel Core Ultra 7 268V outlasted the same notebook with the Qualcomm X1E-80-100 inside it, 20.1 hours to 18.1 hours, running the PCMark Procyon Office test. (Qualcomm emerged victorious over the course of a marathon Teams call, 12.7 hours versus 10.7 hours.) In the graphic above, the PC maker shipped a Ryzen notebook, too, but only in a larger size. Intel’s Lunar Lake (Core Ultra Series 2) versus the Snapdragon X Elite and AMD’s mobile Ryzen chips. Intel’s Core Ultra didn’t run ragged over Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite in terms of AI, generating a score of 1,828 in the UL Procyon AI benchmark, very close to the score of 1,792 Qualcomm originally produced last year. Intel’s belief is that more and more software developers will try to use the different parts of a mobile SOC — the CPU, GPU, and NPU — in a combined effort. That future isn’t here yet, either, though. However, Intel did use specialized AI benchmarks, such as those found in Adobe Premiere and Lightroom, to indicate that it was leading in AI, too. In Lightroom, for example, Intel claimed that its Ultra 9 288V could outperform the Qualcomm X1E-78-100 by 145 percent in AI denoising. Intel also ran several “live” demos, in which games like DOTA 2 were looped on comparable machines to show off how well Lunar Lake performed. Intel executives also pushed the button to launch several demos on their own captive hardware. In live demos (at 1080p, Medium settings, with XeSS enabled) Lunar Lake laptops hit playable 60ish and 70ish frame rates in Cyberpunk: 2077 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We have to take every benchmark that we didn’t run ourselves with a grain of salt, though they’re more convincing than just a PowerPoint slide. Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG Mark Hachman / IDG To be fair, Intel’s handpicked benchmarks are…handpicked. And Qualcomm clearly has Intel nervous, as company executives zeroed in on its competitor to the south. Intel, of course, has programs like Intel Evo, the co-engineering program with PC makers that it says it will continue and expand to improve cool and quiet testing. Intel still faces thousands of potential layoffs as well as cost cuts. Intel sources I spoke to say that those decisions haven’t been made yet. Carla Rodriguez, an Intel vice president responsible for ecosystem enablement, says that Intel has no plans to cut its co-engineering and marketing programs. Intel also reiterated that Lunar Lake isn’t subject to the “Vmin” voltage issue that affected its desktop processors. Intel does advantages: its dominant position, and its breakneck pace. Intel will ship both Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake in the time its rivals have shipped one architecture. Whether Intel can live up to its claims, though, will be put to the test as soon as we can test the Core Ultra Series 2 / Lunar Lake for ourselves. Read...

The lower South Island could expect more heavy rain on Sunday. Read...

MetService has issued watches for the lower North Island and parts of the South Island. Read...

Timaru Herald visual journalist Aiman Amerul Muner has gone to the Lower South Island Regional TheatreFest competition at The Playhouse Theatre. Read...

An orange heavy rain warning in place for the lower North Island, as the capital is hit by torrential rain and slips close roads in the South Island. Read...

A small quake just south of Lower Hutt hit late last night. Read...

MetService has issued several strong wind and heavy rain warnings across the South Island and lower North Island. Read...

