Core Ultra 9 288V: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core Ultra 9 288V is the top chip of Intel's Lunar Lake generation — a 2024 design that traded raw core count for efficiency and battery life — and 21 matched models in the catalog carry it. Judged purely as a processor, it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 36 of the 69 games the catalog tracks. This guide covers where the chip ranks, what its unusual architecture brings, and the laptops built around it.

Where the Core Ultra 9 288V sits in 2026

A catalog score of 54.15 places the chip 218th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the middle of the table, which is the deliberate price of an efficiency-first design wearing a flagship badge. The neighborhood: the Core i5-12500H (54.6), Core Ultra 5 335 (54.5) and Core Ultra 5 125H (54.4) just above, the Core i9-11900H (54.1), Core Ultra 5 325 (54.1) and Ryzen 3 PRO 4450U (54) just below. Sitting level with yesterday's i5s and i9s while drawing a fraction of their power is exactly the Lunar Lake bargain — the 288V never promised to top performance charts, only to deliver most of it at ultrabook power draws.

What the chip brings

Lunar Lake gives the 288V 8 cores and 8 threads — no hyperthreading — on a 3 nm-class process, the most advanced node in this neighborhood by a wide margin. Clocks run from a 3.3 GHz base to 5.1 GHz in a 30 W envelope, and the integrated graphics are Intel's Arc Graphics 140V, the stronger of the two Lunar Lake graphics configurations. The PassMark overall score of 19,855 is mid-range on paper, but the design's priorities show up elsewhere: in the efficiency figures of the laptops around it rather than in throughput records.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured as a processor only, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 36 of 69 cataloged games — including Dying Light 2, Far Cry 5, Escape from Tarkov, Flight Simulator 2020, Diablo 4, F1 24, Doom Eternal, Death Stranding, Grand Theft Auto V and Civilization 6. Another 26 titles sit at the minimum tier: Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk 2077, Counter-Strike 2, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3, PUBG: Battlegrounds and Metro Exodus among them. Seven games — Starfield, Helldivers 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Fortnite, Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone — ask for more processor than this. These verdicts are CPU-only: actual playability depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, and while the Arc 140V is a capable integrated solution, this is not discrete-GPU territory.

Laptops that carry it

The 21-model roster is a 2025 consumer and ultrabook lineup. The value tier holds the Acer Aspire 14 AI and Aspire 16 AI plus Dell's 14 Plus and 16 Plus at $765; the mainstream tier is remarkably uniform at $1,232, spanning the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI, Swift Go 14 AI OLED, MSI Prestige 13 AI+, LG Gram 17 and HP OmniBook 7 17.3. Dell's 14 and 16 Plus 2-in-1 convertibles sit at $1,275, and the Acer Predator Triton 14 at $1,440 is the roster's lone gaming entry. The laptops built around it typically show a median office comfort score of a perfect 100, energy efficiency of 92.5, mobility of 75, and a best CPU score of 83.94 — against a median gaming index of 19 with a median best GPU score of zero — most of these machines rely on the integrated Arc graphics alone.

Bottom line

The Core Ultra 9 288V should be bought for what it optimizes: a top-tier mobile experience — excellent battery efficiency, perfect median office comfort, thin chassis — rather than maximum compute. Half the game catalog exceeds its recommended CPU tier and its fleet is built around integrated graphics, so it is not a gaming purchase. But for a premium ultrabook in the $765–1,440 band that stays fast, cool and quiet through a full workday, this chip is one of the most refined packages in the catalog — the flagship badge here refers to the experience, not the horsepower.