Intel's highly anticipated Arrow Lake is finally here with new AI CPUs for gaming

Intel announced a new family of desktop and laptop processors codenamed Arrow Lake. We've been following the leaks and slow trickle of official information on this new generation of Intel chips for some time, replacing the hot, power-hungry, and somewhat disappointing Raptor Lake Refresh. Competing against AMD's AM5 platform with Zen 4 and Zen 5 processors, Intel has been on the backfoot these past few generations, largely due to the company's struggle with shrinking its manufacturing process. This resulted in considerably less efficient processors launched to the general public.

With Arrow Lake, Intel claims a power reduction of up to 30% compared to 14th-gen processors, and AI buzzword marketing is everywhere. Although these chips will suck less power through the socket, performance is claimed to be up to 10% higher for multi-threaded workloads and graphics have seen a bump of two times what's found in Raptor Lake Refresh. Not bad. Intel did manage to shift the focus away from AI and touched on performance for gaming.

Meet the new Intel Arrow Lake processors

Representing the Arrow Lake platform on the desktop is the mighty flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, essentially the direct successor to the Intel Core i9-14900K. It has 24 cores, consisting of 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores, 24 threads (Hyperthreading is out the window), 4 GPU cores, and a maximum boost speed of 5.7 GHz. It's a slight reduction compared to the outgoing 14900K, which had 32 threads and a 6.0 GHz boost speed, though that processor almost hit more than 300W at maximum load. Intel is pushing efficiency gains here without sacrificing performance, so results should be similar.

The rest of the SKUn line-up consists of an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K with 8 P-cores and 12 E-cores and an entry-level Intel Core Ultra 5 245K with 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores. A "KF" variant of the Intel Core Ultra 5 and Core Ultra 7 will also be available, which strips away the GPU for a slightly more affordable MSRP. Every CPU within the Arrow Lake-S family of desktop chips has a tera operations per second (TOPS) score of 13. This has been handled by a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) within the PC but Intel is combining the NPU with the CPU and GPU on the package to leverage more computing power.

Thermal design power (TDP) tops at 250W for the Intel Core Ultra 9 and 7 series with the Core Ultra 5 CPUs at 159W. Intel shared a reduction of up to 58% in power consumption compared to previous-generation chips. Intel has consistently been the leader in single-core performance and Arrow Lake is seemingly no exception. While we have to get these chips in for our testing, the chip maker claims a 1T performance gain of 8% over Raptor Lake Refresh and a 4% win over the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K — nT gains are a similar story with Intel claiming a 13% win over AMD's flagship Zen 5 CPU.

In released official test data, Intel showed 165W less power being used by the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K over the 14900K in games with similar performance results across a wide selection of tests. Some showed lower performance, others showed notable gains, so it worked out to an even ground with the Arrow Lake CPU drawing considerably less electricity. It's also good to see Intel pushing the Intel Core Ultra 5 series of CPUs as the essential picks for pure gaming systems. The Core Ultra 7 is a better match for 4K and more intensive gaming with productivity in mind, and the Core Ultra 9 is reserved for PC enthusiasts.

More changes under the hood

Arrow Lake marks a considerable upgrade for Intel. This isn't a simple refresh like we've seen with the previous couple of generations. The company is going all-in with AI, much like the rest of the industry, and Arrow Lake is Intel's first with CPU AI, GPU AI, and NPU. At the surface, we've got support for integrated Wi-Fi 6E, Thunderbolt 4, PCIe 5.0, a revamped Xe GPU, new Lion Cove P-cores and Skymont E-cores, and a silicon security engine. The primary goal for Intel with Arrow Lake is efficiency and power reduction. The changes are substantial with some interesting results from Intel.

Arrow Lake HX chips have seen a 33% reduction in package size, yet still include up to 16 E-cores and 8 P-cores like the flagship Arrow Lake-S Intel Core Ultra 9. The new P-cores have been "re-architected" for efficient performance. In other words, Intel pushed through architectural changes for lowering power draw. There's AI-based power management, wider predict and scheduling, and optimization for power, performance, and area (PPA). E-cores saw changes over the previous generation with increased workload coverage, double vector and AI throughput, and scalability.

Compared to previous-gen cores, the new Lion Cove and Skymont cores should offer considerable gains in efficiency, allowing Intel to reduce the amount of power drawn by the package, resulting in a cooler and more stable system. Because we've seen issues with how everything is scheduled on these new Intel chips, the company worked on new E-core prediction, P-core telemetry infrastructure, and prediction model. These changes with the Intel Thread Director should allow the CPU to more effectively handle various workloads across P-cores and E-cores.

The all-new Intel 800-series chipset joins the Arrow Lake desktop processors with plenty of I/O support and up to 48 PCIe lanes when combined with a 15th-gen CPU. Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are supported with Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 both on the specs sheet (Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7 being discrete). Intel has also revamped the overclocking capabilities of its platform and processors, offering 16.6MHz steps for granular core clock changes, DLVR bypass, features in the Intel eXtreme tuning utility, the ability to bypass voltage limits at lower temperatures, and new XMP and CUDIMM DDR5 memory support.

Speaking of RAM, Arrow Lake can support up to DDR5-6400 at 48GB per DIMM for a 192GB total maximum. For the graphics, Intel added full DirectX 12 support throughout the Xe GPU with up to two times the available compute resources, higher clock frequencies, and architectural efficiency gains. This should provide us with the claimed two times better performance over previous-gen processors and be most noticeable on laptops without an available discrete card.

Available soon with laptop chips arriving in 2025

Intel is wasting no time in getting these new desktop chips to market. To battle AMD and attempt to stop the loss of market share to Team Red, Intel will make the new desktop processors available for pre-order on October 24. For those of you who prefer using a portable device, Intel Core Ultra H and HX series mobile processors for laptops will arrive in Q1 2025.