HardwareProcessorsThe latest influx of Intel Arrow Lake rumours make me cautiously hopeful about desktop and mobile processors for a changeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareProcessorsThe latest influx of Intel Arrow Lake rumours make me cautiously hopeful about desktop and mobile processors for a changeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Future)
It’s been such a rough year for CPUs, especially for Intel, that I feel like a scared dog tentatively approaching a treat when I hear rumblings about upcoming processors. It’s part of the reason I don’t like to cover too many rumours, because I don’t want others suffering the same potential disappointment. But these latest ones have rekindled the slightest glimmer of hope inside me.
Arrow Lake looks to bejust a few weeks away, and I bet Intel’s got its fingers (possibly even its toes) crossed for a great launch. Afterlayoffs,Arm share liquidation,Raptor Lake stability issues, and adropped 2024 invitation event, tides mustsurelynow be ready to turn for chipzilla.
While one can only hope, these latest rumours do point in a positive direction for a change. Let’s start with the Arrow Lake-S specs. The clock speeds most relevant to gamers are rumoured to be as follows:
Swipe to scroll horizontallyRumoured Intel Arrow Lake-S specsIntel Arrow Lake CPUBase clock (P-Cores)Boost clock (P-Cores)Core Ultra 3 2053.9 GHz4.8 GHzCore Ultra 5 2353.4 GHz5 GHzCore Ultra 5 2453.4 GHz5.1 GHz
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Rumoured Intel Arrow Lake-S specsIntel Arrow Lake CPUBase clock (P-Cores)Boost clock (P-Cores)Core Ultra 3 2053.9 GHz4.8 GHzCore Ultra 5 2353.4 GHz5 GHzCore Ultra 5 2453.4 GHz5.1 GHz
We don’t know precisely how the new Core Ultra nomenclature will stack the chips up compared to previous i5/i7/i9 nomenclature, so it’s hard to know exactly which chips to compare these to. But given they’re not Core Ultra 7 or 9 chips, we can probably compare them to i3 and i5 chips.
In which case, these numbers look pretty good. The current-genIntel Core i5 14600Khas a boost clock of 5.3 GHz and the Core i5 14400 has a boost clock of 4.7 GHz. Which means these rumoured Arrow Lake-S clock speeds are pretty much in-line with current-gen chips.
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If that was the whole story then there’d be little to get excited about, but we must remember Arrow Lake-S is said to not onlyuse a brand new core layoutbut also be mostly produced on TSMC’s N3 node andconsume up to 100 W less power at high frequencies.
After hearing that Arrow Lake should be a lot more efficient, I was a little worried that we just wouldn’t see enough high frequencies for these fabled efficiency gains to kick in, at least not with lower-end chips. But if these clock speeds are correct, it looks like I might not need to worry after all..
This, of course, is on top of what we’ve already heard about the higher-end Arrow Lake chips—which should launch before lower-end ones. The upcoming flagship Core Ultra 9 285K, for instance, isrumouredto boost up to 5.7 GHz and perform better than the Intel Core i9 14900KS andAMD Ryzen 9 9950Xin single-threaded and multi-core workloads.
But shimmying this down into the lower end with some decent clock speeds, too? I can be here for that.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
Your next upgrade
(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
(Image credit: Future)
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
The fact that there’s renewed hope that it does exist is reason enough for excitement over a mobile PC gaming market that’s arguably more promising and progressive than the desktop one. Even if Arrow Lake Halo “won’t be available so soon”, as the Lenovo PR suggests.
Originalrumours(waaay back when) were that it would have a big Alchemist Xe-LPG Ark GPU with 320 Execution Units (EUs). There’s been a lot of back-and-forth since then, and nobody really knows what such a chip would actually be like, but “Halo” is meant to designate, y’know, ahaloproduct, so don’t blame me for feeling a twinge of excitement at potential evidence that it exists.
Plenty to be tentatively excited about, then, or at least tentatively attentive. Imagine if Intel could be the one to bring the gaming processor scene back from the brink. Wouldn’t that be something?
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