Intel quietly opens preorders on new Arrow Lake CPUs
Intel just opened preorders for its new CPUs, but the way it was done -- and the timing -- is pretty unexpected.
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Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
With CES 2025 right around the corner, most of us expect the big announcements to arrive in a week — but some companies are already teasing new products. In Intel’s case, the manufacturer plans to add more CPUs that might compete against some of the best processors. To that end, Intel has now announced preorders for new Arrow Lake CPUs, but most of us can’t get our hands on them yet.
As spotted by VideoCardz, Intel China announced that preorders for the Core Ultra 200 non-K CPUs are opening today, with availability planned for January 13. These CPUs will presumably just be non-overclockable versions of existing Arrow Lake chips, such as the Core Ultra 9 285K. In its announcement, Intel teases “new architecture” and “better power consumption.”
This is a curious announcement, and unexpected, too. The preorders seem to only be open in the Chinese market right now — Intel’s global accounts are staying silent on the matter. The question now is whether these Core Ultra 200 non-K processors will hit the global market at the same time, on January 13, or perhaps the launch will be reserved for China for a little while. It’s hard to say, but if they are slated to appear internationally, then this is a quiet launch indeed. Intel is likely to talk more about these new CPUs during CES 2025 next week.
Intel Chip ProductsAnother interesting Intel CPU launch, also reported on by VideoCardz, appears to be taking place in China and Korea first. This one is a leak and it’s not coming from an official Intel account, so take it with some skepticism.
According to Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo, the Arrow Lake-H series, which is a lineup of laptop CPUs based on Lion Cove and Skymont architectures, will first arrive in China and South Korea. Other regions are said to follow a month later. These will be mainstream chips that will often be paired with Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 50-series graphics cards. However, gamers would be more interested in the Arrow Lake HX-series, which wasn’t mentioned this time around.
This leaves us with two signs of Intel CPUs potentially launching in China before hitting the global market. We’ll undoubtedly learn more during CES 2025.
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Not this again: Intel Arrow Lake may have instability issues
Intel's Arrow Lake is just a couple of days from hitting the market, and we've been inundated with various reports and leaked benchmarks. Today's news doesn't sound good, though. YouTuber Moore's Law Is Dead reports that Arrow Lake, also referred to as Core Ultra 200-S, may have some instability issues -- much like what we've seen Intel battle for months on end with Raptor Lake.
Before we dive in, keep in mind that all of this is yet to be confirmed, and we're mere days away from finding out whether it's true or not. However, it could give some buyers a reason to hold off and read the reviews before preordering the CPUs. Moore's Law Is Dead talked about various reviewers and tech YouTubers who had something bad to say about Arrow Lake's stability. The issues are twofold: A wild discrepancy between benchmarks, and running into crashes.
Intel’s next laptop chips may have a secret weapon
An upcoming Intel graphics solution, namely the Intel Arc 140T, has recently been spotted on GFXBench. The most interesting bit is that it offers a noticeable performance advantage over the Xe2-based Arc 140V iGPU that recently made its appearance on Intel’s latest Lunar Lake mobile CPUs.
A post by X (formerly Twitter) user Michael (@miktdt) compares GFXbench scores of the Arc 140T with two Arc 140V SKUs—one with 16GB memory and the other with 8GB. The 8GB Arc 140V reached 6,613 frames with an average of 106.7 framers per second (fps), while the 16GB version achieved 6,839 frames at 110.3 fps. However, the Intel Arc 140T, equipped with 16GB of memory, excelled with 11,056 frames at an average of 178.3 fps, surpassing the 16GB Arc 140V by 62%, despite both GPUs sharing eight Xe cores.
Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs can still consume a ton of power
Intel has made a big deal about the efficiency of its upcoming Arrow Lake CPUs, which are looking to earn a spot among the best processors when they release later this week. Some early benchmark results HXL on X (formerly Twitter) show that the CPUs can still draw a ton of power if you stray from Intel's default power settings, however.
The post, which you can see below, shows the Core Ultra 9 285K peaking at 370 watts of power draw in Cinebench R23's multi-core test. The CPU itself is blacked-out, but you can tell it's the Core Ultra 9 285K from the 24 cores picked up by Cinebench. The Core Ultra 9 285K has a maximum turbo power of 250W, according to Intel, and a base power of 125W.
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