Intel’s cheaper, faster new Core Ultra CPUs still have a lot to prove

Can Intel’s “Arrow Lake Refresh” chips succeed where the first-generation “Arrow Lake’ processor failed two years ago? With Intel’s announcement of its new processor family today, we’ll find out soon.

Meet Intel’s new Core Ultra 200S Plus (Arrow Lake Refresh) family, where the “Plus” means it’s better. We hope.

They’re cheaper, at least. And it appears that they may offer higher performance, too, though that’s helped by a new software trick that helps boost gaming performance through more efficient code. But Intel has a problem: the company made bold claims about the original Arrow Lake processors, then failed to live up to them. It then spent the remainder of 2024 and into early 2025 chasing the problem down and finally making it right. So is it fair to be skeptical? You’re damn right it is.

Meet the Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus family

For now, Intel is shipping four chips: the unlocked Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, plus “KF” variations of both which turn off the integrated GPU. Officially, both are members of the Core Ultra 200S Plus family. All four processors will ship March 26, with Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus pricing beginning at $199 and $299, respectively.

The most interesting addition to the family isn’t in hardware, however, but software. An “Intel Binary Optimization” tool performs (we think) somewhat the same task as Microsoft’s Prism interpreter does for Arm: it converts the code into a compatible, optimized format for improved gaming. But for an X86 processor?! We’ll have to hear more.

Intel also believes that the new Core Ultra 200S desktop processors will benefit from a 900MHz increase in speed between the CPU and memory controller, boosting the speed at which data is transferred between them, as well as 4-rank CUDIMM memory, which includes a small clock driver on the memory circuit itself. CUDIMMs are necessary for RAM modules with higher clock speeds, and that’s just what will slot in: DDR5 memory modules with up to 7,200 MT/s (DDR5-7200). (If enthusiasts can find them during the RAM crisis, of course.)

Otherwise, what we’re not hearing are any claims about power consumption. (The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus runs at 125W, the same as the comparable, older Core Ultra 7 265K.) The 2024 version of Arrow Lake was supposed to deliver about the same performance as the prior generation at half the power, and failed miserably. Intel’s still claiming that these Arrow Lake Refresh chips will deliver 15 percent faster gaming performance (as a geomean) versus the original Arrow Lake, as well as up to 103 percent multithreaded performance versus “competing CPUs.” Both claims aren’t worth much until properly tested.

Just a few new things within Arrow Lake Refresh

We already knew many of the details of the Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake Refresh) family already, thanks to publicly disclosed benchmarks on sites like Geekbench. The Core Ultra U7 270K Plus has 24 cores, including 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, while the Core Ultra U5 250K Plus contains 18 cores, with 6 performance cores and 12 efficiency cores.

As the “Refresh” label suggests, both the latest Core Ultra 200S and 200S Plus remain virtually identical from an architectural perspective. They share the same CPU architecture (“Lion Cove” P-cores, and “Skymont” E-cores), the same integrated Xe-LPG GPU used in the Core Ultra Series 1 mobile (Meteor Lake) chips, and the same 13-TOPS NPU as well. Normally, you’d expect that the Core Ultra 200S Plus would be paired with an external GPU, though the astronomical prices of some GPUs might mean that lower-end or even integrated GPUs will be asked to do more than they normally would.

Both the Core Ultra 200S and 200S Plus chips will fit into the same LGA 1851 socket, presumably sharing the same chipsets as well, like the Z890. Unfortunately, all of Arrow Lake’s chipsets supported the more expensive DDR5 memory type, and Intel didn’t give any indication that it could magic up a chipset that could support slower, cheaper DDR4 memory for Arrow Lake Refresh. Intel did say that a dozen new 800-series motherboard designs are in the works, though.

Instead, Intel just seems to have chosen more of an emphasis on affordability this time around: the Core Ultra 9 285K contained 24 cores (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores), ratcheting up to 5.7GHz, for $589; the Core Ultra 7 265K (8 P-cores, 12 E-cores, up to 5.5GHz) was priced at $394. The new Core Ultra 7 270K Plus also contains 24 cores (8 P-Cores, 16 E-Cores, and goes to 5.5 GHz) but for $299. Still, the lack of a “U9” or Ultra 9 version of the Arrow Lake Refresh generation leaves room for a future introduction, most likely with a higher clock speed and higher price.

