Leaked Intel Arrow Lake benchmark hints at a seriously promising mid-range CPU
A massive single-thread upgrade, if this leak is on the money
A leak has surfaced showing what's purportedly an Intel Arrow Lake processor which is 20% faster than Team Blue's current top 14th-gen Core i9 CPU for single-thread performance.
As posted on the Tieba Baidu forums (spotted by Wccftech), the unnamed processor is supposedly an Intel Core Ultra 200 CPU (add your own seasoning, and plenty of it). The CPU-Z score highlights a 20% lead in single-thread performance over the very speedy Intel Core i9-14900KS.
Specifically, the unnamed Intel Arrow Lake processor achieved a single-thread score of 1,143, which beats out the Core i9-14900KS at 933, and the Core i9-14900K at 914. That's pretty eye-opening, but the waters are muddied here as the same level of advancement isn't seen in the multi-threaded result.
In that respect, the leak shows the Arrow Lake CPU scoring 12,922 and falling behind the 14th-gen Core i9 or indeed Core i7 CPUs, as well as upper-tier Ryzen 7000 processors, too.
There could be some kind of mistake here, or problem with a sample chip - or indeed the leak could be fake - but as Wccftech points out, the latter result hints that this Intel CPU could be a Core Ultra 5 model (Core i5 mid-range equivalent).
Intel Arrow Lake is rumored to be released in Q3 2024, so we won't be waiting long for Team Blue's AI-powered next-generation hardware.
A recent leaked diagram for the Intel Core Ultra 200 family shows that support for DDR4 RAM might be dropped for good, and that there's a total of 32 PCIe lanes for the GPU and NVMe SSDs. However, it doesn't seem as though Thunderbolt 5 will be supported. Overall, though, Arrow Lake looks very much like a step in the right direction.
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Arrow Lake showing some serious promise
Should this Intel Arrow Lake processor's CPU-Z scores be accurate for the upcoming mid-range model - and the leak may not be, so we still have to be quite careful here - then the new architecture is showing some promise. Multi-thread performance doesn't seem to be as impressive, but that may change as more benchmarks surface as we get closer to release.
As mentioned, the launch will hopefully happen in Q3, and it's been rumored that Intel Arrow Lake will be coming in September. However, that will be too late to rival the Ryzen 9000 series which is arriving in a matter of weeks, later in July. It's a thrilling time for the processor space as the competition is heating up.
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Aleksha McLoughlin is an experienced hardware writer. She was previously the Hardware Editor for TechRadar Gaming until September 2023. During this time, she looked after buying guides and wrote hardware reviews, news, and features. She has also contributed hardware content to the likes of PC Gamer, Trusted Reviews, Dexerto, Expert Reviews, and Android Central. When she isn't working, you'll often find her in mosh pits at metal gigs and festivals or listening to whatever new black and death metal has debuted that week.