Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus

The Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus is the flagship of Intel's refreshed Arrow Lake HX laptop lineup, launched in the first quarter of 2026. It is soldered to the motherboard, so you pick it by picking the laptop. It has 24 cores, 8 performance cores and 16 efficient cores, with 24 threads and no Hyper-Threading. The performance cores boost up to 5.5 GHz and the efficient cores up to 4.7 GHz, backed by 36 MB of Intel Smart Cache and 40 MB of L2 cache. It supports up to 256 GB of DDR5-6400 memory in two channels, 24 PCIe lanes with PCIe 5.0 support, and Thunderbolt 4.

This is a chip for large gaming laptops and mobile workstations with serious cooling, running at a 55 W base power and up to 160 W of turbo power. Everyday work is effortless, and its 24 cores are aimed at the heaviest jobs you can do on a laptop: long 4K video exports, 3D rendering, big code builds and gaming while streaming. How much of that speed you get depends on the laptop maker's power limits and cooling, so two laptops with the same chip can finish long jobs at different speeds.

The built-in Intel Graphics has 4 Xe-cores running at up to 2.0 GHz and supports up to 4 displays. It is there for the screen, video playback and light work, while the dedicated graphics card that comes with every flagship HX laptop does the gaming. The Intel AI Boost NPU is rated at 13 TOPS, and Intel quotes 36 TOPS for the whole chip. That covers Windows Studio Effects and light local AI tasks, but it falls short of the 40 TOPS NPU needed for Copilot+ PC features.

The 290HX Plus is a refresh of the Core Ultra 9 285HX with the same 24-core layout, 36 MB of cache and 5.5 GHz peak boost, so the two are close and price should decide between them. The Core Ultra 9 275HX has the same core count with lower clocks. The previous-generation Core i9-14900HX also has 24 cores but uses Hyper-Threading for 32 threads. AMD's Ryzen 9 9955HX and 9955HX3D bring 16 full-size cores with 32 threads, and the 3D version adds extra cache that helps in many games. The comparison pages below show each spec side by side.

Yes, if you want a flagship gaming laptop or a mobile workstation and you run heavy multi-core work often. For gaming alone, a Core Ultra 7 HX chip paired with the same graphics card gets close for less money, so put the savings into the GPU, memory or screen. If a discounted laptop with the Core Ultra 9 285HX has the same GPU and cooling, it is a sensible alternative. If battery life, weight or Copilot+ features matter most, choose a thin Core Ultra 200V, Panther Lake or Ryzen AI 300 laptop instead.