Strong southwesterly winds may reach severe gales in exposed places, MetService says. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating ProsClean, simple interfaceEssential protection against malwareLower impact on PC system resourcesConsLess participation in testing performed by independent security organizationsExtremely light on featuresOur VerdictMalwarebytes Premium Security offers a simple, easy-to-use alternative to Windows Security—but don’t expect big bang for your buck. Seasoned security vets may also find the lower amount of available independent performance test results offputting. Best Prices Today: Malwarebytes Premium Retailer Price Malwarebytes $42.79 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Malwarebytes was once a crucial piece of software—a necessary supplement for your main antivirus scanner. You couldn’t always count on just one program to catch everything, and Malwarebytes rose to prominence as a reliable secondary tool. But the world has changed since 2010. Now if you run multiple antivirus apps, you could open yourself up to software conflicts or increased risk for system vulnerabilities. One single program is the way to go—and if you’re a newbie to security and prefer a dead simple app, then Malwarebytes’ streamlined, elegant approach can fit the bill. How much does Malwarebytes Premium Security cost? As a simple suite, Malwarebytes Premium Security costs $60 per year. New subscribers can sign up for a two-year package to save $9 ($111 total). Unlike most other antivirus vendors, Malwarebytes bills in monthly installments over a 12-month term, rather than charging the total cost upfront.  For its consumer products, the company offers a 14-day trial, and a 60-day money back guarantee. Single-device plan (3 devices) $60 per year (billed monthly over a 12-month term) Malwarebytes’ plan allows you to spread your device allotment over those running Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and even ChromeOS. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld If you want to cover more gear, or save a little more cash, you can get licenses for Malwarebytes through third-parties like Amazon and the PCWorld Software store with more flexible terms and at lower rates. However, such plans currently don’t include VPN service, which Malwarebytes added to the subscriptions it sells directly. What does Malwarebytes Premium Security include? When you step up from Malwarebytes’ free version to a paid subscription, real-time monitoring for malware, email, web, and select network threats becomes active. (The free plan only scans if you initiate a manual check.) Overall, you’re protected against viruses, ransomware, and other malware, as well as other common attacks like phishing attempts, zero-day exploits on the web and over email, and suspicious apps. Choosing Malwarebytes Premium Security adds on access to the company’s VPN, which Malwarebytes advertises as a no-log service. As premium upgrades go, this one is simplistic—you don’t get parental controls, a password manager, additional defenses like protected folders, or PC utilities, as you do with a rival like AVG. The company seems to weigh its VPN service as equally valuable to a collection of such antivirus features. Key features of Malwarebytes Premium Security Installation and user interface After you install the app, you’ll see the main dashboard. The interface is incredibly streamlined, with just two tabs on the left navbar—Dashboard and Settings. You can choose between Light, Dark, or matching Windows’ mode. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld Accordingly, you’ll send almost all your time on the Dashboard view, which is divided into three segments. In the larger one, you’ll see a couple of sections blocked out. At the upper left is Security, with Scanner, Detection History, and Real-Time Protection as the three options and their settings: Scanner lets you run a quick, full, or custom scan, as well as jump directly to related settings. You can also access the scheduled scans to review what’s already set up and create new ones.  Detection History shows quarantined items, the history of events (like detected viruses), and your allow list—items that you’ve approved as safe after initially being flagged by Malwarebytes.  Real-Time Protection is not so much a feature, but an explanation for how Malwarebytes and how it safeguards your PC continuously. Directly underneath the security section is one for the VPN. It puts the major controls at your fingertips, letting you quickly activate the service and change the location. You can also jump into related settings. Along the right side is a rating for your PC’s protection level—Malwarebyte’s assessment of how close you are to utilizing the app fully. You can also check on other devices associated with your account. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld Generally, the interface is clean and simple, as are the settings for the app and its features. The only area where you can dig in deeper are the antivirus protection settings—but as Malwarebytes rightly warns, nearly all users are better off leaving the defaults as they are. One tip: Once the software is installed, head to Settings > Notifications, scroll down to the bottom, and turn off marketing notifications. Virus, malware, and threat protection Real-time protection Malwarebytes Premium Security constantly keeps an eye out for a variety of threats. When you’re opening or adding files, using apps, or browsing the web, it’ll block viruses, ransomware, and other malware like rootkits, along with phishing attempts. Unlike other rivals, Malwarebytes doesn’t offer a firewall. That job is left to Windows. It also doesn’t offer additional protections against dangers like DNS hijacking and webcam takeovers. As for identity protection, like dark web monitoring and insurance coverage, you must upgrade to the company’s Complete Protection plan, which costs twice as much per year. