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

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.

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.

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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