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Intel Arrow Lake: What we know about 15th generation chips

Intel Arrow Lake: What we know about 15th generation chips

Intel Arrow Lake or Core Ultra 200 is the next generation of processors from Team Blue. The successor to its 14th generation desktop CPUs, Arrow Lake will launch in October 2024 and will be the first desktop processor to carry the new Intel Core Ultra branding. It was originally thought that Arrow Lake could launch alongside a Bartlett Lake CPU series, but these are now rumored to launch in early 2025.

Over the last year we’ve been dealing with leaks and rumors, but now Intel has told the truth and given us all sorts of exciting details. Here’s everything you need to know about Arrow Lake.

This slide shows Intel’s approach this generation: comparable performance with greater efficiency. Intel

Prices and availability

Intel announced pricing for its Arrow Lake K-series core processors and planned launch date in October 2024. They were originally unveiled on October 10th, with the launch date for the first CPUs set for October 24th.

As for pricing, the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K will launch with a suggested retail price of $589. The Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF will launch at prices of $394 and $379, respectively. The more modest Core Ultra 5 245K and 245KF will hit shelves priced at $309 and $294, respectively.

If these chips prove popular, the initial shortage could temporarily impact pricing and drive up costs soon after launch.

Arrow Lake specifications

Like recent generations of Intel processors, Arrow Lake is a tile-based design, with performance and efficiency cores running alongside an integrated GPU and other accelerators for AI and video transcoding.

After months of leaks and rumors, Intel released the hard specs for Arrow Lake on October 10th.

Cores (P+E) / threads Base clock (P/E ratio) Boost clock (KGV) Total Cache (L2+Smart Cache) graphic Performance (Base/Max)
Core Ultra 9 285K 24 (8+16) / 24 3.7GHz / 3.2GHz 5.7GHz / 4.6GHz 60MB Intel graphics 125W/250W
Core Ultra 7 265K 20 (8+12) / 20 3.9GHz / 3.3GHz 5.5GHz / 4.6GHz 50MB Intel graphics 125W/250W
Core Ultra 7 265KF 20 (8+12) / 20 3.9GHz / 3.3GHz 5.5GHz / 4.6GHz 50MB N/A 125W/250W
Core Ultra 5 245K 14 (6+8) / 14 4.2GHz / 3.6GHz 5.2GHz / 4.6GHz 38MB Intel graphics 125W/159W
Core Ultra 5 245KF 14 (6+8) / 14 4.2GHz / 3.6GHz 5.2GHz / 4.6GHz 38MB N/A 125W/159W

This specification confirmed the long-standing rumor that Intel would abandon hyperthreading for this generation. This reduces the number of total threads for each of these CPUs compared to their predecessors. This doesn’t appear to have affected multi-threading performance, but along with the slight clock speed reductions this generation, this may be where the efficiency gains have been achieved.

While the specs suggest that these CPUs can deliver up to 250 watts, Intel has promised significantly higher gaming efficiency for the 14th generation. Combined with the lower temperatures, gaming is said to rarely exceed 165W, although performance will only be the same as the last generation of 14900K or even slightly worse.

Core Ultra Performance film.
Intel

The performance cores will be based on a new Lion Cove architecture, while the efficiency cores will be based on a new Skymont design. There’s also a new generation of onboard Xe graphics that Intel says can be up to twice as fast as their predecessors, as well as a new neural processing unit (NPU) that can itself deliver 13 tera operations per second (TOPS), with another potential 8 TOPS from the GPU and 15 TOPS from the CPU.

Arrow Lake is based on a new LGA 1851 socket design with more pins than the 13th and 14th generation designs on the LGA 1700 socket. This means you’ll need a new motherboard for Arrow Lake processors and won’t be able to upgrade directly from 12th, 13th, or 14th generation PCs. However, it will have the same physical size as LGA 1700, so coolers should be compatible.

This new socket also brings with it a new generation of motherboard chipsets as well as mandatory DDR5 – with this generation there is no longer DDR4 on Intel motherboards. Memory speed support increases to DDR5 6400 with up to 48GB per stick and a maximum of 192GB in each system. Arrow Lake will also offer support for Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt 4, with the possibility for motherboard manufacturers to add support for Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7.

