Although Intel still dominates the CPU market share compared to AMD, this is mostly due to the conservative OEM desktop and laptop markets. In the retail CPU segment – especially relevant for gamers – Intel has been taking a beating. Retail sales of the new Arrow Lake / Core Ultra 200 processors appear to be underwhelming, which likely led to an unusual move: Intel has now issued a significant price cut on Arrow Lake chips.
Price drops are fairly common for AMD, whose CPUs often get cheaper over time even when official MSRPs remain unchanged. Intel has also been using this practice recently. But yesterday, the company has actually announced a formally acknowledged discount, published on its community blog, promising better price-to-performance value. It’s not a blanket price cut across the entire Arrow Lake lineup, but specifically for two out of the five 125W “K” series enthusiast models (though the rest may still receive unofficial retail discounts).
Interestingly, Intel chose the chips that are probably the most appealing to gamers – Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 7 265KF. These CPUs feature the full complement of eight P-Cores and a large L3 cache. The Core Ultra 7 series is also quite solid for productivity tasks, as it retains 12 out of 16 E-Cores. Even in multi-threaded workloads, performance isn’t far behind the high-end Core Ultra 9 models, which are much pricier – and that price gap will now become even more dramatic.
Arrow Lake unexpectedly competitive?
Intel is cutting the official MSRP of these two processors quite drastically – by 100 USD. The Core Ultra 7 265K, originally listed at 399 USD (boxed version), now carries a suggested price of 299 USD. The Core Ultra 7 265KF, the same chip but without its integrated graphics, drops from 384 USD to 284 USD. In Europe, converting with yesterday’s exchange rate and adding VAT, that translates roughly to 324 EUR and 308 EUR. It appears these price drops have already reached local markets, though most retailers (excluding the very cheapest ones) are still pricing them slightly higher. The pricing move may be gradual, so prices could fall further over time.
It should be said that CPU prices had already been declining since roughly the end of February (a trend helped along here by the weakening dollar), so in a way, Intel is merely “making official” a price drop that was already happening in the streets. But not entirely – this move still adds something extra on top. As a result, these two processors have now reached their historically lowest prices.
As mentioned, the Core Ultra 7 chips were already the best value within the Arrow Lake range. Now, with this discount, they’re even more compelling. Interestingly, their pricing is now very close to the lower-tier Core Ultra 5 245K and 245KF, which are substantially cut down in core count (6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores) and L3 cache. In gaming, those CPUs lag significantly as well. And since they didn’t receive any price cuts, they’ve become virtually irrelevant in the lineup.
Intel hasn’t lowered the price of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K either, which now sells for nearly double the cost of the 265K or 265KF. The performance gap, however, doesn’t justify such a steep difference – especially if the user intends to overclock.
- Review: Intel Core Ultra 5 245K vs. AMD R5 9600X or… R7 9700X?
- Review: Intel Core Ultra 7 265K: Often more efficient than Ryzen 7 9700X
- Review: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K: #1 in multi-threaded tasks even without HT
Of course, one has to factor in the platform cost as well. Motherboards with the LGA 1851 socket and DDR5 memory can be pricey, potentially softening the benefits of a cheaper CPU. As an alternative, one might consider a build based on 14th-gen Raptor Lake chips (e.g., Core i7-14700K and 14700KF), but those are now actually more expensive than Arrow Lake after this price cut. But given known reliability and degradation issues with Raptor Lake, we’d recommend avoiding them in favor of the newer LGA 1851 platform – which now makes more sense thanks to these newly reduced prices on the Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF.
All of this, of course, assumes that for one reason or another you’re committed to buying an Intel processor and not considering AMD’s Ryzen platform. How many buyers Intel can win back with these price cuts – and whether it can reclaim any ground in the retail CPU market – remains to be seen.
We might get a clearer picture through Amazon sales rankings or data shared by retailers like Germany’s well-known Mindfactory. If interest in the two discounted chips increases, we should see signs of that there – unless Arrow Lake’s bad image has already become irrecoverable and unsurmountable in the public’s mind…
Sources: Intel, VideoCardz
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
⠀
