Despite all the progress AMD has made in recent years with its Zen desktop CPUs, Intel has managed to maintain a critical advantage over its long-time rival: gaming performance. For those looking to squeeze every possible frame out of the latest AAA games, the company's recent Core 5/7/9 often outperformed their AMD counterparts. However, that performance has historically come at the cost of energy efficiency and thermal energy. The best 13th Gen Intel processors are power-hungry beasts. That has limited its appeal, especially as smaller PC versions have become more popular.
On Thursday, Intel detailed its long-awaited Arrow Lake processors and announced five new models arriving on October 24. With the new CPUs, Intel promises a paradigm shift. Compared to its previous generation of Raptor Lake chips, the company said it aimed to reduce power consumption by 40 percent and internal package temperatures by up to 10 degrees Celsius. Judging by the benchmarks Intel shared ahead of today's announcement, the company did just that.
Intel's new flagship, the Ultra 9 285K, features a 24-core CPU design consisting of eight 'Lion Cove' performance cores and 16 'Skymont' efficiency cores, and a maximum boost clock of 5.7 GHz. This, along with the rest of the current Arrow Lake family, also comes with a neural processing unit (NPU), a first for an Intel desktop CPU. But those specifications are not what is interesting about the 285K and its brothers.
In “lightly threaded” workloads, including tasks like Zoom calls and select Cinebench benchmarks, Intel recorded the 285K consuming up to 58 percent less power than the 14900K, Intel's 14th-generation flagship. the company. When it comes to gaming performance, the results are even more interesting. In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2For example, Intel said it saw the 285K run the game on average 4% faster, while consuming 165W less system power. Even in GPU-intensive games like Black Myth: Wukong, The 285K offers promising efficiency gains, and Intel noted that the CPU consumed 34 watts less total system power compared to the 14900K.
Those efficiency improvements translate into equally impressive thermal gains, and Intel noted that its data shows the 285K runs, on average, about 13 degrees Celsius cooler than the 14900K during gaming loads. The new processor even offers similar gaming performance when users limit their power consumption from Intel's default 250W to 175W or 125W. For those who like to reduce the voltage of their CPU or plan to use a case and an ITX motherboard for your next build, it's exciting news.
“I think it's safe to say this is a big change of direction for our desktop portfolio,” said Robert Halleck, general manager of Intel's ai and technical marketing units. “I'm sure their testing will match the numbers we're talking about today.”
On paper, Arrow Lake is exactly what Intel needs to get back on its path to sustainability; It's easily the most efficient family of desktop processors the company has released in a long time. However, it's less clear whether that alone will be enough to turn around Intel's fortunes.
In the short term, the company faces a rival AMD that is more competitive than ever. In the long term, it's hard to say how much of Arrow Lake's efficiency should be attributed solely to Intel engineers. As tech” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:recently as 2022;cpos:2;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>recently like 2022The company had maintained that it would build the new processors using a combination of its own 20A manufacturing process and TSMC's 3-nanometer technology. But then Intel posted a $1.6 billion loss in the second quarter of this year and said it would cut more than 15,000 jobs in an effort to cut costs by $10 billion. Part of that plan involved total outsourcing Arrow Lake manufactures from a third party. At the time, Intel did not specifically name TSMC. However, the list of companies capable of producing silicon at the density and scale required for Arrow Lake is very short. Given that Intel has reportedly had a recent problem getting its next-generation 18A process off the ground, it's clear that the company still has a long way to go.
When the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K arrives on October 24, it will cost $589.
