Disappointing Intel Arrow Lake leak alleges severe software issues and slow Core Ultra 9 285K gaming performance

We are right on the cusp of Core Ultra 200S “Arrow Lake” reviews. Unsurprisingly, it is also the perfect time for leaks regarding the new CPUs. This is exactly what has happened, as Moore’s Law Is Dead has now revealed some quite damaging information about the new Arrow Lake processors.

Before we move on to discuss further, we have to warn the readers to take the information as it is and try not to form an opinion before the reviews officially drop.

Disappointing Core Ultra 9 285K gaming performance

MLID claims that, per the discussions the leaker has had with reviewers, game developers, and YouTubers, Arrow Lake does not improve gaming performance. In gaming, the Core Ultra 9 285K allegedly not only loses to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, the Core i9-14900K, and the Ryzen 9 9950X but one review also had the Arrow Lake flagship lose to the two-generation-old Core i9-13900K.

The Core Ultra 7 265K also reportedly lost “in one set of averages” to the Ryzen 7 7700X (Available on Amazon). This is quite troubling since the Ryzen 7 7700X is a direct competitor to the Core i5-13600K and not the Core i7.

For non-gaming workloads, the Core Ultra 9 285K seems to be on the same level as the Ryzen 9 9950X (Available on Amazon).

Core Ultra 9 285K issues

Gaming performance might not be the only glaring weakness of Arrow Lake CPUs, as MLID claims that virtually everyone he’s talked to has reported a ton of issues. These issues include extreme variance in performance per multiple sets of review data, constant Blue Screen of Death errors, and even games kicking the player out of the servers due to a false positive identification of cheating software when running the Core Ultra 9 285K.

The Arrow Lake problems are allegedly so bad that multiple reviewers are wondering if there is a hardware flaw. However, the leaker has gotten confirmation from someone at Intel that Arrow Lake doesn't have hardware issue, rather the problems are due to bad software.

To sum it all up, Arrow Lake seems to just be a generation that delivers only efficiency gains and some productivity performance uplifts and not much more. When it comes to Intel’s competition against Zen 5, the Core Ultra 200S chips supposedly have no performance advantage. And, with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D on the horizon, it seems Intel fans will have to wait for next year's Panther Lake for desktops to finally get more gaming performance to compete with Zen 5 X3D.

Combined with the reported issues, Core Ultra 200 processors might be in for a rough landing when reviews drop.