Intel's Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX refresh CPUs won't be featuring any major changes to the NPU architecture.
Intel Won't Bring Any Major Update To Arrow Lake-S & Arrow Lake-HX Refresh CPUs, So Why Even Bother With Them?
Last year, it was reported that Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh offering for desktops "S" and enthusiast mobile "HX" platforms will be offering a major update to the NPU. This would've led to a bigger die size, but the Blue Team has decided to refrain from making any significant changes to the chip itself.
The latest information comes once again from Jaykihn at X, who states that Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX refresh CPUs will not receive any NPU changes. This means that we shouldn't expect changes to the NPU architecture, or even the NPU clocks themselves. So we can expect the refreshed chips to retain the 13 TOPS NPU compute performance from the current-gen chips.
This means that Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs will only get boosted clock speeds, which, to be honest, aren't going to change much as far as performance is concerned. Maybe they will dial up the power consumption figures and offer around 2-5% better performance, but that's about it. This has been the case with most Intel offerings, such as the most recent Raptor Lake "14th Gen" refresh, but we all know what higher power and temperatures do to CPUs, as we have seen with 13th and 14th Gen chips. Maybe Intel would be extra careful this time.
Intel has been trying hard to fine-tune the performance of Arrow Lake chips for a while with updates that include Core Ultra 200S boost, which optimizes memory performance, fine-tunes the fabric/D2D inter-connect and a few changes here and there, but those are mostly on the platform level, and not on the architecture level.
Gaming performance will remain the same with the refresh so yeah, this is just Intel trying to get something out for their LGA 1851 platform which hasn't been doing too well on the retail channel, and it looks like motherboard makers are pushing Intel in doing something new to help their partners move inventory, and clear up stock before the next-generation arrives with a new socket, aka Nova Lake's LGA 1954 platform. Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs are expected to launch in the second half of this year so expect an update on them soon.
Intel Desktop CPU Generations Comparison:
| Intel CPU Family | Processor Process | Processor Architecture | Graphics Architecture | Processors Cores/Threads (Max) | Platform | Memory Support | PCIe Support | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alder Lake (12th Gen) | Intel 7 | Golden Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | HD 700 Series | 16/24 | LGA 1700/1800 | DDR5 / DDR4 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2021 |
| Raptor Lake (13th Gen) | Intel 7 | Raptor Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | HD 700 Series | 24/32 | LGA 1700/1800 | DDR5 / DDR4 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2022 |
| Raptor Lake Refresh (14th Gen) | Intel 7 | Raptor Cove (P-Core) Gracemont (E-Core) | HD 700 Series | 24/32 | LGA 1700/1800 | DDR5 / DDR4 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2023 |
| Arrow Lake (Core Ultra 200) | TSMC N3B | Lion Cove (P-Core) Skymont (E-Core) | Xe1 (Alchemist) | 24/24 | LGA 1851 | DDR5 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2024 |
| Arrow Lake Refresh (Core Ultra 200 Plus) | TSMC N3B | Lion Cove (P-Core) Skymont (E-Core) | Xe1 (Alchemist) | 24/24 | LGA 1851 | DDR5 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2026 |
| Nova Lake (Core Ultra 400?) | TBA | Coyote Cove (P-Core) Arctic Wolf (E-Core) | Xe3 (Battlemage) | 52/52 | LGA 1954 | DDR5 | PCIe Gen 5.0 | 2026-2027? |
| Razer Lake (Core Ultra 500?) | TBA | Griffin Cove (P-Core)? Golden Eagle (E-Core)? | TBA | TBA | LGA 1954? | TBA | TBA | 2027-2028? |
| Hammer Lake (Core Ultra 700?) | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | LGA 1954? | TBA | TBA | 2029-2030? |
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
