Intel 800 Series Chipset Leak Reveals A Key Caveat For Overclocking Arrow Lake CPUs
First and foremost among those is that, if you want to fiddle with CPU overclocking, you're going to need some relatively high-end parts. That's right—unlike AMD CPUs, where everything short of an X3D chip is unlocked for overclocking (and even those may get the ability soon), Intel limits CPU tuning to its K-series CPUs and its Z-series motherboards. Otherwise, you can still do memory overclocks with XMP, but core tweaking is limited.
That will continue to be the case with Arrow Lake, at least according to this leak from seemingly-dedicated Intel leakster Jaykihn. The fellow who leaked the Lunar Lake processors' "Core Ultra 200V" branding as well as the performance of those parts' integrated graphics is back with another leak, this time concerning the 800-series chipsets from Intel, and it looks pretty believable.
The chart shows the specifications of each 800 series chipset supposedly coming along with Intel's Arrow Lake processors. Well, more accurately, most of them are coming along after Intel's Arrow Lake processors. We were briefed on Z890 at Computex, but Intel didn't say a peep about the other chipsets, suggesting to us that the company will once again be launching its high-end "K" series CPUs along with the Z-series chipsets, and then the rest of the CPUs and chipsets will come along later, possibly at CES.
Interestingly, it seems like this generation will spur a shake-up in Intel's chipset strategy. Gone is the "Hx70" SKU, its place taken by the business-oriented Q870 platform that offers a half-step between the value-oriented B860 and top-of-the-line Z890. The W880 workstation SKU is listed here too, offering everything Z890 does besides overclocking plus ECC memory and out-of-band management features.
The key takeaways here for enthusiasts are basically this: if you want to build an Arrow Lake gaming rig, there's little reason to consider Z890 over B860 once both are out. However, overclockers and those with abundant PCIe storage (like me) will need to pony up for the Z890 chipset to have our cake (performance) and eat it too, as the Q870 line does not even support XMP memory overclocking.
Intel is committed to launching its Arrow Lake processors this quarter, so we don't have too long to wait, but according to Jaykihn, the chips aren't even in "qualification" stage yet. Hopefully they get there soon; Intel is going to need these new parts to present a fresh challenge against the assault of AMD's Ryzen 9000 processors launching at the end of this month.
