Intel launches Arrow Lake-S for desktops led by the $589 Core Ultra 9 285K, new LGA1851 socket, Xe-LPG GPU, NPU, and CU-DIMM support in tow
From dying CPUs to performance-reducing mitigations and internal cost cuttings, the past few months have been a bumpy ride for Intel. But the company is placing all those behind to deliver the next generation of chips for desktops and high-end laptops.
After introducing Lunar Lake last month, Intel is now taking the wraps off this year's offerings for desktop and enthusiast laptops. Dubbed Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX, respectively, these new CPUs are positioned to offer increased performance-per-Watt with a sprinkling of some AI goodness.
According to Intel, Arrow Lake-S should allow for reduced package temperatures and power consumption compared to the Core i9-14900K.
Significant IPC gains with Lion Cove P-cores and Skymont E-cores
Like Lunar Lake, the new Arrow Lake-S Core Ultra 200S CPUs do not feature hyperthreading — the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K tops out at 24 cores and 24 threads.
Nevertheless, Intel is promising major IPC uplifts with the new Lion Cove P-cores (+9% over Raptor Cove) and Skymont E-cores (+32% over Gracemont).
Arrow Lake-S is built using Intel's Foveros 3D packaging tech that consists of individual tiles for the SoC, Compute, GPU, and I/O.
The Lion Cove P-cores now sport 3 MB L2 cache per core compared to 2 MB L2 in Raptor Lake Refresh. The E-core L2 cache and total CPU L3 cache remain the same at 4 MB and 36 MB, respectively.
First Alchemist Xe-LPG iGPU and 13 TOPS NPU for desktops
Arrow Lake-S is also the first Intel desktop platform to integrate the Xe-LPG Alchemist iGPU. There is no Xe2 Battlemage unlike what we've seen with Lunar Lake, however.
Nevertheless, the iGPU offers four Xe cores and four ray tracing units, support for the full Intel Arc software stack including XeSS and with up to 8 TOPS of total performance.
Interestingly, we also get to see a 13 INT8 TOPS NPU this time that Intel says should be able to handle agents, small language models, and media. Overall, the Arrow Lake-S platform offers a combined 36 TOPS of platform AI power.
New Intel 800 Series chipset and LGA1851 socket
Intel is shifting to a new LGA1851 socket with Arrow Lake, up from the LGA1700 that was in vogue up to Raptor Lake-Refresh. Also debuting is the new 800 Series chipset platform that offers a combined 48x PCIe lanes from the CPU and chipset.
The CPU offers an impressive 24 PCIe lanes, 20 of which are PCIe Gen 5 and 4 PCIe Gen 4. Additionally, there's support for up to four eSPI, 10x USB 3.2, 14x USB 2.0, and up to 8x SATA 3.0 connectivity.
2x Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6E with Bluetooth 5.3 comes integrated onto the platform for the first time with support for discrete Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7 options as well.
More granular overclocking with DLVR bypass and up to 192 GB DDR5-6400 CU-DIMM support
Arrow Lake-S also brings in new overclocking enhancements. Users can now tune the frequencies in 16.67 MHz clock increments on both the P-cores and E-cores. The BCLK for the SoC and Compute tiles are separate, allowing for independent adjustments.
Intel is also enabling DLVR bypass for extreme overclocking scenarios wherein the processor's power delivery can be substituted with an external power supply. Incidentally, some Z690 boards did offer DLVR bypass option in the BIOS, but the feature was canceled during Raptor Lake's development which rendered this option useless.
Also new is support for the latest clock unbuffered DIMM (CU-DIMM) memory standard that allows DDR5 speeds up to 9600 MT/s or more with XMP. The platform supports both ECC and non-ECC memory, with up to 48 GB per DIMM capacity and a maximum of 192 GB DDR5-6400 RAM.
Pricing and availability
Intel is being rather conservative with the number of Arrow Lake-S SKUs on offer. It is not clear whether we will get to see additional SKUs at CES, but for now we have a total of five CPUs starting from the Core Ultra 5 245KF all the way up to the Core Ultra 9 285K.
The Core Ultra 5 245KF retails for $294 SEP while the flagship Ultra 9 285K will set you back by $589 SEP — these prices are more or less similar to what we've seen with Raptor Lake-R last year.
All processors have a base TDP of 125 W. The Core Ultra 9 285K, Ultra 7 265K, and Ultra 7 265 KF have a PL2 of 250 W while the Ultra 5 SKUs top out at 159 W.
All major PC OEMs and system integrators are expected to offer Arrow Lake-S desktops from October 24.
Source(s)
Intel Press Brief
