Intel Accepts Loss on Arrow Lake — Still in the Game

Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs have not had the smoothest launch. Our reviews of the Core Ultra 9 285K and Core Ultra 5 245K highlight how these new processors failed to impress in both productivity and gaming tasks, falling significantly short of the top processors available today. Intel acknowledges several issues with the platform and has plans to rectify them soon.

In an interview with HotHardware, Intel’s Robert Hallock candidly stated, “The launch didn’t go as planned… we have a number of things we need to fix.” Hallock, who previously worked at AMD, is a leading figure in Intel’s technical marketing. While he did not specify the exact problems affecting Arrow Lake, he did assure that Intel is actively working on updates that could lead to substantial performance improvements within a few weeks.

“There are BIOS, firmware, and OS-level issues that we need to resolve,” Hallock mentioned. “We will return with a comprehensive review and a detailed list of what went wrong.”

It is not surprising that there are significant issues with Arrow Lake. Our tests showed that while the new CPUs achieved some remarkable benchmarks—such as the Core Ultra 9 285K outpacing the 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X in rendering applications like Cinebench with its 24 threads—they struggled in gaming performance, particularly when compared to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

The performance inconsistencies are noticeable. Intel has made considerable advancements in certain applications, yet they lag significantly in others. Hallock has clarified that these issues are not a result of user error or review biases, describing the problems with Arrow Lake as “self-inflicted.” Although he did not commit to a specific timeline for the performance fixes, he indicated that updates should be expected by the year’s end.

There is hope that these updates will address the performance gaps observed by numerous reviewers, including those from Digital Trends, during the launch phase. Intel has been facing challenging times, with speculation about a potential AMD buyout circulating. Arrow Lake, featuring a drastically new architecture, was anticipated as a pivotal moment for the company. Unfortunately, it has so far struggled to compete with AMD’s offerings and even its predecessor Intel processors. The forthcoming updates could prove crucial for Intel’s redemption.