Intel's lackluster Arrow Lake appears to have a refresh inbound — Arrow Lake Refresh appears in reference document

If we are to believe a leaked manual for an upcoming Intel W880 motherboard, the Intel Arrow Lake-S processor will seemingly have a refresh successor. Popular hardware leaker momomo_us shared an image of the purported motherboard reference document with the CPU labeled Arrow Lake S/Arrow Lake S Refresh.

Previous rumors point to another generation of the Arrow Lake architecture, focusing only on high-end K and KF chips. So, it would make sense for motherboards designed for high-end workstations to take advantage of this refresh. Unfortunately, we do not see any other information on the document, so we will have to wait and see if manufacturers of more mainstream consumer and enthusiast motherboards will release new models for this alleged Arrow Lake update.

The Intel Core Ultra 200S series arrived on the scene in October 2024, around two months after the company released its disastrous financial report. Team Blue sorely needed a win to help it get back on course—unfortunately, the Arrow Lake wasn’t it, as sales for its latest processor stagnated just a week after its launch. After half a year on the market, the company still struggles to sell its AI chips, with many customers preferring the older Raptor Lake CPUs.

One reason behind this could be the chip’s lack of gaming prowess. It has consistently trailed behind AMD’s outstanding offerings, especially the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and was even outperformed by Intel’s own last-generation chips. And even though the Arrow Lake processors boast an NPU and offer higher AI processing power, most buyers don’t care about that. This, combined with the higher prices, meant that there was low demand for these CPUs.

If the Arrow Lake-S Refresh chips are indeed arriving, Intel must address the gaming performance issues. Otherwise, buyers would shun them and instead flock towards options that deliver more FPS and do not bottleneck other components.

Despite all the negativity in the gaming space for the Arrow Lake-S chips, Intel has made some interesting innovations in the processor. It has improved power consumption and efficiency, reducing its cooling requirements. It’s also a productivity powerhouse, with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K beating most of its competitors in Cinebench.

This was the first Intel desktop CPU to use a chiplet-based design, so it’s bound to have first-generation hiccups. Hopefully, the company can fix some of the concerns with the refresh, allowing us to get the most out of the Arrow Lake architecture.

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