Intel’s Core Ultra 200S CPUs are its biggest desktop refresh in three years
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Linux-Is-Best
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
But will it work?
The last few Intel CPUs had critical flaws and Intel didn't offer any true recall or compensation, choosing instead to more or less tell people, "Oh well."
The last few Intel CPUs had critical flaws and Intel didn't offer any true recall or compensation, choosing instead to more or less tell people, "Oh well."
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Power draw has gone down from "crazy insane nutty nutbar" to just "bad." That's good if you must have intel at all costs, but 125 / 250 watt for even the Ultra 5 is not great compared to a 65 / 88 watt AMD 9700X.
I'll probably wait until next year to build my next gaming PC, after the nvidia 5070 and whatever the matching radeon are released. At that point I'll choose the CPU based on power efficiency and "good enough" performance since quiet is important to me.
I'll probably wait until next year to build my next gaming PC, after the nvidia 5070 and whatever the matching radeon are released. At that point I'll choose the CPU based on power efficiency and "good enough" performance since quiet is important to me.
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Intel will replace any boxed 13th or 14th generation CPUs with a simple phone call. For prebuilt‘s every company that I’m aware of is replacing CPUs.
Free replacements plus a warranty extension to five years. The exact opposite of “oh well”.
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I was just wondering when Intel would release improved desktop chips. Performance isn't boosted, but this seems like a good choice for my next work desktop. And possibly my home PC to replace my i7-860 
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This certainly seems like an improvement; but it also puts all the “zOMG Zen5 stabbed gamers in the back by mostly being efficient!!” in perspective; since it looks like Intel is also doing an efficiency generation; along with the move to DDR5 exclusively.
I’m still waiting on X3D Zen5; since X3D anything is basically stupid good for gaming purposes; but this strongly suggests that Zen5 generally (while not an obviously compelling upgrade if you already have something recent-ish) is not at risk of being left in the dust because it was more efficiency than performance gains.
I’m still waiting on X3D Zen5; since X3D anything is basically stupid good for gaming purposes; but this strongly suggests that Zen5 generally (while not an obviously compelling upgrade if you already have something recent-ish) is not at risk of being left in the dust because it was more efficiency than performance gains.
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Why would you need an NPU if you have a eGPU attached? That’s how AI is usually calculated, GPUs just are not energy efficient for mobile applications.
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They only responded after much goading from the media and large customers. They certainly were fine with "Oh well" until all heck broke loose in the tech media.
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Given how TDP has completely lost all meaning from both Intel and AMD, I think I will reserve judgement on this till reviews are out. It's clearly better than Raptor lake in terms of power consumption, but I'm not sure what else we can draw from this press release.
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They also still have no tool for people to run to detect the level of damage to their CPU, and I've read horror stories of people getting the runaround trying to get their CPU exchanged.
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I'm specifically talking about these desktop chips. That is what the article is about.
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We're talking about Arrow Lake (desktop) not Lunar Lake (laptop). The TomsHardware first look is 100% intel claims and stats, they don't have their own CPUs to test yet.
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Does it make any sense to buy a CPU with built-in GPU if I already have an RTX 4080? Is there any scenario when this could become useful?
That Core Ultra 7 265KF looks like it could be a decent upgrade from my i7-6700K Skylake. I'll be buying a new gaming PC this winter and still have not decided whether to go with Intel or AMD.
That Core Ultra 7 265KF looks like it could be a decent upgrade from my i7-6700K Skylake. I'll be buying a new gaming PC this winter and still have not decided whether to go with Intel or AMD.
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I'm not confusing anything, I kept tabs on this right through from the first rumblings. Ars had minimal coverage, so unless one ventured to more tech focused sites much of the day by day happenings went unnoticed and there are STILL lots of unanswered questions. Now myself, and surely others that are affected by this are pleased with the end result, but for quite some time it certainly appeared like Intel was in full denial, more so when one considered their transparency when compared to AMD's when they had a similarly destructive bug. But hey, you just set it to Intel recommended defaults and everything will be fine, it's all the motherboard partners fault anyways.
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That doesn't help up extrapolate power curves up to the much higher thermal loads allowed in desktops.
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One use case is if your GPU bites the dust you have the IGP to fall back on. Also, as the article states, you get QuickSync with the IGP, which is arguably the best hardware video block out there.
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When you’re building the computer you can leave out the GPU for simplicity sake at first.
If there’s a problem with your GPU and you need to send it in you’re not out the entire computer.
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Linux-Is-Best
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
This was what I last knew. A lot of angry people with no refund from Intel. If they changed their minds later, it likely was after people moved on.
