A previously unannounced Intel Core Ultra 7 254V processor from the Lunar Lake lineup has surfaced in benchmark leaks, showcasing its performance and positioning itself as a modest alternative to budget-friendly gaming handhelds and laptops, which could potentially rival the likes of the Steam Deck.
The benchmark leaks were initially spotted by users on X, where the chip showed up in PassMark results, revealing an eight-core configuration with four performance cores and four efficiency cores. Furthermore, the CPU boasts eight threads and 12MB of L3 cache, putting it closer to the Core Ultra 7 256V and 258V.
From the information available to us, we can see a single-core performance rating of 4,089 and a multi-core performance score of 17,327. While the single-core performance of the 254V is nearly identical to the averages of the 256V and 258V SKUs, it does not fare well in the multicore part of the benchmark: The 254V falls almost 10 percent short of the 258V’s average of 19,158 and almost 13 percent short of the 256V’s 19,800.
To put things into perspective, the leaked Core Ultra 7 254V underperforms when compared to the entry-level Core Ultra 5 228V in multi-core scenarios, even though it is considerably faster when it comes to single-threaded workloads.
Further details from other benchmarks, such as FurMark and Vulkan, have confirmed the integration of the Intel Arc 140V GPU, clocked at 2.0 GHz, identical to the higher-end Lunar Lake chips such as the 256V and 258V, rather than stepping down to the Arc 130V found in the 230-series.
Unfortunately, clock speeds for the 254V have not been disclosed in the leaks, but speculation and comparisons suggest that it may feature a lower base clock of 1.8–2.0GHz than the 258V’s 3.7 GHz or the 256V’s 2.2 GHz, both of which can boost up to 4.8 GHz, while matching its peers in terms of boost clock speeds.
The Core Ultra 7 254V is expected to come with soldered LPDDR5X RAM, which cannot be upgraded. For context, the 258V features 32GB, and the 256V features 16GB of RAM. Hypothetically, the 254 could feature 8GB of soldered RAM, which could limit its use-case scenario in entry-level laptops and gaming handhelds. One should consider that Microsoft’s guidelines recommend a minimum of 16GB of memory for AI workloads, which could factor into a more generous RAM offering than the 8GB that some are speculating is in play, however.
It must be noted, however, that there has been no confirmation by Intel about the leaked SKUs at this moment. The benchmark available on PassMark is also from a sample size of one, so the higher single-thread performance could potentially be an outlier, or the chip in question may have been overclocked by a tester to get said result (since we do not, at the moment, know the clocks the CPU offers or ran at during said benchmark).