Arrow Lake-S replaces Raptor Lake-R (Raptor Lake Refresh AKA the 14th Gen Desktop platform). It is manufactured using a mixed process of TSMC’s 3nm and 5nm production methods, packaged as tightly packed tiles using Intel’s Foveros technology. By utilising tightly packed chiplet tiles rather than discrete chiplet dies the chip’s latency characteristics should be significantly lower than AMD’s implementation, but may also be more expensive to manufacture.



Arrow Lake’s packaging style makes maintaining the rigidity of the CPU package essential. LGA1700’s ILM was known to deform the CPU heatspreader and substrate, so much so that CPU cooler manufacturers began shipping replacement contact frames which maintained their rigidity under pressure and didn’t cause the CPU to deform. LGA 1851 motherboards are fitted with the revised RL-ILM, an updated design with more structural rigidity that should also reduce operating temps by offering better heatspreader-to-cooler contact despite a lower contact force.

The Arrow Lake S architecture is a significant generational update over Raptor Lake. P-Cores, E-Cores and GPU compute tiles are all significantly improved over their predecessor, and the design also makes room for a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU).

New to Arrow Lake: Skymont E-Cores. Replaces Gracemont E-Cores from Raptor Lake.



New to Arrow Lake: Lion Cove P-Core. Replaces Raptor Cove



In quite a departure from Intel’s marketing claims of the past, Arrow Lake S processors are expected to be only modestly faster than their predecessor. Comparing the Ultra 9 285K vs the i9-14900K in gaming for instance is basically a wash according to internal testing, while it should generally outperform the Ryzen 9 9950X in both gaming and well-suited multi-threaded productivity tasks. It might lag compared to the 7950X3D in gaming but handily beats it in Content Creation, which focuses on multi-core performance.

Where Arrow Lake apparently excels is power efficiency. Intel boast an average of 73W lower total system power usage compared to the i9-14900K and up to 165W less in some scenarios, despite maintaining performance broadly on par with the chip it replaces. This should also compare favourably with the Ryzen 9000-series, though that should be a sterner test.

With lower power draw comes lower temperatures, and the Ultra 9 285K should run considerably cooler than its predecessor. While this might not mean you run less beefy coolers, it should allow cooling fans to operate at significant lower RPM (and thus generate much less noise).

New to Arrow Lake: Updated Xe iGPU



Intel’s integrated GPU continues to be an underappreciated gem. While you’re unlikely to use it for gaming directly, its immense encode and transcode capabilities will continue to be the envy of their competition. Being the first iGPU to integrate hardware AV1 encode as well as decode is the cherry on top, a cherry that will prove to be almost essential to content creators if/when Twitch.tv and Youtube implement streaming in that format as the defacto standard.

New to Arrow Lake: Neural Processing Unit (NPU)



The jury is still out on the need for hardware-accelerated AI processing on desktop CPUs, particularly in the enthusiast class where they’re most likely to be paired with a far more capable dGPU. On paper Intel’s implementation isn’t quite as robust as AMD’s, but with the technology still largely unused it remains to be seen if it’s a killer feature or expensive boondoggle. In total, when combining CPU, iGPU and NPU, the Arrow Lake S desktop processor range hits up-to 36 int8 TOPS. Strictly speaking that's not sufficient for Microsoft Copilot+ certification that requires a minimum of 40 TOPS, but nor does it reckon with the >100 TOPS likely offered by a discrete GPU.

Finally, when it comes to the SoC and standard I/O, Intel are far less boastful than AMD despite arguably a more complete package. PCIe 5.0 lane allocation is identical at 20 off-CPU, up-to two Thunderbolt 4 ports are supported (broadly equivalent to a ‘better’ USB 4 that’s backwards compatible), WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 is standard, and 1Gbit Ethernet is available at a minimum. The Z890 chipset optionally offers even more, including Thunderbolt 5, WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and 2.5GbE depending on how their partner configures the design.