Is Intel about to turn Arrow Lake CPUs around? Leak suggests ‘big changes’ are coming for Core Ultra 200 chips

• A leaker claims some major tweaks are close at hand for Arrow Lake
• We don’t know their nature beyond being ‘voltage-frequency’ related
• This could be the start of some big performance boosts for Arrow Lake

Intel’s tweaks, which are incoming to help boost the performance of its recently released Arrow Lake (Core Ultra 200S) processors – that rather disappointed upon their arrival – could be about to land.

Or at least we might be about to witness the start of Intel fixing up these desktop CPUs. We’re told by expert overclocker Skatterbench (who’s affiliated with Asus, and regularly sets world records using the firm’s motherboards) on X that Intel has some big changes coming in its next microcode update for Arrow Lake chips (add seasoning, as ever).

These pertain to the ‘VF behavior’ which means voltage-frequency, and as VideoCardz, which noticed this, pointed out, the overclocker likely already has access to the beta update.

Hopefully, it won’t be long before whatever tweaks and improvements are being introduced here come to all Core Ultra 200 CPU owners (though there will be a beta BIOS deployed by motherboard makers first, no doubt, before the full release).

Analysis: A new chapter for Arrow Lake?

So, the crux of the matter here is whether these changes are about delivering better performance for the Core Ultra 200S family, or perhaps more about fixing overclocking (as Skatterbench indicates later in that thread on X). Meaning these (rumored) tweaks could be more about, say, shoring up stability (especially for overclocking), rather than juicing up Arrow Lake CPUs with performance improvements.

The expectation is that this has something to do with Robert Hallock’s (VP of marketing at Intel) previous observation that Arrow Lake’s disappointing performance (particularly with gaming) was due to multiple issues in Windows and the BIOS, and an accompanying promise that fixes are inbound for those problems.

Is this upcoming microcode patch the start of those fixes? Quite possibly, but we’d temper our expectations, as it sounds like Intel has a lot of work to do on this front. Remember, we were also promised a full audit of all the issues in play with Arrow Lake’s missteps, so it seems like a thorny tangle of gremlins in the works, and we’re betting this is going to be a multi-step cure (for “multifactor issues” as Hallock called them).

You might also like

• AMD vs Intel: which chipmaker does processors better?
• What is a processor: Your CPU explained in plain terms
• These are all the best cheap graphics card deals