A new Intel rumor every day. Let’s face it, Intel has been generating a lot of buzz and (often bogus) press lately. So what can we say about the details leaked about the Arrow Lake refresh? This evolution of the current range is eagerly awaited, and we’ve been told it’s imminent for several months. The latest speculations spoke of an update that would pull the timetable up to Nova Lake without bringing any upheaval. The trend was towards higher frequencies for the K and KF series and a new NPU. But today, we’re told that Intel may choose to continue using its silicon NPU 3 instead of migrating to its NPU 4. At present, the NPU used in the Core Ultra 200S is the same as that used in the Core Ultra Meteor Lake series due for release in 2023. Rumors suggested that it would be replaced by the NPU 4 found in Core Ultra 200V (Luna Lake).
Not really a drama for Arrow Lake-S, a little more annoying for Arrow Lake-HX (laptop). Under these conditions, Intel’s new Arrow Lake chips won’t significantly improve AI performance, and still won’t be compatible with Microsoft Copilot (unless one day Microsoft decides to “validate” the cumulative performance of dedicated CPUs and GPUs).
We’ve written several times here that Arrow Lake-S chips are really under-priced, and that in a way, the“hype” around Ryzen 9000X3D prevented us from behaving rationally on these CPUs. Yet these CPUs are remarkable in terms of efficiency and performance. Even with a simple increase in frequency, they will be interesting to observe. The real problem for Arrow Lake is its platform, doomed in the short term by the arrival of a new socket in the coming months. And all this at a time when AMD has the wind at its back and a reassuring strategy for the durability of its sockets.
