Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake desktop refresh detailed in new leak — Core Ultra 290K Plus, 270K Plus, & 250K Plus will ship with improved clocks and more E-cores, along with DDR5-7200 support

(Image credit: Intel)

After what could only be described as an underwhelming release, Intel is ready to refresh its Arrow Lake-S lineup of desktop CPUs with three new models, all set to bring marginal improvements. According to Videocardz, the company is preparing the Core Ultra 290K Plus, Core Ultra 270K Plus, and Core Ultra 250K Plus processors as the final products to launch on the outgoing LGA 1851 socket, soon to be replaced with LGA 1954 for Nova Lake. Let's break it all down.

The first SKU is the Core Ultra 290K Plus, which will be "replacing" (read: succeeding) the current-gen Core Ultra 285K. It has the same 8P+16E core count, but the P-Core turbo has been bumped 100 MHz to 5.6 GHz, and the E-Core now turbos at up to 4.8 GHz, up from 4.6 GHz. The Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) — which can take the clocks of certain, cherry-picked cores even higher than the max turbo — is now rated 5.8 GHz, compared to 5.7 GHz on the 285K.

Next up is the Core Ultra 270K Plus, coming in place of the Core Ultra 265K. It takes the core count from 8P+12E to 8P+16E, matching the Core Ultra 9 SKUs. The 270K Plus has the same max turbo and P-Core boost, but a 100 MHz higher E-Core turbo. Interestingly, it actually drops the base clocks for both core types marginally. Given those details, there is reason to speculate that the 270K Plus might just be a lower-binned 285K.

Lastly, we have the Core Ultra 250K Plus, a slightly upgraded Core Ultra 245K, or perhaps even a binned-down Core Ultra 265K. The core config sees minor changes, going from 6P+8E to 6P+12E with 100 MHz increments in both E-Core and P-Core boost clocks, along with a 100 MHz decrease in E-Core base speeds. The maximum turbo and TVB are unknown for this model, the latter of which we expect to be at least 100 MHz higher as well.

Overclocking Arrow Lake — Arrow Lake-S Die Shot (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

All of these SKUs will come with DDR4-7200 support, a sizable 800 MT/s uplift from Arrow Lake's maximum of 6400 MT/s, though how much of that can even translate to real-world improvements — given the current memory shortage — remains to be seen. Intel has kept the same power limits for the refreshed models as the current Arrow Lake lineup across both base and turbo wattages.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Intel Arrow Lake Refresh (unconfirmed)
SKU	Core Ultra 9 290K Plus	Core Ultra 7 270K Plus	Core Ultra 5 250K Plus
Core Count	8 P-Cores + 16 E-Cores	8 P-Cores + 16 E-Cores	6 P-Cores + 12 E-Cores
Thermal Velocity Boost	5.8 GHz	—	—
Turbo Boost Max	5.6 GHz	5.5 GHz	—
P-Core Turbo	5.6 GHz	5.4 GHz	5.3 GHz
E-Core Turbo	4.8 GHz	4.7 GHz	4.7 GHz
P-Core Base	3.7 GHz	3.7 GHz	4.2 GHz
E-Core Base	3.2 GHz	3.2 GHz	3.5 GHz
Base Power	125 W	125 W	125 W
Max Turbo Power	250 W	250 W	159 W

As for how these chips will be marketed, it's refreshing to see Intel not label them as Core Ultra 300 (which Panther Lake already is) and stick with the 200 branding, but with a "Plus" modifier to indicate these are slightly upgraded SKUs. The Raptor Lake refresh was designated 14th Gen, even though it was barely changed from the 13th Gen. We might even see these new SKUs mix with the existing Arrow Lake lineup, which has received various updates since launch to improve performance.

Speaking of, a previous GeekBench listing for the Core Ultra 270K Plus revealed its single-core and multi-core scores already, which sat somewhere between the 285K and 265K. We can, therefore, expect minute uplifts across the board with Arrow Lake 2.0. Thanks to fierce competition from AMD, pricing will largely dictate how well these models perform in the market, but we have no details on that yet.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

27 Comments Comment from the forums

Tom791

Cue up Lip Bu Tan to announce that the processors are not as good as competitors and they’re thinking about just giving up. Also that he has great integrity and isn’t trying to crash the company.
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User of Computers

Tom791 said:
they’re thinking about just giving up.
Source?
Reply
bit_user

The article said:
Interestingly, (the 270K) actually drops the base clocks for both core types marginally.
Probably because it supports faster DDR5 and they increase other non-core clock speeds? They have to account for the power consumed by everything in the package, when they're computing base clocks.

Edit: whoops, I forgot about the 270K having more E-cores than the 265K. Thanks, @thestryker .
Reply
bit_user

User of Computers said:
Source?
It's clearly intended as some gallows humor, especially if you read the rest of the post.
Reply
TerryLaze

bit_user said:
It's clearly intended as some gallows humor, especially if you read the rest of the post.
Nah, it's because intel said the truth about nvidia having steamrolled the whole AI market.
https://dig.watch/updates/intel-concedes-defeat-in-ai-race-with-nvidia
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usertests

If 285K sales are bad, the 290KP should replace it entirely, while the 270KP acts as the official 8P + 16E price cut.

Meanwhile, the 250KP is a nice chip near the bottom, but pricing is everything. On Newegg, 245KF is $220, 245K is $230, 265KF is $300, and 265K is $310.
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rluker5

$400 for a 9950X (270k) doesn't sound too bad at all.
Reply
thestryker

bit_user said:
Probably because it supports faster DDR5 and they increase other non-core clock speeds? They have to account for the power consumed by everything in the package, when they're computing base clocks.
Nope, it's as simple as them adding cores. The 285K has the lowest base clocks of the three intial ARL SKUs as well.
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thestryker

This pretty much confirms initial suspicions that this was going to be another 13th to 14th Gen binning type situation. I'd hoped that this wouldn't be the case given how little headroom N3B seems to have, but it's the smartest available business decision I'd imagine. That may also explain the launch delay as I doubt Intel was interested in pushing a bigger buy through just for binning purposes.

From a technical standpoint I'd love to have seen what ARL looked like on an Intel manufacturing process. We still haven't seen any unlocked SKUs on an Intel EUV node and while I do not expect it to be crazy high like Intel 7 I do wonder how it does compared to TSMC. GNR in workstation form should be the first opportunity and then in theory NVL for client. There have been rumors about multisourced nodes for NVL so perhaps not even then. In the case of GNR workstation it's hard to say when exactly that will appear now given that Intel has canceled 8CH DMR which might be why it hasn't been released yet.
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cyrusfox

The 290k is very uninspiring, They eliminated the difference between the 7 and 9 class here. You are essentially getting 200-400 MHz higher P core boost (100 MHz bump on e-core). 270k is definitely the chip to get for price performance. Who would pay the premium for the 290k for a meager boost when the main problem with ARL is still chip to chip latency which makes it lose any many scenarios to prior 13/14th gen and a real loser to x3D. 7% boost clockspeed improvement does not change this.

I've seen the 265K go for extremely cheap, have been tempted, but my 13900 is still going strong. ARL and ARL-R is a dud, at least the refresh will have all outlets retest the processors which should perform leaps and bounds better than they did at launch now that they have most the bugs accounted for. Intel is now the budget option...

Will Intel ever be competitive again on the high-end desktop space? x3D is over 3 years old and Intel has never responded to it with a equivalent competitor, Giving up the market.
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