Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus Arrow Lake Refresh Impresses In Benchmark Leak

Arrow Lake is the codename for Intel's Core Ultra 200 series processors, which are currently its latest-generation desktop CPUs despite that they've been somewhat superseded by the Core Ultra 300 series on mobile. Before we receive the truly next-generation Nova Lake processors on a new platform later this year or early next year, we're expecting to see a refresh of Arrow Lake. Processor refresh releases are usually not that interesting, but this one looks like it might defy that trend, as performance is shaping up to be better than expected.

We say that based on today's leak, which comes courtesy of the Geekbench Browser. It shows an upcoming Core Ultra 9 290K Plus processor delivering Geekbench performance that is significantly ahead of the average result for the current flagship, the Core Ultra 9 285K. In fact, the leaked result is even ahead of our own tuned desktop system represented in our review. While the single-core score is only slightly ahead of our system, the multi-core score is a full 17% faster ours, and some 11% faster than the average result. That's impressive considering that these chips don't appear to have much of a clock speed upgrade. The leaked processor was clocked at 5.6 GHz in the test, below the 5.7 GHz maximum speed of the Ultra 9 285K.


With that in mind, we do have to wonder where this performance gain is coming from. We've speculated in the past that the Arrow Lake refresh processors could integrate an upgrade similar to the Core Ultra 200 series Boost Mode that Intel debuted to improve gaming performance through overclocking on its Arrow Lake processors. While Arrow Lake offers excellent multi-core and productivity performance, its gaming performance definitely left something to be desired, even compared to Intel's own previous-generation parts—never mind the competition's outstanding gaming performance from processors equipped with 3D V-Cache.

We're not expecting Arrow Lake Refresh to credibly challenge AMD's X3D processors in gaming, but if Intel can make up some ground and decisively beat its own previous-generation parts, it'll be doing well enough. Of course, Core Ultra 200 series Boost Mode required expensive and exotic CUDIMM memory. AMD made a smart play recently with the launch of its Ryzen 7 9850X3D processor by highlighting that its 3D V-Cache feature reduces the need for high-speed memory. If these new chips require similarly spec'd RAM to achieve the gains represented in this benchmark, Intel could be in a tough spot due to the ongoing memory shortage. It's worth noting, however, that this result used DDR5 memory clocked at a relatively modest 6800 MT/s, not the exotic 8 GT/s RAM required by Boost Mode on current-generation parts.

We still don't know when the Arrow Lake refresh parts are due to hit, but it likely won't be long, as motherboard vendors are already shipping BIOS updates for existing LGA 1851 boards that enable support for the new chips. We're fascinated to see what changes Intel has made to warrant the addition of the "Plus" appellation to these processors. As always, we'll have a full review of the new parts when they arrive, so keep your eyes on HotHardware!