Core Ultra 5 236V: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core Ultra 5 236V is the mainstream Lunar Lake chip — an 8-core, 3 nm design from 2024 built for thin laptops with long battery life. The catalog matches it to 25 models, and it clears the recommended CPU tier in 36 of the 69 games the site tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings to a portable, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core Ultra 5 236V sits in 2026

A catalog score of 52.8 places the chip 235th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the upper third of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood is a stack of Core i5 P-series parts: the Core i5-1350P (53), Core i5-8257U (52.9) and Core i5-1340P (52.8) just above, and the Core i5-1250P (52.8), Core i7-1360P (52.7) and Ryzen 5 8540U (52.7) just below. Being the newest design in that band — 2024 silicon slotting between 12th- and 13th-generation parts — is the Lunar Lake story: efficiency-first engineering that holds a solid mid-upper slot on raw CPU score.

What the chip brings

Lunar Lake is an 8-core, 8-thread design on a 3 nm-class process, rated at just 17 W: a 2.1 GHz base and up to 4.7 GHz boost. The integrated graphics is an Arc Graphics 130V tile — the generational jump that matters most in a chip destined for machines without discrete GPUs. Memory support and cache details were not captured for this chip, so the table above sticks to what the catalog verifiably holds: a PassMark overall score of 18,397.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 36 of 69 cataloged games — Far Cry 5, Diablo 4, Flight Simulator 2020, Dying Light 2, Doom Eternal, God of War and Grand Theft Auto V among them. Another 26 sit at the minimum tier: Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, The Witcher 3, Counter-Strike 2 and Black Myth Wukong all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. Starfield, Helldivers 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Apex Legends and Fortnite ask for more processor than this. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and this roster lives on integrated graphics.

Laptops that carry it

The 25-model roster is the 2025–2026 refresh wave of thin business portables. Dell's new Pro line dominates: Pro 13, Pro 14, Pro 13 Premium and Pro 13 Plus at $1,232, with the Pro 16 Plus and Pro 14 Plus at $765. Lenovo counters with the ThinkPad E14 Gen 7, E16 Gen 3 and T14 Gen 6 at $1,144, the T16 Gen 4 at $1,284 and the ThinkPad L13 Gen 7 heading into 2026. The Samsung Galaxy Book 5 360 (15.6") covers the convertible angle at $1,232. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: office comfort at a perfect 100, energy efficiency 92.5 and mobility 84.5 — but a median best-GPU score of 0 and a gaming index of 19, because this fleet leans entirely on the integrated Arc tile.

Bottom line

The Core Ultra 5 236V suits the battery-first buyer: a 2024 3 nm design that matches 13th-generation i5s on CPU score while drawing 17 W, carried by quiet thin chassis from $765 to $1,284. The honest verdict on games: the processor clears recommended tier for 36 of 69 tracked titles, but the laptops around it are integrated-graphics machines with a gaming-index median of 19 — the CPU is rarely what limits them, the Arc 130V tile is. For office work, travel and endurance, this is one of the most balanced fleets in the catalog.