Reviews of the new Arrow Lake-based Intel Core Ultra 9 200S series processor have been lackluster, specifically when it comes to gaming performance, but Intel says that's not the end of the story. Its new chips should perform better and the company will have an estimated arrival date to get them there soon, according to Robert Hallock, vice president and general manager of customer ai and technical marketing at Intel, in a new interview with hot hardwareDave Altavilla and Marco Chiappetta.
Intel was upfront in saying that these new chips wouldn't outperform AMD's gaming chips. But the reviewers' findings have been unexpectedly poor. Despite some efficiency improvements like those seen in Tom Warren's report Edge review of the Core Ultra 9 285K, the new chip appears to be behind even Intel's previous Raptor Lake chips in gaming. Not to mention its performance compared to AMD's very good Ryzen 9800X3D.
Intel's Arrow Lake chips “are solid,” Hallock said during the interview. Still, the company has identified factors “that can combine to produce some pretty crazy unwanted effects.” Hallock was also clear that Arrow Lake's new performance issues are strictly Intel's responsibility, and not the fault of Microsoft or anyone else.
As for when Intel will provide an ETA on the fixes, Hallock said Intel hopes to provide a “full update” on what the chip's issues are and what's causing them by late November or early December. The good news is that the fix will be easy, according to Hallock, who called it a “BIOS flash and Windows update type situation.”