The 200S Plus performance looks impressive, but is it really?

Put simply, Arrow Lake’s performance was a fiasco. Our own Arrow Lake review, as well as those from other publications, found that the chip underperformed AMD’s rival Ryzen 9700X and even Intel’s older 14th-gen Core chips, depending upon the application. Intel spent months trying to determine what went on, blaming everything from faulty Windows power plans to a “field update” which pointed to issues with anti-cheat services and more.

In January 2025, Intel issued a firmware patch to motherboard manufacturers to solve the problem in conjunction with a Windows update, and washed its hands of the issue. That patch, Intel claimed, could boost performance by up to 25 percent or so on some games.

With this news, we’d expect testing should begin soon on the Core Ultra 200S Plus (Arrow Lake Refresh). For now, Intel is again publishing aggressive performance numbers compared to AMD’s Ryzen, though the test systems used DDR5-7200 DRAM (versus DDR5-5600 DRAM on the Ryzen test bed). Intel’s 900MHz increase in speed between the CPU and memory controller will also have an effect. Intel’s K-series chips have typically run at 125W, while the 9700X being compared below runs at 65W.

IBOT: Sure to be controversial

The most interesting feature of the new processor family is what Intel calls the Intel Binary Optimization Tool (IBOT), which Intel calls a “first-of-its-kind optimization technology” that improves both the instructions per cycle (IPC) as well as the user experience. Intel says that the IBOT will improve performance “even if the workload has been optimized for another x86 processor, a game console, or an earlier architecture.”

Typically, incompatible architectures will either recompile the code in its entirety for a chip like Arm, or use an interpreter or an emulator like the one used by the Via/Centaur WinChip. Either way, the goal is for the processor to be able to run the code as efficiently as possible.

Intel isn’t prepared to talk about IBOT quite yet, though the company described it using a “Tetris” motif to imply that the work being done is more efficient than a bunch of scattered instructions. IBOT “leverages Intel compiler and profiling IP” to “streamline library and executable performance.” The “results are achieved by reducing architectural contention,” the company said.

IBOT will be able to be turned off and on within the Intel Application Optimization tool, where it will live in the “advanced features” section of the tool, an Intel spokesman confirmed. It’s not clear whether IBOT will apply to every Application Optimized game Intel maintains, however. (The Application Optimization tool can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store.)

It’s not known how IBOT will play out in the real world. Will gamers have to download a specialized version of the game for the Core Ultra 200S Plus? Will it be treated like shaders, where specific graphics assets will be downloaded for a particular GPU? Or will it all be handled behind the scenes, in real time? Probably the latter, but we just don’t know.

What we do know is that some of Intel’s gaming benchmarks were tested with IBOT on. (Those games are the ones with the asterisks attached to them.)

It’s pretty clear that turning on IBOT pushes the Core Ultra 200S Plus performance dramatically higher, as two of the games that use it elevate the performance of the 250K Plus more than 20 percent more than the Core Ultra 5 245K. The tests were performed at a 1080p resolution.

For whatever reason, the separation becomes more pronounced when the faster Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and the older Core Ultra 7 265K are compared.

Intel is happy to compare its new Arrow Lake Refresh chips against AMD’s higher-end chips in content-creation benchmarks, though excluding the 9900X and 9950X entirely. Oh, and for gaming? Intel’s content to pretend that those games don’t exist. That’s not a great sign.

It’s possible, of course, that Intel could discount this chip into success. Processor analyst Dean McCarron told me that he didn’t think that the original Arrow Lake chip was a failure, simply because it was available to buy at a decent price.

But for a long, long time, AMD was the value supplier, and Intel shipped chips into high-end PCs. Has the market reversed? It certainly could be. Stay tuned for the testing that will help answer that question.