Intel’s Arrow Lake-S performance details have been leaked by a Chinese news source just days before its official release, and the results aren’t particularly impressive. The top-tier Core Ultra 9 285K appears to be slower than Intel’s fastest current generation Raptor Lake-R. Additionally, AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D series outperforms it in demanding gaming situations. The lone positive note here is that Arrow Lake boasts better power efficiency.
Performance Comparisons
The Core Ultra 9 285K only trails the i9-14900K by a few frames per second. According to the leak, the Arrow Lake-S chip averages 261 fps, while the i9-14900K averages 264 fps. Interestingly, the information suggests that Intel is showing total system power usage rather than just CPU power. The Core Ultra 9 285K system is 80 W more efficient, while matching the performance levels of the Raptor Lake-R system.
Focus on Efficiency
It seems that raw performance is not the main goal for the new Arrow Lake series. Instead, Intel's enhanced manufacturing method allows for lower thermal design power (TDP) with similar performance levels, or in some cases, up to 15% better performance. Another slide indicates that the Core Ultra 9 285K matches the i9-14900K while consuming 34-58 W less power, and certain games may experience a performance boost of 4-6% with a TDP reduction of up to 165 W. However, the specifics of the TDPs for the 15% performance improvement in F1 23 are unclear.
Competitive Edge
The leak also features two slides that pit the Core Ultra 9 285K against AMD's older and newer Ryzen 9000 series processors. In productivity tests, the Arrow Lake-S flagship model outperforms the Ryzen 9 7950X3D by as much as 30%. Intel has consistently held an advantage in productivity and content creation for several generations. On the gaming front, though, the Arrow Lake-S is sometimes 15% faster, but it can be up to 21% slower in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, making it generally slower. Furthermore, Intel isn't comparing it to the 7800X3D, which continues to be the top performer in gaming.
When compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X, the Core Ultra 9 285K is mostly even, achieving three wins and five losses, giving it a slight overall performance edge of 0.26%. This slide is not particularly useful since it fails to specify the TDPs for any of the CPUs. Additionally, there is a note indicating that the results utilize Application Optimized (APO) code, which typically skews results in favor of Intel.
