Intel’s wins, fails, and WTF moments of 2024

The good news for Intel? 2024’s almost over.

Our collection of the highs and lows of Intel’s 2024 will have you reaching for the brandy. They weren’t good. I mean, aside from some of Intel’s mobile chips, what exactly did it do right? Let’s put it this way: when your ex-CEO prays for your company after he was kicked out, it was a bad year.

As we’ve done for other companies in the past, we’ve collected the best, worst, and head-scratching moments from the past year. Get yourself a hot mug of cider or a cold glass of egg nog, and sit down with as we recap Intel’s 2024. And hold on — it’s going to get bumpy.

Crashing Intel 13th-gen/14th-gen CPUs: FAIL

Intel’s year-long saga of mediocrity just would not go away. From a January advisory by RadTools through more intensive investigations that stretched through the summer, Intel’s latest 13th- and 14th-gen desktop chips were plagued by two questions: what was going on, and, more importantly, would my processor be affected?

Mulad Images / Shutterstock

Eventually, Intel solved the problem of why desktop systems with both chips inside ran the risk of blue-screening: a combination of faulty microcode and elevated operating voltages that contributed to a bug known as Vmin Shift. But once the bug was identified, it needed to be fixed. And Intel ran through patch after patch to try to and finally nail down the problem, which lasted until September.

Right now, there’s no way of telling if your CPU has been damaged — well, except for a crash, of course. Extended warranties helped, of course, but the reputation of Intel’s Raptor Lake architecture was irrevocably tarnished. Thank goodness Arrow Lake was waiting in the wings, huh?

Intel 14th-gen Core HX notebooks: WIN

At least Intel’s Core HX mobile gaming processors succeeded, right? Well, sort of. The 14th-gen Core HX didn’t really offer that much more than the mobile 13th-gen Core HX did in terms of performance, and we all know that the combination of a Core HX and an Nvidia GeForce can product a howling dervish of a laptop.

Intel

As far as how the 14th-gen Core HX fared against the Ryzen 8000 mobile, reviews gave the edge to Intel in terms of single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, but handed AMD the crown in terms of power and battery life. The 14th-gen Core HX performed adequately, just without a whole lot of value. But it also offered AMD a chance to start stealing market share from Intel, which it eventually did. It’s not much of a win for Intel, but you have to take what you can get, right?

Intel’s desktop share decline: FAIL

Historically, Intel has commanded about 80 percent of the PC market. Everything that AMD never quite changes that equation. Except that in desktops, AMD is now approaching 30 percent of the desktop market. The Intel faithful may yawn and roll over, content that Intel would have to give up millions of PCs to AMD before it would lose its majority. But cynics may point at the deluge of bad Intel news and conclude that the market has decided accordingly.

In notebooks, however, Intel has maintained the 80-20 ratio. At stake are millions of PCs set to replace older Windows 10 hardware that will go out of support in October 2025 unless customers buy some extra time.

Windows on Arm: WIN

Intel these days is a big fat, target, and Qualcomm is taking aim. So far, however, it doesn’t seem like buyers are necessarily signing up to buy Windows on Arm PCs instead of Intel, surprisingly. (Mercury Research recently reported that combined Apple/Qualcomm Arm processor sales were 10.3 percent, flat with the quarter before.) That might be due to the unexpected success of Lunar Lake or just some old-fashioned arm-twisting under the table.

Still, a Dell XPS 13 powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon? Embarrassing. A crappy result? Intel saved face, sort of.

With Mediatek and powerhouse Nvidia rumored to be developing Windows-on-Arm processors, though, 2025 may be the year of the Arm PC.

The NPU hype: FAIL

Intel tried to convince us that its first Core Ultra chip, Meteor Lake, would usher in a wave of AI PCs. And they did — but save for Windows 11’s Windows Studio Effects, they really didn’t do too much.

So what was the NPU good for? Two things, apparently: to highlight that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform had an NPU that it was actually shipping, and to usher in the Core Ultra 200 / Lunar Lake, which finally had the horsepower to qualify as a Microsoft Copilot+ PC. If you bought into the AI hype with Meteor Lake, you probably ended up with a sour taste in your mouth.

Mark Hachman / IDG

At least for now, Copilot+ PCs offer just a handful of generative AI improvements within Windows 11. Recall, the feature expected to get customers slavering for local AI, still hasn’t officially shipped. Meanwhile, while both the Core Ultra 200 and the Ryzen AI 300 technically qualify for Copilot+ status, it’s only on paper. Both require Microsoft to issue Windows updates to enable Copilot+ features — though just one, Recall, has been enabled…and that’s just in preview. It’s still a huge mess.

Intel’s GPU situation: WIN and FAIL

Complicating Intel’s NPU issue was the recognition that while NPUs were more efficient at AI than anything else, there was another PC component that could execute AI far better: the GPU. If you owned a PC with a GPU inside of it — especially a desktop — you already owned the most powerful AI engine in the PC ecosystem. The problem? Intel didn’t have one.

ASRock / Amazon

The delays between Intel’s first-generation “Alchemist” and second-generation “Battlemage” parts was so big that Intel essentially fell out of the desktop GPU market. Yes, Battlemage (in the form of the Intel Arc B580) is here, it rocks, and its $249 price point will prove to be a boon for cash-strapped PC gamers. But as of this writing both AMD and Nvidia are expected to release far more powerful next-gen GPUs at CES in January 2025, including Nvidia’s Blackwell/GeForce 5000. All either company has to do is decide to release a stripped-down version that competes with Intel on price, and Intel could be toast — though that is unlikely to happen until later in the year, if the competition is even able to compete with the Arc B580’s spectacular value.

Another plus? Intel’s GPU driver issues are largely a thing of the past now.

Intel Core Ultra 200 / “Lunar Lake”: WIN

Let’s be real: Qualcomm is only competing against Intel. AMD is too. But Intel has to compete with both companies, on two different metrics: performance and low power. Lunar Lake, or the Core Ultra 200 series, is Intel’s response to the power-sipping Snapdragon X Elite. And Lunar Lake did very well, offering killer, competitive battery life with Qualcomm’s best. While the CPU performance was middling, Lunar Lake’s gaming performance certainly improved over the prior generation.