Intel Core Ultra 7 200K Plus Leaks in First Arrow Lake Refresh Reveal
The first chip in Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake refresh generation of CPUs has been revealed in a leak of a Lenovo desktop's Geekbench results. The CPU, named Core Ultra 7 270K, has 24 cores. This makes it appear akin to the 280K, though it would presumably be weaker with such a name, making it an intriguing choice for a refresh. Usually, Intel and AMD increase performance across the range when refreshing CPUs, rather than just expanding the lineup.
Intel's Core Ultra 200 series of desktop and mobile CPUs launched at the tail end of 2024 to a muted response . Gaming performance was particularly unimpressive, falling behind the two-generation-old 14000-series CPUs. They've since improved, and price drops make them excellent value buys at the mid-range on down, but Intel is looking to refresh them. Now we know the designation for this new range will be Plus, to help separate them from their predecessors.
Credit: Geekbench
The 24-core 270K Plus managed 3,215 points in Geekbench single-core tests, and 22,720 in the multi-thread test. As VideoCardz highlights , that's almost identical to the Core Ultra 9 285K. There have been rumors that this could be thanks to faster memory support despite the potentially lower clock speeds of the 270K Plus.
Other rumors suggest there will be a Core Ultra 9 290K Plus with 24 cores and higher boost clocks, with a 14-core Core Ultra 5 250K also said to be in the works.
Intel hasn't released much official information about the Arrow Lake refresh, leaving rumors to fill the gaps. We expect a launch of these chips very soon, though, so Intel is likely to begin talking soon. Indeed, if this chip is being tested in systems in China (it used an Nvidia RTX 5090D China-exclusive GPU, so it almost certainly happened there), then we will likely see these complete systems with Arrow Lake refresh CPUs in the near future.
