Intel's current 14th Gen CPUs will be replaced by the new Arrow Lake-S Core Ultra range, which may ... [+]
Details of Intel's next generation of Arrow Lake desktop processors for gamers and content creators are starting to trickle through the rumor mill and the latest is yet more information that points to the successor to its current 14th Gen models not gaining any extra cores, instead sticking with 24 cores on the flagship model - the Core Ultra 9 285K.
Revealed in a post on Benchlife (via Videocardz), The Core Ultra 9 285K (24 cores), Core Ultra 7 265K (20 cores) and Core Ultra 5 245K ( 14 cores) seem to match exactly the core counts on its existing K-series models, namely the Core i9-14900K, Core i7-14700K and Core i5-14600K.
Still on rumor-level status and to be taken with a generous pinch of salt, this glimpse reveals that Intel isn't looking to boost core counts in an effort to beat AMD in the highly anticipated shootout between the two companies later this year. Indeed, AMD's Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 processors are also expected to retain their Ryzen 7000 core count configurations.
SANTA CLARA, CA - JANUARY 16: The Intel logo is displayed outside of the Intel headquarters on ... [+]
The difference for both AMD and Intel, though, is that they are launching new architectures and also shrinking the manufacturing process that builds them. The former will see a boost in instructions per cycle or IPC, which means that clock-for-clock a newer, more efficient architecture will be faster. This is why for the moment, the lack of core count increases may not matter, because even without them the newer CPUs will be faster in general.
The manufacturing process can often dictate how much power a new range of CPUs needs and the frequencies its cores can reach. Shrinking the components on a CPU die means they require less power to operate and usually offer higher peak frequencies too. We have both of these factors coming with Intel's Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs.
However, perhaps an even bigger question is whether or not Intel has ditched hyper-threading. Allowing each core to access two lines of code and performing work on separate 'threads', Intel and AMD CPUs have included some form of hyper-threading (with AMD it's called Simultaneous Multi-Tasking) for years and it can massively boost multi-threaded workload performance by allowing cores to work on two threads of code at the same time to fill in any idle moments.
The rumor is Intel will not include hyper-threading with its Alder Lake-S processors, which could see reduced multi-threaded performance. Some industry commentators are even speculating that multi-threaded performance may even be worse than the current 14th Gen models as a result given cores counts are the same. We won't know until review benchmarks land and we'll see if the improvements in performance are enough to counteract the the rumored reduction in thread count.
Meanwhile, we do know that the new Arrow Lake-S CPUs will require a new processor socket and that means new motherboards, although existing coolers are expected to be compatible. The dual compatibility with DDR5 and DDR4 memory will come to an end with the older DDR4 memory no longer being supported. We'll know more later in 2024, with AMD expected to break cover with details of its plans for the second half of 2024 at the Computex trade show in Taiwan in June.
