Intel has officially unveiled its new generation of desktop processors – Core Ultra 200S or Arrow Lake-S. In new products, the manufacturer focuses on energy efficiency. The processors received completely new productive and energy-efficient cores, new integrated graphics and, for the first time for desktop CPUs, a built-in AI engine (NPU). Intel has also switched to a new naming scheme for desktop processors.
Image source: Intel
Today Intel presented only five models of the new series. All of them have an unlocked multiplier for manual overclocking (as indicated by the “K” suffix in the name) and have a power consumption rating (TDP) of 125 W. These chips are aimed at enthusiasts and gamers.
The flagship model of the Arrow Lake-S series is the Core Ultra 9 285K. The chip is equipped with 24 cores (eight high-performance Lion Cove and 16 energy-efficient Skymont) and can be automatically overclocked to 5.7 GHz. The processor includes four graphics cores based on Xe-LPG architecture. The Core Ultra 7 265K model received 20 cores (eight productive and 12 energy-efficient) and a maximum frequency of up to 5.5 GHz. Next comes the 14-core Core Ultra 5 245K model (six productive and eight energy-efficient cores), operating at frequencies up to 5.2 GHz. The Core Ultra 7 265KF and Core Ultra 5 245KF variants differ from them only in the absence of integrated graphics. Intel did not present a non-built-in version of the Core Ultra 9 285KF.
All Arrow Lake-S processors feature an integrated NPU with 13 TOPS (trillion operations per second) performance on INT8 floating point numbers. This is 3.7 times less than the NPU performance of Lunar Lake mobile processors.
The new high-performance Lion Cove cores in Arrow Lake-S have 18 I/O completion ports and up to 36 MB of L3 cache. The amount of L2 cache memory for high-performance cores in the new chips has increased from 2 to 3 MB per core. The “large” cores received a 9 percent increase in IPC (instructions executed per clock) compared to the high-performance Raptor Cove cores in the 14th generation Core processors.
The new efficient Skymont cores have 4 MB of L2 cache per cluster of four cores with double the bandwidth of their predecessors. They achieved a 32% increase in IPC for integer operations and up to 72% for floating point operations compared to Gracemont.
Intel Arrow Lake-S is the first desktop processor to feature Intel Xe graphics cores based on the Xe-LPG architecture. “Embedded” supports software and drivers for Arc series video cards. In addition, it claims to support the DirectX 12 Ultimate API package, but you shouldn’t expect miracles from the new graphics included in the Core Ultra 200S. Its performance in games will be mediocre. At the same time, the “embedded” one has the Xe media engine, so it supports all the same encoding capabilities as Alchemist (AV1/AVC/HEVC encoding, etc.). Also, the integrated graphics of the new processors support DP4a instructions, which provides it with support for Intel XeSS scaling technology.
As mentioned above, Intel is focusing on energy efficiency in the new Arrow Lake-S desktop processors. For example, the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K consumes up to 58% less power in productivity tasks compared to Raptor Lake Refresh processors, as evidenced by four internal company tests.
In games, the new processor consumes 73 W less compared to the Core i9-14900K (using the base profile settings). The lower the power consumption, the lower the operating temperature. Intel says the Core Ultra 200S chips operate at temperatures 13 degrees Celsius lower than their predecessors when using 360 mm LCS systems.
As for the performance of the new chips in games, everything was said yesterday, as part of a major leak. The same flagship Core Ultra 9 285K is slower than the Core i9-14900K and AMD Ryzen 9950X – a price for reduced power consumption. The graphs below speak for themselves. However, knowing Intel and its desire to smooth out corners in internal tests, only independent tests will show the real picture of the performance of new processors in games.
It was also noted above that Arrow Lake-S became the first Intel desktop processors in a long time for which the manufacturer changed the naming scheme. The company initially planned to release Meteor Lake-S desktop processors as part of the Core Ultra 100 series, but eventually abandoned this plan. The chipset naming scheme has not changed, but the serial number has changed. Arrow Lake-S will work with motherboards based on Intel 800 series chipsets.
Today Intel also introduced the new Z890 chipset. This is the flagship solution for older motherboards costing $200S and above. Arrow Lake-S processors will require the new LGA 1851 processor socket. It is currently unknown whether boards with this socket will support more than one generation of processors.
Perhaps the most important feature of the new LGA 1851 platform is support for 20 PCIe 5.0 lanes instead of 16 in its predecessors. This means that new generation video cards with PCIe 5.0 support will not be limited to eight lanes while simultaneously using PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives in PCs. In total, the new platform supports 48 PCIe lanes (20 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes via the chipset, another four PCIe 4.0 lanes via the CPU), up to 10 USB 3.2 ports, up to 14 USB 2.0 ports and up to eight SATA III.
The dual-channel memory controller supports DDR5-6400 modules up to 48 GB, meaning the system can be equipped with up to 192 GB of RAM in total. UDIMM, CU-DIMM, SO-DIMM and CSO-DIMM modules are supported, and ECC support is also noted.
The new series of processors will be offered at prices similar to or even cheaper than their predecessors. Thus, the flagship model Core Ultra 9 285K is priced at $589, and the Core Ultra 7 265K model received a price tag of $394. You can also choose the Core Ultra 7 265KF option without integrated graphics for $379. As for the 14-core Core Ultra 5 245K model, it is priced at $309, and the version of the chip without integrated graphics is priced at $294.
Since new processors will also require purchasing a new motherboard, you will have to shell out at least another $200S for the latter. In addition, you will have to buy DDR5 RAM modules (if you don’t have them), since the Z890 chipset does not support DDR4 RAM, unlike the previous Z790.
Intel Core Ultra 200S desktop processors will go on sale starting October 24.
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