Originally, Intel was expected to launch the Core Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake) desktop CPU refresh right at the beginning of the year in January. That did not happen, but Intel is still preparing these new models for its lineup, and they should reach stores very soon. The dates when customers can expect them have now leaked. Earlier reports indicated March or April, but Intel will apparently manage to launch them within the first quarter after all.
As discovered by VideoCardz, Intel has privately communicated two different dates to reviewers and partners that will govern the launch. One of them is 23 March (which will fall on a Monday in less than three weeks). This date had already been mentioned about a month ago. However, some information remains under a separate embargo that ends 11 March, which is Wednesday next week.
Two dates almost certainly mean that the earlier one will mark the formal unveiling, during which Intel will present this processor lineup (or more precisely, the new refresh models belonging to the already existing Core Ultra 200S series), while the later date—23 March—will be when actual sales start and reviews are published. It appears the processors will reach the market before the end of the quarter after all, which is likely something Intel was pressed to achieve for image reasons. Such a two-stage launch with a gap of two or three weeks has recently been common for new processor and graphics card releases.
Based on this, Intel will likely confirm the models and their specifications next week and probably also present some official benchmarks, but those may have limited informational value, as usual. Specifications have been circulating online for some time, so they will probably not come as a surprise, although it cannot be completely ruled out that something might have changed. For example, Intel recently canceled plans to release a new top model, the Core Ultra 9 290K+, which would have slightly increased the clock speed to 5.8 GHz.
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The more interesting novelty in the refresh will likely be two lower-tier models, where Intel will add extra cores. The Core Ultra 7 270K+ will effectively become equivalent to the previous Core Ultra 9 285K at a lower price, as it will feature the full configuration of 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores. The Core Ultra 5 250K+ will also gain more cores, reportedly offering 6 P-Cores and 12 E-Cores. It could very well become an unexpected value champion in terms of price-to-performance ratio for multi-threaded workloads. On the downside, these core count improvements will appear only in the enthusiast-class 125 W processors with unlocked multipliers. Mainstream locked 65 W and 35 W Arrow Lake processors will not receive the refresh.
In addition to the increased core counts, these processors will also officially support higher DDR5-7200 memory speeds, although such faster memory should generally also work with older non-refresh models through XMP profiles.
Intel is currently getting beaten by AMD (particularly in gaming performance), and it seems the refreshed Arrow Lake models may therefore seek to attract buyers with friendlier pricing—or more precisely, an improved price-to-performance ratio. The increased core counts could thus potentially be offered without a price increase.
We may learn the pricing as early as next week among the details Intel reveals during the official unveiling. The question, of course, is whether attractively priced processors alone will be enough under current market conditions. The extreme rise in memory and SSD prices likely means many gamers and buyers planning new workstation PCs have postponed their upgrades—so both Intel and AMD will probably have difficulty selling their CPUs for PCs and laptops in the current market environment.
Source: VideoCardz
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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