Intel did the unthinkable with its new Arrow Lake CPUs
Intel is giving up on a feature that has been at the center of its desktop CPUs for decades with the release of Arrow Lake.
FrankLin
Intel
It finally happened. Intel killed Hyper-Threading on its desktop CPUs. The new Arrow Lake range, called Core Ultra 200S, ditches the simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) feature that Intel has held onto for more than a decade. And according to Intel, it doesn’t need the extra threads to still deliver a generational performance improvement, even up against the best processors.
Intel says the new range, which we break down in detail in our post focused its gaming potential, can deliver an 8% performance improvement in single-threaded workloads over the previous generation, and a 4% uplift compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X. Those are pretty small margins, but the real impressive stuff comes in multi-threaded performance.
IntelIn multi-threaded performance, Intel says its new Core Ultra 9 285K delivers 15% higher performance than the last-gen Core i9-14900K, and 13% higher performance than AMD’s new Ryzen 9 9950X. That may not sound huge, but it is. Intel is delivering higher performance with 24 threads than AMD can deliver with 32, at least according to Intel’s own numbers. Moreover, Intel says it can deliver this performance while cutting power demands by up to 58%, as you can see in the chart below.
Arrow Lake is a big departure for Intel, but we already know quite a bit about how the processors work. They use the same Skymont and Lion Cove designs as Intel’s new Lunar Lake laptop CPUs, which we first saw in the Zenbook S 14. The architecture is the same, but Intel is bumping the core counts, feeding more power to them, and squeezing out higher clock speeds — up to 5.7GHz on the Core Ultra 9 285K.
IntelBreaking out to more productivity apps, Intel says the Core ultra 9 285K will trade blows with the Ryzen 9 9950X, just with fewer threads. Video workflows will massively benefit from the new chips, however, showing up to a 7.3x improvement, according to Intel. That’s particularly due to support for Sony’s new 4K and 8K XAVC codecs. Intel says Arrow Lake chips are the first desktop CPUs to support the new codec.
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Even a year ago, it was unthinkable that Intel would abandon the SMT feature that it spearheaded, but here we are. And based on Intel’s numbers, killing Hyper-Threading might’ve been the best choice, at least for productivity apps. We won’t know for sure until the processors arrive on October 24.
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Intel’s desktop CPU road map may have changed
Intel's list of best processors is about to expand with the upcoming launch of Arrow Lake-S, also referred to as Intel Core Ultra 200-series for desktops. But what comes next is less certain, and even more so now. According to a post on the Chiphell forums, Intel may have decided to cancel the Arrow Lake-S refresh (Intel Core Ultra 300-series, presumably) that was reportedly slated for sometime next year as a follow-up to this year's initial launch. On the upside, the code name for an upcoming desktop CPU generation was also leaked.
The rumored Arrow Lake-S refresh was never confirmed, but there have been many whispers about it from various leakers. Much like the Raptor Lake refresh, it was never meant to be a groundbreaking update; the neural processing unit (NPU) was the main thing that was going to be updated.
Intel’s CPU lineups might get even more confusing
Intel's list of processors constantly grows, and its whole new naming scheme just got even more confusing. Today's leaks imply that Intel might be working on another Raptor Lake refresh, this time under the Core 200 name. That's right -- just Core 200, without the Ultra. We also spotted some more budget-friendly, previously unheard-of Arrow Lake chips.
With Intel Arrow Lake right around the corner and Lunar Lake CPUs freshly out and available, Intel's got a lot going on in the CPU department right now, and there's more to come. Some non-Ultra Core 200 chips appeared in various Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo) benchmarks, including the Core 7 250U, the Core 7 250H, and the Core 5 220H. There's also the Core 7 Ultra 255H, which is likely an upcoming Arrow Lake-H CPU set to appear inside next-gen laptops.
Intel may have been right about killing Hyper-Threading after all
Intel is getting rid of one of the features that has defined most of the best processors for more than a decade -- Hyper-Threading. It's the branded name Intel uses for simultaneous multi-threading, or SMT, and the company has already confirmed it won't use SMT on its upcoming Lunar Lake mobile CPUs. Rumor has it the company is also ditching SMT for its Arrow Lake desktop CPUs. Surprisingly, according to new leaks, killing SMT might have been the right call after all.
A handful of benchmarks have leaked for Arrow Lake CPUs. Starting off, the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 9 285K both popped up in the Geekbench 6 database. The flagship Core Ultra 9 is a 24-core part, and it achieved a score of 21,075 in Geekbench 6's multi-core test. That's slightly above what you'll see with the Ryzen 9 9950X and on-par with the Core i9-14900K, both of which come with 32 threads due to SMT.
