Intel Arrow Lake appears to be on the horizon according to new insider information which claims a total of 21 CPUs will be available in the upcoming lineup.
As spotted by Wccftech, Intel Arrow Lake-S Core Ultra-200 processors are rumored to be announced at Computex next month with a full suite of processors headed for store shelves this year. According to Benchlife, this is set to include the Core Ultra 9 285K, Core Ultra 7 265K, and the Core Ultra 5 245K.
Interestingly, it's believed that there will be no Core Ultra 3 or Core i3 equivalent included in the slew of Ultra 200 processors so the mainstream lineups are now considered to be Ultra 5 models. That's not entirely a surprise given that even the best processors for gamers on a budget omit the underpowered i3.
It is believed that as well as the three aforementioned K models at 12W5, there will be a total of five non-K SKUs at 65W and a total of 13 processors set to release later which will run at just 35W. That's a wide net and should give options to the vast majority of users; while gamers will want a K model, budget builds could benefit from a lower power, and cheaper chip.
Hyperthreading appears to be a thing of the past with the leading Intel Arrow Lake-S models. That's because the Core Ultra 9 is speculated to run 24 cores and 24 threads with the Core Ultra 7 to feature 20 cores and 20 threads, and the Core Ultra 5 at 10 cores and 10 threads; all of which utilize a mixture of E-cores and P-cores.
All chipsets will run on the LGA 1851 socket with its longevity planned until 2026 which, much like AMD's AM5 socket, will just be using DDR5. That means it could be time to upgrade to some of the best RAM alongside a new motherboard so that you aren't left behind.
It's still a little confusing
We've previously reported on the Intel Arrow Lake-S naming conventions being confusing and the advent of so many Ultra 9, Ultra 7, and Ultra 5 models isn't helping matters. While enthusiasts are going to want to stick to the 285K, 265K, and 245K, there are a lot of things to unlearn after nearly 16 years of being used to Intel Core branding.
It remains to be seen exactly how disaggregated architecture will work when on desktops, especially with the transition over to AI computing and what that will mean for gamers. We're hoping that Computex will clear things up with an official announcement going over the full flagship models and the other 65W variants.
