Intel Arrow Lake leaks pour forth flagship CPU looks to offer some solid gains, but its bad news for PC gamers

Date:
Tue, 08 Oct 2024 13:38:52 +0000

Description:
Some PC gamers are already judging the Arrow Lake flagship CPU as DOA, but lets not get carried away here

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Intels Arrow Lake desktop CPUs are almost with us, going by rumors, and the prevalence of leaks backs up this notion with a few fresh pieces of spillage joining the recent flood, one of which will cause some concern.

Much of this comes in the form of leaked presentation slides purportedly from Intel ( from press briefings that are supposedly underway ), and its the gaming-related material thatll doubtless cause a stir. As always with all this, lets be cautious as with any leak (though this one appears genuine enough). pic.twitter.com/9DuJZ6IjGl October 8, 2024

This first slide, shared on X by leaker @wxnod, shows that the flagship for Arrow Lake, the Core Ultra 9 285K, is actually going to be slightly slower than the current Core i9-14900K flagship when it comes to running PC games .

The difference is marginal an average of 264 frames per second (fps) for the 14900K versus 261 fps for the 285K, which is nothing youd ever notice but
the point is that youd expect a marked uplift (or at least some increase)
with a new generation of silicon from Intel.

There is an upside here, though, namely that the Core Ultra 9 285K delivers that same performance using a good deal less power 447W versus 527W for the Raptor Lake Refresh flagship, so thats about 15% more power-efficient (this
is the total power usage for the PC, we should note so the figure for just the chips will show a bigger generational leap than this, too).

In another slide, Intel further demonstrates that the Core Ultra 9 285K chugs a good deal less power than the Raptor Lake Refresh flagship, with
consumption dropping by up to 165W compared to the 14900K, with gaming frame rates roughly even (theres some give and take, and the Arrow Lake CPU is faster in some games, slower in others).

More gaming comparisons are provided with the Core Ultra 9 285K stacked up against the Ryzen 7950X3D, the current top-end of 3D V-Cache processors from AMD. This is a roughly even battle, but the 7950X3D wins out slightly, although the Arrow Lake flagship certainly comes out on top with the productivity benchmarks.

Elsewhere, @wxnod posts a comparison with the Ryzen 9950X, AMDs current flagship CPU, which again is a fairly even match with the Arrow Lake flagship across a bunch of games (though the 9950X again edges the victory overall bear in mind, too, that these are benchmarks Intel has picked out). ARL-S IPC (vs 13/14th)P Core +9%E Core +32% pic.twitter.com/B0EjnIEWBU October 8, 2024

A further post on X, from another regular leaker, HXL, shows a slide for
Arrow Lakes overall IPC gain (Instructions per Clock in other words, the measure of the performance boost imparted by the change in chip architecture with the next-gen CPUs).

This slide shows that Arrow Lakes performance cores are 9% faster than Intels current processors for IPC, and the efficiency cores get a huge 32% leap.

Yet another slide from @wxnod shares a comparison of productivity benchmarks, alongside 3DMark, and in the latter the Core Ultra 9 285K is 11% faster than the 14900K. Its also around 5% to 8% quicker than the current flagship in those productivity scores (including Cinebench and Geekbench), with AMDs
9950X roughly trading blows with the 285K (though the Ryzen CPU is a fair bit slower in 3DMark).

Finally, weve also been treated to a Passmark benchmark on X possibly from
an engineering sample of the 285K that shows the Arrow Lake flagship is 11% faster than the Core i9-14900K for single-core performance (assuming its genuine). (Image credit: ShutterStock) Analysis: A tricky time ahead for Intel?

Theres a lot to digest here, but the real-world gaming benchmarks are a worry
and are already causing controversy across various online forums as you
might imagine. For Intel to fail to achieve any performance gain in gaming and indeed a slight slip compared to the 14900K overall is a pretty shabby showing.

Weve got to again state that we cant jump to any conclusions until we know these slides are genuine, but its not a good look for Intel if they are. Particularly as the Core Ultra 9 285K is appreciably slower in a few games in the various battles shown versus the 14900K, and also high-end AMD
processors. (Note, too, that some of the benchmarks use Intels APO to boost them up , six out of 14 of them in one comparison and this isnt a very
widely supported tech yet).

So, whats going on here? Part of why were seeing some of these more disappointing results could be wrapped up in the relatively modest IPC gain for Arrow Lakes performance cores (9%), coupled with slower clock speeds here versus 14th-gen chips (the lack of hyper-threading for Arrow Lake is also a drag factor, but not really for gaming, though).

Given these factors, some of these results are perhaps not surprising and
the trade-off is that Arrow Lake is a good deal more power-efficient than Intels current CPUs. But then Intel really had to do better on that front, as the company was heading into a dead-end with the jack-up-the-power path taken by Raptor Lake and its refresh (the latter failed to impress with its gains, too, by and large).

The other positives for Arrow Lake are that productivity gains certainly look robust, and the efficiency cores are definitely being brought more into play (which will help with those games that leverage APO, too). And with Intel taking big strides with efficiency in Lunar Lake these are some excellent
new laptop chips theres clear evidence of Team Blues new focus on driving lower power consumption across its CPUs.

The downsides for gamers could be a bitter pill to swallow, though although well have to wait until we perform our own testing before we get carried away here. Its difficult to see how Arrow Lake is going to fare well against AMD
in the realm of PC gaming, though, when the Ryzen 9800X3D could be imminent, bringing a major uplift to the table for Team Red (and offering better all-round general performance away from games, too, if the most recent rumor is right).

This could be a very tricky time for Intel. Weve yet to see Arrow Lake pricing, of course the final part of the equation but Team Blue may have to think of pitching price tags more competitively than it usually might, even given the lackluster reception for new Ryzen 9000 CPUs. Especially when we take into account the cloud currently cast over Intel silicon due to the instability debacle with 14th-gen and 13th-gen processors. ( Arrow Lake isnt affected by those voltage woes , mind, but this whole painful affair is still going to stick very much in the minds of the component buying public, were betting).

Via VideoCardz [ 1 , 2 ], TweakTown You might also like Rumored price hikes for Nvidia RTX 4070 and upwards mean you might want to buy soon What is a processor: Your CPU explained in plain terms These are all the best cheap graphics card deals



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/cpu/intel-arrow-lake-leaks-pour-forth-flag ship-cpu-looks-to-offer-some-solid-gains-but-its-bad-news-for-pc-gamers


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