Intel has finally announced the first Arrow Lake CPUs

This is potentially significant This is because, in addition to increased efficiency, these CPUs are Intel's first desktop CPUs with an NPU (Neural Processing Unit)

In other words, while these first Arrow Lake chips do not offer significant performance gains over their Intel Raptor Lake predecessors, the added benefit of having the NPU onboard promises to deliver similar performance with less power and heat

NPUs are also included in the chip

NPUs have become all the rage in laptop chips over the last year or two, as they are optimized to chew through the kinds of workloads that most AI apps demand So having a CPU with a powerful (and power-efficient) NPU has become important if the emphasis is on using AI-centric features like those available in the Copilot+ PC

Of course, Microsoft can only utilize the Copilot+ feature on Windows 11 machines with NPUs that can achieve 45+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), and none of these new Arrow Lake CPUs can achieve only 13 TOPS Therefore, they will likely not be able to support these advanced features Combining a powerful graphics card [like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090] with these new Arrow Lake chips will ensure more than enough computing power to chew through AI applications running locally on the PC

Here's everything you need to know about the new Intel Arrow Lake chips, which will be available on October 24

Intel will first release five different Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, which will be available for order at participating retailers starting October 24

However, these are entry-level Arrow Lake CPUs, with the lowest clock speeds and fewest cores; to purchase the top-of-the-line Arrow Lake CPU, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, you will have to pay $589

Intel will release the first of five Arrow Lake CPUs with core counts from 14 to 24 and speeds from 52 to 57 GHz All of these CPUs have 13 TOPS NPUs, and most have 4-core GPUs

Typically, chips with -F in the name do not have an onboard GPU, so PCs must be paired with discrete graphics cards from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia

Intel has not promised that the new Arrow Lake CPUs will offer significant performance gains over previous chips Instead, it is trying to market these chips as the beginning of a new generation of NPU-equipped Intel desktop CPUs that have a lot of room to grow in terms of performance and are more efficient than previous models

This is a nice way of saying that this first round of Arrow Lake chips does not appear to be much more powerful than the top-of-the-line Raptor Lake chips Intel released in late 2023 However, it promises to deliver comparable power while consuming less power and running at cooler temperatures

As can be seen from the charts above and below (provided by Intel), the company claims that the performance of its new flagship Arrow Lake desktop CPU is on par with the top-of-the-line Intel Core i9-14900K, but requires significantly less power to do the same work

This is a very good thing

While this may not be the most exciting marketing campaign for performance freaks who just want to build the fastest, most powerful gaming PC, it's good for efficiency-oriented geeks like me who are getting a little tired of watching their electricity bills skyrocket during marathon gaming sessions But it's good news for efficiency-oriented geeks like me who are getting a little tired of watching my electric bill skyrocket during marathon gaming sessions

Intel has also provided some of its own internal benchmarks on the gaming performance of its new flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K ($589) and top-of-the-line AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ($649), with mixed results

As you can see from the chart of benchmark results embedded above, Intel is not promising that its new top-class CPUs can reliably beat AMD's best

Instead, the results (at least at high 1080p settings) are mixed, with AMD's top-tier chips performing better in games like “Cyberpunk 2077” and “Red Dead Redemption 2,” while the new Arrow Lake flagship claimed to deliver more frames per second in games like “Total War: Warhammer 3” and “Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm”

Of course, we won't really know how well these Arrow Lake chips perform until they hit the market and enthusiasts start benchmarking them in real-world conditions

I must say that in a market dominated by flashy marketing campaigns and big promises, Intel's frank and efficiency-first marketing of these first Arrow Lake chips is refreshing in a way

While gaming enthusiasts may be understandably underwhelmed by the promised performance gains of these first Arrow Lake CPUs compared to their Raptor Lake predecessors, I believe Intel when they say that these CPUs represent a new CPU family floor with lots of room for growth I believe them when they say that they represent the floor for a new CPU family with lots of room for growth

Intel has spent the last few years trying to compete with Apple, AMD, and now Qualcomm in the laptop chip business and has fallen behind Intel continues to lag behind its competitors in many key metrics, and the results are showing in cooler and quieter desktop CPUs

The problem is that we don't know how much difference it will make in high-end PCs optimized for gaming and content creation Sure, it's great that a new high-end CPU consumes (on average) 50-100 watts less power than its predecessor, but in a rugged gaming rig where an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 sucks up 450-800 watts of power in an intense gaming session How much of a difference will it make?

However, these new Arrow Lake chips could be a huge boon for mini-PCs, especially mini-gaming PCs Of course, we will have to wait until the end of October to see how much of an impact these chips will have