Intel is finally tackling the heat and power consumption issues that have plagued its desktop CPUs in recent years.
The company’s new flagship Core Ultra 200S series processors, which will be released on October 24th, prioritize performance per watt, aiming to run cooler and more efficiently than their 14th-generation predecessors.
These processors, codenamed Arrow Lake S, are also Intel’s first enthusiast desktop CPUs to feature a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) for accelerating AI tasks.
“Arrow Lake will deliver Intel’s best performance for enthusiasts in desktop and mobile,” said Josh Newman, general manager and VP of product marketing for client computing at Intel.
“It will deliver that performance at significantly lower power levels than previous generations of Intel enthusiast products, and Arrow Lake is also delivering the first Intel AI PC for enthusiasts in both the desktop and mobile performance space.”
The Arrow Lake architecture represents a significant effort by Intel to reduce the power draw of its chips. Both the 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core CPUs were known for being power-hungry, often consuming more power than their AMD counterparts.
The new Core Ultra 200S series chips aim to cut power consumption in half during basic desktop tasks, and Intel also claims they will reduce power usage during gaming.
“You’ll see about half the power consumption at the desktop,” explained Robert Hallock, vice president of Intel’s client computing group.
“You’ll also see about half the power when you’re just using a single core. Gaming will vary, from 50 to 150 watts, depending on the title and its behavior.”
During a recent press briefing, Intel showcased Assassin’s Creed Mirage running on the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K, comparing its performance to the current Core i9-14900K.
The Ultra 9 285K delivered similar or better performance while using 80 watts less power.
Intel also claimed that power consumption would drop by up to 58 watts in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, F1 24, and Total War: Pharaoh, with more extreme cases like Warhammer: Space Marines 2 showing reductions of up to 165 watts.
Intel also noted that the package temperatures of the Core Ultra 9 285K would decrease by around 13°C compared to the 14900K during 1080p gaming with a 360mm all-in-one cooler.
Though Intel is transitioning to a new LGA-1851 socket with these chips, existing all-in-one coolers should remain compatible.
Some cooler manufacturers may need to confirm whether additional standoffs are required, but Corsair confirmed that all of its coolers supporting LGA-1700 will also support LGA-1851.
Intel is employing its latest 3D packaging technology to construct the Core Ultra 200S series chips, reducing the package size by 33% compared to the 14th-generation chips. This redesign brings several notable changes.
The flagship Ultra 9 285K will feature 24 cores and 24 threads, with a boost clock of 5.7 GHz.
This is a slower boost clock and includes eight fewer threads than the previous 14900K, as Intel has opted to remove hyperthreading in favor of improved power efficiency. “We knew we could save the wattage by not including hyperthreading,” explained Hallock.
The Ultra 9 285K will feature eight performance cores (P-cores) and 16 efficiency cores (E-cores). The E-cores have been upgraded for greater efficiency in processing instructions, and latency has been reduced.
The chip will also include 36MB of L3 shared smart cache, 3MB of L2 cache per P-core (up from 2MB in the 14th Gen), and 4MB of L2 cache per E-core.
Intel claims that the Ultra 9 285K will be about 8% faster in single-thread tasks and approximately 15% faster in multi-threaded workloads compared to the 14900K.
When pitted against AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X and 7950X3D processors in gaming, the Ultra 9 285K is expected to hold its own, but Intel acknowledged that it would likely fall behind AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D in gaming performance.
“I think we’ll be about five percent behind X3D parts, which we feel really good about considering we have just the cache built into the CPU and the great IPC of the product,” Hallock stated.
Although this might be disappointing for gamers, Intel emphasized that the Ultra 9 285K will still lead in performance for most creator and AI tasks.
The chip includes an NPU capable of 13 TOPS, although this won’t be enough to qualify for Microsoft’s Copilot Plus features, which require a 40 TOPS NPU.
Intel hopes that as NPU adoption increases, developers will find ways to leverage this capability for offloading tasks and potentially for certain gaming features.
The new LGA-1851 socket also means new motherboards. The Core Ultra 200S desktop CPUs will require a Z890 motherboard. Intel’s 800-series chipset supports up to 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up to eight SATA 3.0 ports, and up to 32 USB 3.2 ports.
The platform can handle a total of 48 PCIe lanes, with 20 of those being Gen 5 from the CPU. There’s also integrated Wi-Fi 6E, 1GbE, Bluetooth 5.3, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports, while motherboard manufacturers can add discrete options for Wi-Fi 7, Thunderbolt 5, 2.5GbE, and Bluetooth 5.4.
Intel is also improving memory support with the Core Ultra 200S series and Z890 motherboards, which will now support up to DDR5-6400 memory, with a capacity of up to 48GB per DIMM and a maximum of 192GB.
Support for DDR4 has been dropped in this chipset. Additionally, these chips are Secure Core compliant, featuring three built-in hardware engines for security.
However, Intel hasn’t confirmed how long the LGA-1851 socket will be supported. AMD has committed to supporting its AM5 socket until at least 2027, but Intel remains silent on its future plans.
Rumors suggest that an Arrow Lake S refresh might be scrapped in favor of a leap to Nova Lake, meaning the LGA-1851 socket might not have a long lifespan.
Intel’s history of quickly replacing sockets, such as the switch from LGA-1200 in 2020 to LGA-1700 a year later, raises concerns that the cycle could repeat.
This announcement of Arrow Lake comes shortly after Intel resolved the Raptor Lake instability issues caused by excessive voltage. The new Arrow Lake chips will not be affected by these voltage problems.
The Core Ultra 200S chips will launch on October 24th, with the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K priced at $589, the Core Ultra 7 265K at $394, and the Core Ultra 5 245K at $309.
Intel will also offer KF variants of the Ultra 7 and Ultra 5 without the built-in GPU, priced at $379 and $294, respectively.
