Intel's Arrow Lake-HX Refresh flagship, the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus CPU, has been benchmarked again & shows surprisingly strong performance.
Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus "Arrow Lake-HX Refresh" CPU Leaks Again & Closes In On The Desktop 285K
At CES 2026, several motherboard, laptop, and Mini PC vendors listed the upcoming Intel Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX refresh CPUs. Despite that, Intel didn't announce any new refresh part, focusing its CES presentation entirely on the Panther Lake "Core Ultra Series 3" launch. When we approached Intel about why the Arrow Lake refresh was missing from CES, they simply replied by saying, "Stay Tuned.
So it looks like Intel has decided to unveil its Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX Refresh or Core Ultra 200S/HX Plus families on a separate date. We have already seen the flagship desktop CPU, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, leak out. Yesterday's benchmark didn't show us the true potential, but today, a new one has leaked, which showcases much better performance.
In terms of specifications, the Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus CPU will feature 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores for a total of 24 cores and 24 threads. The chip will feature a base clock of around 3.10 GHz and a boost clock slightly higher than the 5.5 GHz of the existing flagship, the Core Ultra 9 285HX.
The core configuration is the same as the 285HX, so we can expect a nominal increase in performance. Other than that, you will see 36 MB of L3 cache, 12 MB of L2 cache, and an integrated 4 Xe iGPU. The chip should retain the same TDP ratings of 55W at base and 160W MTP.
Geekbench 6 (Higher is Better)
As for the performance, the chip scored 3198 points in single-core and 21,581 points in the multi-core tests. The benchmarks were carried out within the same Acer Predator Helios 18 NEO laptop, and these results put the 290HX Plus close to the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Desktop CPUs. This is some incredible performance from a chip that is built for laptops. The HX series essentially takes a desktop die and puts it on laptop.
We expect to see Intel's Arrow Lake-HX and Arrow Lake-S "Core Ultra 200S/HX Plus" refresh CPUs in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more information.
News Source: Benchleaks
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.
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