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld If you want to adjust your real-time scanning settings, you can change what the app screens for and how stringent it is with its filters, as well as how it handles suspicious files. Malwarebytes allows you dig surprisingly deep, though only experts should get into the weeds. The overwhelming majority of users should keep the defaults as they are. Scheduled and manual scans At installation, Malwarebytes Premium Security automatically creates a scheduled scan for once per week. It runs whenever your system is idle, which the app calls a “smart scan.” You can edit this default or create additional scheduled scans. For manual scans, Malwarebytes offers three types. The default is a threat scan, which checks commonly targeted areas of your PC, including things running in memory and at startup, as well as registry changes. Files stored on your PC are also looked over.  PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld To fire up a quick or custom scan, you must choose Advanced Scan from the three-dot menu for the Scanner on the dashboard. Custom scans let you tweak a handful of settings related to file types and areas of your PC, as well as how to handle potentially unwanted programs and modifications to your system. Additional features Browser extension Malwarebytes offers a Browser Guard extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, but despite being available as a separate free download, it’s still considered a component of the Premium Security suite. After installation, it runs quietly in the background, protecting your browser from malware and scams (including credit card skimming), as well as serving as an adblocker. VPN Malwarebytes keeps its controls for its VPN simple rather than restrictive. Firing up the service is quick and fast, as is choosing a location for a server—and Malwarebytes lets you choose a handful of cities within countries outside of the US, more similar to a dedicated VPN. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld You can choose servers in Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, UK, Ukraine, USA. This country list isn’t as large as with some VPN services, but as mentioned above, you can generally choose between two to four cities per country. The exception is the United States, which has 18 cities available, coast to coast. Speeds held stable when using the VPN during light testing. For US server speeds, Los Angeles (within the same state as PCWorld’s San Francisco location) showed a decrease of about 5 to 7 percent, while New York saw a roughly 26 percent drop. Customer support From within the app, you can jump to Malwarebytes’ user guide, support pages, and support tool. You can also use an AI chatbot for answers to your questions, or if you’re signed into your Malwarebytes account, to contact customer support—you’ll get funneled to your choice of email or live chat. Updates and maintenance  Updates for the app and virus definitions happen automatically in the background, but you can also trigger a check manually. You’ll need to click on the person icon in the upper right of the app window, then choose About Malwarebytes and click on the Check for updates button. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld Performance While Malwarebytes participates in some independent benchmarking of its software, it has no current results from AV-Test and AV-Comparatives, two major organizations that test how well antivirus suites can catch threats. Instead, the company points the curious toward AVLabs’s testing data. During the May 2024 advanced in-the-wild test, Malwarebytes caught all 521 samples—though its detection rate was split between 78.32 percent pre-launch and 21.38 percent post-launch of the samples (that is, before the malware samples could activate versus after). In comparison, rivals Bitdefender and McAfee caught nearly all the samples before they could execute, with 97.98 percent and 99.3 percent pre-launch detection, respectively. When asked about its participation in independent benchmarks, a representative from Malwarebytes said the company “focuses on third-party testing that is most closely aligned with the needs of customers” and that it works “with the third-party testers that are most relevant to what our customers encounter in today’s threat landscape.” PCWorld / AVLab PCWorld / AVLab PCWorld / AVLab During hardware performance tests on our budget Acer Aspire 3 test laptop, Malwarebytes lived up to its claims of light impact on PC resources. When left idle in the background, it had virtually no effect on typical tasks, as shown by PCMark 10’s extended benchmark. That test simulates video chatting, web browsing, gaming, image and document editing in free apps like GIMP and LibreOffice, and the like.  If you work instead on Microsoft Office documents, our UL Procyon tests showed a minimal impact on results, with a less than 3 percent difference. Similarly, our Handbrake encoding test only dipped by about 4 percent. Even running a threat scan continuously during our benchmarks didn’t disturb these numbers much—PCMark 10 slipped by about 7 percent, Procyon by about 14 percent, and Handbrake by about 19 percent. Given how rival antivirus engines from rivals like McAfee and Norton are far greedier about system resources, Malwarebytes does distinguish itself in this regard. Conclusion If you dislike complicated interfaces, Malwarebytes Premium Security can be a good fit as an alternative to Windows Security—so long as you don’t mind not getting as much bang for your buck. The app is attractive and clean in its layout, and the settings are clear and straightforward. However, more seasoned security vets may have reason to hesitate on pulling the trigger, due to the relatively low amount of independent testing data available about software performance. Antivirus Read...

The rain will continue in lower North Island and upper South Island, as unsettled weather continues today. Read...