Core Ultra 200S "Arrow Lake": Intel's new desktop CPUs launch on October 24

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For the launch of the Core Ultra 200S desktop processors, also known as Arrow Lake, Intel is initially sending the overclockable K variants Core Ultra 9 285K, Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 5 245K into the race at the end of October. Intel is also offering a slightly cheaper KF version of the Ultra 5 and 7 with a deactivated graphics unit. For the first time, the manufacturer is using a chiplet design for desktop processors: instead of a monolithic die, there are several smaller chips, called tiles by Intel. Most of these do not come from the company's own semiconductor plants, but from the contract manufacturer TSMC. Together with significantly boosted cores, this is intended to increase efficiency in particular.

The top-of-the-range Core Ultra 9 285K model comes with eight performance and 16 efficiency cores. The core configuration remains identical to its predecessors, the Core i9-14900K and Core i9-14900KS. However, the Core Ultra 9 achieves a maximum of 5.7 GHz, while its predecessors reached 6 GHz and more. The number of threads is also reduced from 32 to 24, as the eight new performance cores (Lion Cove architecture) are no longer capable of Hyper-Threading or Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), as in the Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake) mobile processors.

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Revised core architectures

Nevertheless, Intel promises an 8 percent increase in performance compared to the Core i9-14900K in single-threading with one core and 15 percent in multi-threading with all cores. Intel has significantly boosted the cores so that this works despite a lower clock rate and fewer threads. The decoder units of the performance cores can now translate eight instead of six x86 instructions into micro-ops. The micro-op cache delivers up to 12 instructions (previously: 8). Intel has rearranged the execution units so that each is connected to the schedulers via a separate port. As a special feature, in addition to 3 MByte level 2 cache (previously 2 MByte) and 192 KByte level 1 cache (previously: 48 KByte), there is now a level 0 cache with a size of 48 KByte per P core.

The changes to the "Skymont" efficiency cores are similarly extensive. These are still located in a cluster of four with 4 MByte L2 cache each. They have been given a third decoder block, which increases the decoding performance to up to 8 micro-ops. The number of execution units has increased from 19 to 28, and floating point performance in particular is set to double.

Many chiplets, but only one from Intel

The cores with the up to 36 MB shared level 3 cache are located in a compute tile, which TSMC produces using its 3-nanometer N3B process. In addition, there is the SoC tile (TSMC N6) with the NPU, PCIe root hub, display engine and memory controller. With clocked unbuffered DIMMs (CUDIMMs), the Arrow Lake processors can control DDR5-6400 RAM according to the specification. Such modules have an additional amplifier chip on the memory modules, which processes the clock signal from the processor. The first modules are expected in the coming weeks, but standard UDIMMs will also work.

The IO tile (TSMC N6) provides additional PCIe lanes as well as Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt. The graphics tile (TSMC N5) contains four Xe cores with a total of 512 graphics shaders. This makes the integrated GPU around twice as powerful as that of the 14th Core-i generation. There is also a filler tile without circuits to close a gap in the chip mosaic. The base tile, manufactured in 22 nanometers, is the only one from Intel's own production, on which all other tiles sit and interconnect them.

The processors use the new LGA1851 CPU socket, which is why new mainboards with Series 800 chipsets are required. The latter provide up to 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes. The processor itself provides 20 PCIe 5.0 and four PCIe 4.0 lanes.

Same performance with half the power consumption

In terms of efficiency, Intel promises that the Core Ultra 285K will achieve the same performance as its predecessor, the Core i9-14900K, at 253 watts for most applications with a thermal budget of 125 watts. Intel illustrates the gaming efficiency using two test systems with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090: At the same frame rate, the overall system with the Core Ultra 285K should consume around 165 watts less electrical power than the 14900K PC.

However, Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 9 are still allowed to consume 250 watts permanently. Intel does not specify absolute frame rates. Based on the comparison with the predecessor, however, it can be seen that the gaming performance remains at the level of the Core i9-14900K, which is why the Core Ultra will probably have to admit defeat to the previous AMD Ryzen 7000X3D. The new Ryzen 9000X3D is yet to be released. For applications, there is likely to be a close neck-and-neck race with the Ryzen 9 9950X.

The starting prices are roughly on a par with the predecessors. Intel is asking 589 US dollars for the Core Ultra 285K, which equates to around 640 euros including VAT. This would make the top-of-the-range variant 50 euros cheaper than the Core i9-14900KS. The cheaper Core Ultra 5 and 7 cost between 300 and 400 US dollars (320 to 430 euros), i.e. around 60 euros more than the predecessors Core i5-14600K and Core i7-14700K, although these have fallen significantly in price in recent weeks.

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(chh)