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Intel reportedly promises major Arrow Lake efficiency gain and harmless microcode patch for Raptor Lake issues

Intel Arc Battlemage lineup apparently will not have a high-end GPU. (Image source: Intel, Anton Zaharchenko on Unsplash, edited)
Intel Arc Battlemage lineup apparently will not have a high-end GPU. (Image source: Intel, Anton Zaharchenko on Unsplash, edited)
At an event held in China, Intel has reportedly issued some updates regarding the impact of the upcoming BIOS microcode patch for Raptor Lake CPUs, Arrow Lake efficiency, and the release date for Battlemage GPUs. Among other things, Intel has claimed that the microcode patch will have no effect on the turbo clock speeds of 13th and 14th-gen processors.

It would be an understatement to say that Intel is going through a rough patch. The company is not only facing tough competition from competitors like AMD in the CPU space, and arguably losing that race, but controversies like Raptor Lake stability issues have also hit the company hard. Add to it the financial troubles and it is easy to see how Intel needs some positive news, if not for the company, then for Team Blue’s fanbase.

This is exactly what might have happened as Intel has seemingly shared some positive developments at the Intel x Asus event held recently in China.

Microcode update for 13th and 14th-gen issues won’t affect turbo clock speeds

First up, Intel has reportedly shared that the upcoming microcode update meant to partially address the Raptor Lake stability issues won’t have any negative impact on the turbo boost clocks of the K-series 13th and 14th-gen CPUs. Intel also reportedly claimed that the Raptor Lake processors will retain their overclocking abilities and baseline performance after the deployment of the BIOS patch.

Since Intel’s “Baseline Profile” already takes a toll on the performance, it is certainly welcome news to know that the microcode patch won’t decrease the performance further.

Arrow Lake power consumption

While Intel didn’t share a ton of news regarding Arrow Lake, the company seemingly confirmed that Arrow Lake CPUs consume 100 W less power than Raptor Lake processors. Intel’s 13th and 14th-gen desktop processors, especially the high-end chips, consume considerably more energy than their AMD Ryzen 7000 counterparts. With the latest Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 CPUs, AMD has further widened this efficiency gap. 

So, it is crucial for Intel to ensure Arrow Lake CPUs bring significant improvement in the efficiency department.

Moreover, Intel also shared at the event that the desktop Core Ultra 200 CPUs will bring a noticeable performance improvement. That said, Team Blue has decided to keep the Arrow Lake performance under wraps for now and didn’t reveal any concrete figures.

Next-generation Battlemage release date

Finally, it is not a secret that Intel is hard at work on the next-generation Battlemage GPUs featuring the Xe2 architecture. Based on previous reports, Intel could release three Battlemage desktop cards with up to 56 Xe2 cores this year.

Intel has reportedly promised a major performance bump and revealed that the Battlemage release date is set for some time by the end of the year. We already have an indication of the performance that we can expect from Intel’s Xe2 GPU architecture. During the Xe2 architecture reveal, Intel promised a 50% performance improvement at the same power level for Lunar Lake iGPU vs the Arc iGPU inside Meteor Lake chips.

Source(s)

Little Pigeon Post (Chinese), VideoCardz, Teaser image: Intel, Anton Zaharchenko on Unsplash (edited)

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2024 08 > Intel reportedly promises major Arrow Lake efficiency gain and harmless microcode patch for Raptor Lake issues
Fawad Murtaza, 2024-08- 8 (Update: 2024-08- 9)