The Chinese tech media is buzzing with leaked slides, reportedly from Intel’s pre-launch deck for the upcoming Core Ultra 200-series “Arrow Lake-S.” The most shocking revelation is Intel’s own performance claims suggesting that the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor is actually slower in gaming performance compared to the previous generation Raptor Lake CPUs.
Intel can’t seem to catch a break, especially after their controversial attempt to boost the performance of the 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake processors backfired. It was later revealed that Intel had intentionally increased the voltages on Raptor Lake CPUs to unsafe levels by default, while AIB motherboard manufacturers exacerbated the issue by enabling unlimited power limits on unlocked Intel Core CPUs.
After rolling out several BIOS updates, Intel now claims the issues have been “fixed,” with no additional remedies planned. However, given that this statement comes just before the release of their next-generation CPUs, there’s skepticism that it may not be true.
The 15th generation of Intel Core processors, known as Arrow Lake, will undergo a major rebranding as the Core Ultra 200 series, as an evolution of the mobile-only Meteor Lake, which saw performance regressions compared to Raptor Lake processors.
Concerns surrounding Arrow Lake have persisted, especially after Intel’s internal slides revealed underwhelming performance gains, showing only 8-15% improvements in single-core and multi-core tasks compared to the 14th generation, and this despite dropping hyperthreading.
However such figures were speculated internally under the guise that Arrow Lake would leverage Intel’s advanced 20A process node. However, in a surprising turn as the official launch nears, Intel shocked the tech industry by scrapping the 20A process altogether after investing god knows how much throughout its development.
Instead, they will rely on competitor silicon for Arrow Lake-S, mirroring the approach taken with the mobile-focused Lunar Lake, which will be entirely produced using TSMC silicon.
The performance of Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake processors isn’t just underwhelming, it suggests their next-generation CPUs could be shaping up to be a massive failure.
Intel’s only notable marketing highlight for Arrow Lake is its significant leap in energy efficiency, an area that was largely ignored in the Raptor Lake refresh. For instance, the Core i9-14900KS could consume over 450 watts, producing enough heat to practically boil water.
Leaked slides reveal that the Core Ultra 9 285K offers slightly worse gaming performance than the current Core i9-14900K, but with 80 watts less power consumption, a 15% reduction. This is largely due to TSMC’s superior silicon, which outclasses Intel’s 10nm+ process in density and energy efficiency.
However, the bad news lies in the underwhelming real-world performance. Despite Intel’s claimed 14% IPC gains for the “Lion Cove” P-core and clock speeds comparable to the “Raptor Cove” P-cores in the i9-14900K, the 285K offers little improvement in absolute performance.
As seen with AMD’s Zen 5 release, which had a marketed 16% IPC uplift over Zen 4 but resulted in gaming performance gains of only 5% or less, IPC increases don’t always translate to significant real-world performance improvements.
Intel’s case is even worse, rather than moving forward, the performance seems to be regressing. In their internal tests across 12 games, Intel used the i9-14900K as a baseline, though it’s unclear if mitigation updates were applied. Given Intel’s history, it’s likely they were, further casting doubt on the credibility of the numbers.
The Core Ultra 9 285K outperforms the i9-14900K in only four games: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, Age of Mythology Retold, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, and F1 23, with gains ranging from 4% to 15%.
In several titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Total War: Pharaoh, Metro Exodus, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, and Rainbow Six Siege, the 285K matches the i9-14900K, with performance variations between -2% and a 1% increase.
However, it falls behind the i9-14900K in games like Far Cry 6, Final Fantasy XIV, F1 24, and Red Dead Redemption 2, by 4% to 13%. Overall, when averaged across these benchmarks, the Core Ultra 9 285K delivers similar gaming performance to the i9-14900K, and in some cases, it will slower.
Intel also compared the Core Ultra 9 285K to AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X and the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, the latter of which is handicapped in multithreaded, production-focused workloads due to its lower core frequency compared to its non-X3D counterparts.
In gaming, the Core Ultra 9 285K falls significantly behind the 7950X3D in Far Cry 6 and Cyberpunk 2077. It matches performance in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, while only pulling ahead in Rainbow Six Siege.
However, the key comparison is with AMD’s current flagship, the Ryzen 9 9950X “Zen 5,” which will further define Intel’s competitive position.
The Ryzen 9 9950X matches or outperforms the Core Ultra 9 285K in 8 out of 12 gaming benchmarks, and this is without the benefit of AMD’s 3D V-cache, as it’s the standard “Zen 5” version.
This performance is worse than disappointing for Intel, which is under immense pressure. The company recently announced layoffs exceeding 15,000 employees as its offshoot Foundry enterprise continues to bleed billions, pushing Intel to a point where it can no longer report quarterly profits.
Intel is losing both money and crucial market share to AMD across nearly all segments, desktop, mobile, and especially enterprise. Arrow Lake can’t afford to fail commercially, but the current outlook suggests that’s exactly where it’s headed.
It’s not entirely bleak for Intel. While Arrow Lake’s gaming performance remains largely unchanged from the previous Raptor Lake generation, its synthetic benchmark scores show notable improvements. The Core Ultra 9 285K delivers a 5% gain in single-threaded performance on Geekbench, an 8% boost on Cinebench 2024, and an 11% improvement on 3DMark.
However, if these leaked slides are accurate, it could spell disaster for Intel. AMD was ridiculed for the underwhelming performance of its Ryzen 9000 series, mockingly referred to as “Zen 5%” due to its modest gaming gains.
Yet, Intel’s upcoming desktop processors appears even worse, with Intel itself positioning them as inferior to the current Core i9-14900K, which already struggles against AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D and the latest Ryzen 9000 series.
This isn’t the first time Intel has severely disappointed its consumers.
The 11th generation “Rocket Lake” processors, while offering improved synthetic performance over Skylake, took a step backward in core count, dropping from 10 cores in the 10th generation to just 8.
More critically, Rocket Lake delivered inferior gaming performance, a key factor for most buyers. It became one of the worst-received and least successful generations in Intel’s modern history.
Intel seems poised to repeat that very same history with Arrow Lake-S, which is shaping up to be one of the company’s most underwhelming and embarrassing releases since the Pentium 4 era.
While the improved Skymont E-cores give Arrow Lake a fighting chance in raw multithreaded tasks versus current generation Ryzen processors, it comes at the cost of much higher power consumption.
Adding to the concerns are rumors that Arrow Lake’s refresh has been canceled, and it will require a brand-new LGA 1851 motherboard for compatibility with the Core Ultra 200 series, which is launching on what could be a dead-end socket platform with no upgradability whatsoever.
The real issue here clearly revolves around Intel’s main competitor, AMD. With Arrow Lake effectively out of the race for premium gaming performance, AMD faces little competition, especially with their Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.
Even the Ryzen 7000 X3D lineup already outperforms both Intel’s current and upcoming hardware, and the anticipated release of AMD’s 9000-series X3D processors early next year could widen the gap even further.
Without any real competition in gaming performance, the primary factor most consumers consider when upgrading, AMD is under no pressure to lower prices, as Intel struggles to even compete with its own Raptor Lake CPUs, let alone the modest improvements AMD has achieved moving from Zen 4 to Zen 5.
This situation spells disaster not only for Intel, which is likely to hemorrhage even more market share, sales, and profit to AMD, but also for consumers. With Intel faltering, AMD can easily exploit the situation by hiking prices for their upcoming V-Cache CPUs, leaving gamers and tech enthusiasts with fewer affordable options in the market outside of now outdated solutions.
