New Intel Core Ultra gaming CPUs rumored to boost clock speeds, arrive this year

Intel will launch a refreshed lineup of its Intel Core Ultra 200 CPUs later this year, with the chips based on a refreshed variant of the Intel Arrow Lake architecture that powers its current flagship gaming CPUs, according to a new report. These so-called Intel Arrow Lake refresh chips are expected to come with increases in clock speed as well as AI number crunching, for modest all-around gains in performance.

The new Intel CPU lineup could help bolster the company's efforts to attract gaming PC users to once again buy its chips, after several years of AMD's X3D CPUs proving dominant in gaming performance and topping our best gaming CPU charts. However, the new report also suggests the performance gains will be modest, so this is far from a nailed-on certainty.

The Intel Arrow Lake refresh data comes from ZDNet Korea, which according to a machine translated version of the page, states that "Intel is set to release 'Arrow Lake Refresh', a desktop PC processor that slightly improves the performance of its Core Ultra 200S processor, in the second half of this year."

The site doesn't cite any source for this, so this is all just rumor for the time being. However, crucially, it goes on to say that "the prevailing opinion is that the performance improvement is not that great compared to the previous generation (14th generation, Raptor Lake Refresh)."

In other words, while Intel may be bringing a little more general performance to the table with its Intel Arrow Lake refresh chips - expected to arrive with model names based on the Intel Core Ultra 200 schema - they won't be expected to take either the general performance crown from the Intel Core i9-14900K or the gaming performance crown from the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Instead, the biggest boost is expected to be in AI. Intel's current Core Ultra 200 desktop chips aren't Microsoft CoPilot+ certified thanks to their AI-processing NPU not being quite powerful enough, so a slight increase would allow them to tick that box.

For most gaming PC builders, though, it's looking much more like future AMD Zen 6 CPUs will be the next big leap in gaming CPU performance. Though those aren't expected to arrive until 2026.

Meanwhile, despite its gaming performance not being chart-topping, our Intel Core Ultra 7 265K review shows Intel's latest is still a very capable CPU. What's more, recent price drops mean it's currently far cheaper than the 9800X3D, at well under $300.

Whatever model of CPU you're rocking, if you're looking to get the most from your system, a RAM upgrade could be ideal. If you're stuck on 8GB or even 16GB, a move to 32GB could allow your system to spread its wings. Check out our best gaming RAM guide to find the best upgrade for your needs.

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