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I mean, understatement? These new CPUs will be 4x to 10x faster, maybe more depending on workload.
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I think a lot of it was poor communication within the company after the refund process was conceived and rolled out. As of late it's more of a no questions asked process, which is good. The issue I and others had is the amount of hand wringing and mealy mouthed responses by Intel during this whole, needlessly drawn out affair. As for the topic of TFA I'm hoping this is the first release of a leaner, meaner Intel. Despite the flat performance improvement the efficiency gains will be most welcome.
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Yeah, on top of this... sure Intel took much, much longer than they should have to acknowledge the issue here. But I don't think they deserve less than praise for what is finally a fairly thorough/comprehensive response of replacing AND extending warranties on any affected chip.
They deserved criticism for taking too long to comment. That doesn't mean they don't deserve praise for eventually providing a reasonable resolution for affected customers.
Separately and on topic, I feel so mixed on Arrow Lake. The Intel i9 parts have always offered pretty impressive competitive MT performance, but at way, way too much power. If Arrow Lake is bringing that level of MT performance to a price point ~$100 below the 9950X, with power efficiency to match, they're going to have a pretty competitive general purpose processor.
But losing gaming performance feels pretty bad, even if it was ultimately necessary. It's a shame Intel couldn't find a way to squeeze another 5% even out of their chips. True parity (or even a slight lead) over AMD and last gen Intel, while being power competitive with current gen AMD would be a pretty big coup over last gen, even if they still lose the gaming crown to Zen 5 3D (since the 285K will likely have a decently large MT lead over whatever Zen 5 3D parts do come out).
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This is not true. I had to get 14900k replaced and it took a couple dozen emails over two months. I still haven't gotten my refund for the defective chip.
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What are the eSPI channels being used for? SPI is normally a very low level hardware interconnect; as an upgraded version I'd have assumed the same for eSPI. With it being called out alongside user facing features like PCIe and USB I'm wondering if they're doing more with it now though.
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Of course I know who Wendell is, I just said I followed this from the beginning. Do I need to cite every bloody reference every time I comment? Anyways, as far motherboard makers are concerned, at any point Intel could have, and indeed should have, enforced standards on how its products are integrated into theirs. This whole shit show is evidence why. Additionally it's not like they have zero control here, if Asus et al don't follow the rules they don't get access to chipsets. But we are not talking about that, we are talking about how INTEL handled the affair after the failures were discovered.... fucking poorly.
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Not really. There's no real reason to use both.
There's also little reason to buy a KF SKU over a K SKU though when the only difference is the lack of a GPU and fuck all price difference.
AMD also includes a token GPU on their desktop parts now (AM5). It's there if you need it, but you won't use it while having a dedicated GPU.
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After banging the drum on Thunderbolt 5 (USB4 v2.0) for over a year and claiming there would be products, Intel is still putting Thunderbolt 4 out… SMH
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Yep, apples to apples, in ten generations of CPUs over ten years, it's still not worth upgrading my Ivy Bridge setup. 1155 gang represent
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I'm using an i7-8700 from 2017 and my main reasons for upgrading are wanting better nvme and USB support, as well as figuring the motherboard won't last forever. Performance-wise it's still fine.Yep, apples to apples, in ten generations of CPUs over ten years, it's still not worth upgrading my Ivy Bridge setup. 1155 gang represent
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eSPI is effectively a layer on top of traditional SPI that Intel has been bringing up to replace the older LPC interface which was used to connect to various embedded controllers like fan controllers or legacy TPMs.
Explicitly advertising multiple eSPI channels is emphasizing the move away from LPC; the intended audience of that slide is almost certainly motherboard/system designers who are choosing what chips to use or what protocols to implement in firmware that will be interfacing with these new CPUs at a low level.
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I want to be exited about this, but Intel refusing to comment on their platform's longevity several times and the rumours floating around that this will be a single-generation socket means there is no way a desktop enthusiast should consider this unless it's well clear of AMD's offerings (and it seems like that won't be the case, based on Intel's own claims).
AM5 getting 4-5 generations of CPU instead of this getting one mean buying into this dead-end platform is just impossible to justify unless the upside is huge. But the upside won't be huge, because there's no way Intel are under-selling their performance claims.
AM5 getting 4-5 generations of CPU instead of this getting one mean buying into this dead-end platform is just impossible to justify unless the upside is huge. But the upside won't be huge, because there's no way Intel are under-selling their performance claims.
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I just filed a ticket on the warranty site and they emailed me a UPS shipping label. I did not get a refund but I got a replacement and sold it for $500.
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