We initially thought that Intel would use its own 20A node for Arrow Lake. However, During IFA 2024, it was announced that the company was shifting gears towards developing a smaller node: 18A. Arrow Lake is therefore said to be manufactured by “external partners”, which most likely means Intel’s competitor manufacturer TSMC.

Bartlett Lake

There have also been rumors that Intel will introduce a new Bartlett Lake design for low-end processors alongside Arrow Lake in 2024, leveraging the older Intel 4 3nm design. Although this may still happen in the future, Intel has not announced any plans to introduce additional CPU series in 2024. In fact, the most likely outcome is that Bartlett Lake will hit the market in 2025. It’s designed to continue offering support for the LGA1700 socket, and provide competition for AMD’s aging but certainly not unpopular Ryzen 5000 generation, which continues to find support in new designs like that 5700X3D and new 5000 GT series.

Barlett Lake is reportedly based on updated Raptor Lake silicon designs and will therefore be compatible with existing LGA 1700 platforms. It should also have DDR4 memory, potentially making it a cheaper upgrade path for Intel fans.

The latest rumors from September 2024 suggest that Bartlett Lake will be available in some unique configurations, including a pure performance core design with up to 12 P cores and a more typical P+E core design with the usual Intel configurations .

Bartlett BTL-S SKUs.

Hybrid is planned for early January 25, P-Core only for Q3 2025 pic.twitter.com/ueqTJZBDi

— Jaykihn (@jaykihn0) July 15, 2024

While these are unlikely to offer performance comparable to Arrow Lake, the addition of the LGA 1700 socket is great for anyone using an existing Intel platform, especially if your high-end CPU is having issues with the latest Intel fallout has.

Arrow Lake performance

We don’t have any third-party benchmarks for Arrow Lake yet, but we’ll learn more as we get closer to the October 24 release date. For now, Intel has given us some of its own performance graphs to review, which, while showing impressive efficiency gains, aren’t particularly exciting from a pure performance perspective.

Gen-on-gen benchmarks for Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs.
Intel

In the graph above, we can see that the 285K has some slight performance improvements compared to its predecessors in certain games, while consuming significantly less power. However, it’s clear from the graphic below that while certain games get some benefit from playing on Intel hardware, other popular games like. B. there is a big performance advantage for AMD’s best games Cyberpunk 2077.

Intel Arrow Lake performance compared to Ryzen 9000.
Intel

Intel also mentioned the lower temperatures when gaming, which is always welcome but doesn’t necessarily indicate higher performance. In fact, this would normally mean the opposite.

Temperatures for Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs.
Intel

In terms of raw CPU performance, Intel claims its 24-core, 24-thread 285K can beat the 16-core, 32-thread AMD 9950X and the previous generation 14900K in some CPU benchmarks.

Multi-threaded performance for Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs.
Intel

This raw power reportedly leads to some more tangible benefits in certain creative applications and in certain scenarios. However, even on Intel’s own slide, the overall differences appear to be rather negligible.

Intel Arrow Lake performance in Creator apps.
Intel

These performance results from Intel don’t paint a particularly rosy picture of Arrow Lake. Yes, they are more efficient and may offer slightly better productivity performance than the AMD alternatives in certain scenarios, but it’s rarely dramatic, and in gaming – somewhat AMD’s first Ryzen 9000 series processors weren’t exactly praised – that’s a mistake at best.

That won’t be enough to compete with AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 9000 X3D CPUs, which should significantly raise the performance bar for gaming.

Cautiously pessimistic

Intel has had a difficult few years, and it was very much hoped that Arrow Lake would be a saving grace design that would bring Intel back on par with AMD in performance and efficiency and be a real step up from the unimpressive 14th generation Raptor Lake refresh. generation offers. Based on Intel’s own metrics, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and if this generation is at its best, that doesn’t bode well.

When Intel underpromises, there’s always the possibility of overdelivering, but in this case we won’t hold our breath. Look out for more information in the coming weeks, with the full review coming on October 24th.