Insider Foresees Intel Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs Arriving in Desktop & Mobile Forms

[T0@st]

The oft-rumored status of Intel's refreshed generation of Arrow Lake processors (ARL-R) was the topic of much debate in 2023. By September 2024, certain industry watchdogs believed that the endeavor had ended. Early last month, Golden Pig Upgrade proposed that Team Blue leadership had resurrected the troubled project—at least with "ARL-S Refresh" desktop CPUs. Earlier today, the noted leaker of inside information returned to the topic of Arrow Lake Refresh. According to industry moles, the launch of refreshed desktop processors (on LGA 1851) is confirmed.

An extended timeline was disclosed in Golden Pig Upgrade's latest musing: "Arrow Lake HX Refresh is confirmed to return. Don't criticize the interface for only one generation. AI PCs are getting bigger and stronger." Given that ARL-HX-equipped high-end notebooks and mini PCs—with Core Ultra 7 200 series APUs—are relatively new arrivals, a mild update later on in the year could be considered pointless. Intel has committed themselves to a launch of Panther Lake mobile processors (PTL-H) in the second half of 2025. As disclosed by past leaks, the "beefing up" of onboard NPUs—to Lunar Lake-esque standards—is a reported goal; at least with Arrow Lake-S.



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[Daven]

I no longer see Intel as an enthusiast DIY component provider. They are more like a hybrid between Broadcom/Qualcomm and TSMC. I'm sure Intel has good kits for networking, edge, data center, day-to-day corporate/government client tasks, etc. But as far as using them for gaming desktops/laptops, handhelds, workstations and any enthusiast/graphics/GPGPU related compute tasks, AMD, Nvidia and Apple have them beat hands down times 1000. Whatever happens with Intel, I don't think many of us here will have much need of their products going forward or ever again.

 

[phints]

I don't really agree, looking at gaming 1% lows for the 265K (after the bios fixes etc) it's on par or slightly better than the 9700X/9900X, and fairly even in productivity. Efficiency is on par too. It's still overpriced, but the only thing it's behind with is gaming specifically on the 7000/9000 Ryzen X3D CPUs, and yes those are simply amazing.

 

[docnorth]

I no longer see Intel as an enthusiast DIY component provider. They are more like a hybrid between Broadcom/Qualcomm and TSMC. I'm sure Intel has good kits for networking, edge, data center, day-to-day corporate/government client tasks, etc. But as far as using them for gaming desktops/laptops, handhelds, workstations and any enthusiast/graphics/GPGPU related compute tasks, AMD, Nvidia and Apple have them beat hands down times 1000. Whatever happens with Intel, I don't think many of us here will have much need of their products going forward or ever again.

Ok AMD and Nvidia I get it. But Apple for enthusiast/DIY market??

 

[kondamin]

A other Waste of a product cycle on a horrible node that only costs them money

 

[NoLoihi]

Hey, @Daven, do you have reason to tarnish Intel or do you do it for the lulz? … You’re being smart as well: Nothing in that post is outright refutable, it’s just a bad rep dressed as a view of your own.

 

[efikkan]

As I've stated before, I don't have any confidence in any such "leaks" from random forums.
Whether Intel has a refresh or new lineup coming this fall has nothing to do with it, if there are new steppings or redesigns it has to be planned all along, unless it's just renaming of models.

I don't really agree, looking at gaming 1% lows for the 265K (after the bios fixes etc) it's on par or slightly better than the 9700X/9900X, and fairly even in productivity. Efficiency is on par too. It's still overpriced, but the only thing it's behind with is gaming specifically on the 7000/9000 Ryzen X3D CPUs, and yes those are simply amazing.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that so many spread this stuff which is at best misrepresentation.

Arrow Lake is undoubtedly faster overall than Raptor Lake, and as we've seen deliver strong Linux performance. And it does so not only more efficiently, but without running into extreme throttling (or running with removal of thermal limits). It also performs very well in many productive loads, and mainly falls short in edge cases or things which are within margin of error. (Don't forget the competition also have much larger sample variance than Intel.) So I really don't think there would be many buying Raptor Lake over Arrow Lake today.

The main concern would rather be whether it's a big enough step over the predecessor, and how well it fares against the competition. AMD does have a significant edge on anything using AVX-512, which is growing over time. Anyways, anyone looking to upgrade will probably be running Comet Lake or Zen 3 or older.

Meanwhile platform IO is a step above for Intel; GPU + 2x M.2 + 8 chipset lanes, can be used as e.g. 4x M.2 or 3x M.2 + 10G NIC at almost full speed(or more at lower speed). Meanwhile AMD has wasted lanes on USB4, leaving GPU + 1x M.2 + 4 chipset lanes, so anything beyond 2x M.2s would mean sacrificing speed one way or another. This can have significance for how long you keep a system before upgrading, therefore affecting overall value. Yet keep min mind "fully featured" motherboards aren't exactly cheap for either vendor.

 

[Editor666]

I no longer see Intel as an enthusiast DIY component provider. They are more like a hybrid between Broadcom/Qualcomm and TSMC. I'm sure Intel has good kits for networking, edge, data center, day-to-day corporate/government client tasks, etc. But as far as using them for gaming desktops/laptops, handhelds, workstations and any enthusiast/graphics/GPGPU related compute tasks, AMD, Nvidia and Apple have them beat hands down times 1000. Whatever happens with Intel, I don't think many of us here will have much need of their products going forward or ever again.

hello. Until the last updates, I would have somewhat agreed with you. But now things are different, and who knows what's coming next. In terms of price/performance, even for gaming very good, the 265K is the best all-around CPU for money in that moment on the market for me.