Intel could really do with a win right now and its Arrow Lake CPUs are its next best chance to bag one. Sadly, it seems that Core Ultra 200 series processors may be a mixed bag when it comes to average performance. If a recent leak proves true, we should prepare for equally impressive gains and regressions relative to Team Blue’s current stock.
Performance is largely king when it comes to separating the best CPUs from pretender processors. This is true generationally speaking but also relative to alternatives from competitors. Intel has much to prove on both fronts, following the muted response to its 14th Gen Core processors but also in the wake of AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series. Unfortunately, though, Arrow Lake may not be the architecture that puts Team Blue back on top.
| Benchmark (250W) | Core i9-14900K | ARL-S QS | Diff. (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CrossMark | 2,432 | 2,587 | +6% |
| WebXPRT4 3.73 Chrome v114 | 388 | 372 | -4% |
| Speedometer 2.1 Chrome v114 | 521 | 472 | -9% |
| GeekBench 5.4.5 SC | 2,432 | 2,455 | +1% |
| GeekBench 5.4.5 MC | 23,902 | 27,381 | +15% |
| Cinebench R23 | 36,681 | 43,118 | +18% |
Leaker jaykihn0 shared new Arrow Lake benchmarks in an X post. While we’ve seen Core Ultra 200K series performance before, these were previously from engineering samples. This time, however, we have test results from an alleged qualfication sample. Practically speaking, it’s as close to final silicon as you can get before release.
Conveniently, jaykihn0 has results for both Core i9-14900K and the Arrow Lake processor captured at 250W. Across the suite, we see a disappointing improvement of just 5%. Diving into the specifics of each benchmark, though, the Core Ultra 200 series chip appears to boast welcome multi-core performance improvements but its single-core gains pale in comparison. Oddly, though, this goes against prior results which showed a 20% uplift in the latter.
More worrying for Intel, though, is how this chip performs compared to Ryzen 9 9950X. The Zen 5 flagship reportedly scores 46,090 in Cinebench R23 at just 230W, making it both more efficient and performant than this qualification sample. Of course, we should remain sceptical of all these results given their preliminary nature. Still, things aren’t looking fantastic for Team Blue right now.
The CPU space is surprisingly ripe with excitement and controversy in equal measure. On the one side, Raptor Lake instabilities continue to hurt Intel despite the promise of a fix. Meanwhile, AMD has just delayed its Ryzen 9000 series at the last-minute due to issues with quality control.
We’ll have the final word on both Core Ultra 200 series and Ryzen 9000 once the processors arrive at Club386 for testing. In the meantime, though, give our Ryzen 9 7950X review a read.
