For all the progress AMD has made with its Zen desktop CPUs in recent years, Intel has managed to maintain one critical edge over its longtime rival: gaming performance. For those looking to get every frame possible from the latest AAA games, the company’s latest Core 5/7/9 often outperformed their AMD counterparts. Historically, this performance has come at the expense of energy efficiency and heat. Intel’s top 13th generation processors are absolute beasts of power. This limited their appeal, especially as small form factor computers became more popular.
On Thursday, Intel detailed the long-awaited Arrow Lake processors and announced five new models on October 24. With new CPUs, Intel promises a paradigm shift. Compared to the previous generation of Raptor Lake chips, the company said it aims to reduce power consumption by 40 percent and internal package temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius. According to benchmarks Intel shared ahead of today’s announcement, the company did just that.
Intel’s new flagship Ultra 9 285K features a 24-core CPU design with eight “Lion Cove” performance cores and 16 “Skymont” efficiency cores and a maximum clock speed of 5.7GHz. Along with the rest of the current Arrow Lake family, it also comes with a neural processing unit (NPU), a first for one of Intel’s desktop CPUs. But it’s not these features that are interesting about the 285K and its siblings.
In “light-threaded” workloads, including tasks such as Zoom calls and selected Cinebench benchmarks, Intel drew 285K, up to 58 percent less power than the 14900K in the company’s 14th-gen flagship. When it comes to gaming performance, the results are even more interesting. In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2for example, Intel says the 285K runs the game 4% faster on average, while drawing 165W less system power. even in GPU-intensive games like Black Myth: Wukong, The 285K offers promising efficiency gains, with Intel noting that the CPU draws 34 fewer watts of total system power compared to the 14900K.
These efficiency improvements translate into equally impressive thermal gains, with Intel showing its data running at 285K during gaming loads, about 13 degrees cooler than the 14900K on average. The new processor offers similar gaming performance even when users limit power consumption from Intel’s default of 250W to 175W or 125W. This is exciting news for those who like to overclock their CPU or plan to go with an ITX case and motherboard for their next build.
“I think it’s safe to say this is a big turnaround for our desktop portfolio,” said Robert Halleck, Intel’s general manager of AI and Technical Marketing. “I’m sure your test will match the numbers we talked about today.”
On paper, Arrow Lake is just what Intel needs to get back to sustainability; it’s the most efficient family of desktop processors the company has produced in a long time. However, it’s less clear whether that alone will be enough to turn Intel’s fortunes around.
In the short term, the company faces rival AMD, which is more competitive than ever. It’s hard to say how much of Arrow Lake’s long-term efficiency can be attributed solely to Intel engineers. as recently 2022the company said it will build the new processors using a combination of its 20A manufacturing process and TSMC’s 3-nanometer technology. But then Intel posted a $1.6 billion loss in the second quarter of this year and said it would More than 15,000 jobs were cut is trying to cut costs by $10 billion. Part of that plan was involved full outsourcing Arrow Lake third party production. At the time, Intel did not specifically name TSMC. However, the list of companies capable of producing silicon at the density and scale required for Arrow Lake is very short. According to information, Intel is hitting a final jam it is clear that the company still has a long way to go to get the next generation 18A process off the ground.
When the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K arrives on October 24, it will cost $589. For those looking for a more affordable entry into Intel’s Arrow Lake ecosystem, the company will also offer the 14-core Ultra 5 245KF for $294 and the 20-core Ultra 7 265K for $394. Along with its KF sibling, which comes without an integrated Intel Xe GPU, the 265K appears to be the dark horse of Intel’s Arrow Lake line. The company says the 265K runs about 15 degrees cooler than the 14900K and draws up to 188W less system power.
