Intel Announces New Core Ultra Desktop Processors

Arrow Lake-S Brings Lunar Lake’s Tiled Architecture and Efficiency to Desktop

Intel has made the Core Ultra desktop processors official, and we finally have a new architecture for the DIY enthusiast space from team blue. Many of the topological particulars might be familiar to those who studied the Lunar Lake launch, with Arrow Lake-S essentially offering the desktop companion to the latest Intel mobile architecture.

Here’s a complicated infographic about the new CPUs:

There’s a lot to digest here, but if we look further into Intel’s press deck we find that the #1 goal of this launch was performance-per-watt, which is an area that was sorely lacking from the past few generations of Intel desktop parts, as we all know. But no longer will Intel represent super-high power draw and temps on desktop…or so we hope. Let’s just say we are cautiously optimistic.

Via Intel’s Robert Hallock:

“The new Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors deliver on our goals to significantly cut power usage while retaining outstanding gaming performance and delivering leadership compute. The result is a cooler and quieter user experience elevated by new AI gaming and creation capabilities enabled by the NPU, and leadership media performance that leverages our growing graphics portfolio.”

As to the official lineup, here is a slide featuring the all-new Core Ultra 9 285K (yes, we are back down to three digits with Intel desktop CPUs after more than a decade):

Two things to focus on right away might be:

1. Intel has dropped Hyper-Threading from all CPUs for the first time since (I believe) the pre-HT Pentium 4 era
2. Intel is not showcasing TDP on this slide, though it is shown later in the presentation (it’s 250W for Core Ultra 9 and 7; 159W for Core Ultra 5)

Shall we over-react to these points briefly? Intel is making quite a play for efficiency here, highlighting the significant gains that Arrow Lake-S has made in that department compared to Rocket Lake-S in single-threaded workloads (a 2x improvement), but we will need to see numbers from a variety of workloads from independent reviewers before we make a final judgment on multi-core efficiency. The power numbers just aren’t that much lower overall, considering the new flagship still has a 250W PL1 and PL2 (down just 3W from Intel-defined Rocket Lake-S limits).

As to pricing, here is what Intel is calling the “Suggested eTail Price” (not a 1K tray price) for these new parts:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 285K – $589 USD
• Intel Core Ultra 7 265K – $394 USD
• Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF – $379 USD
• Intel Core Ultra 5 245K – $309 USD
• Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF – $294 USD

And, if you are the type to buy flagship enthusiast CPUs and run them without a discrete GPU, here’s a slide about the Xe graphics found in the new Arrow Lake-S processors (except for the KF SKUs, of course):

One more thing, as these Core Ultra desktop parts are incompatible with existing Intel motherboards. That’s right, we are moving into the LGA1851 era (for now), so look for a deluge of 800 Series motherboard announcements in the very near future.

The new chipset offers integration of Thunderbolt 4 for the first time (rather than relying on a discrete chip), along with the usual level of solid I/O options:

The new processors will go on sale in just two weeks, on October 24th. Are you excited for the new, more efficient desktop architecture, or holding off until you see independent reviews? Let us know in the comments.