Friday, May 2nd 2025
Intel IPO Surpasses 200S Boost Profile in "Arrow Lake" Gaming Performance
In the last few weeks, Intel rolled out two new performance‑enhancing presets for its Core Ultra 200S "Arrow Lake" processors: Intel Performance Optimizations (IPO) and the factory‑approved 200S Boost overclocking profile. Independent benchmarks shared by a BiliBili user reveal that IPO delivers a slightly stronger uplift in gaming performance compared with 200S Boost. Testing centered on a Core Ultra 7 265K paired with DDR5‑8000 memory and a GeForce RTX 5090D. Seven modern titles were measured at 4K with DLSS enabled where supported. Three system presets were compared: a baseline with XMP‑enabled DDR5‑8000, Intel's 200S Boost, and Intel IPO. Under 200S Boost, Intel ramps the chip's Die‑to‑Die (D2D) fabric from 2.1 GHz to 3.2 GHz and the Next‑Generation Uncore (NGU) fabric from 2.6 GHz to 3.2 GHz, while maintaining factory CPU clock speeds. By contrast, IPO takes a more holistic approach: P‑core and E‑core boost clocks rise to 5.4 GHz and 4.9 GHz (from 5.2 GHz/4.9 GHz), the ring bus ticks up to 4.0 GHz (from 3.8 GHz), and memory is overdriven to DDR5‑8400 with tightened timings.
IPO's D2D and NGU fabrics run at 3.1 GHz due to power-and-thermal headroom trade-offs. Across the board, IPO edged out 200S Boost by roughly 2% in average frame rates and 1% in the 1% lows. In Forza Horizon 5, IPO delivered 274 FPS versus 269 FPS on 200S Boost, with 1% lows of 198 FPS (+1 FPS). Cyberpunk 2077 saw a 3% jump to 297 FPS average and a 6% gain in 1% lows. Total War: Warhammer III's averages climbed 6%, while 1% lows rose 9% under IPO. The most pronounced advantage appeared in Counter‑Strike 2 (tested at 1080p), where IPO boosted averages by 16% and 1% lows by 20 %. Watch Dogs: Legion also benefited, with an 8% average and 9% low‑end uplift. These results suggest that IPO's balanced tuning of CPU cores, ring bus, interconnects, and memory yields consistent, measurable gains over the simpler fabric‑focused 200S Boost profile. Intel has yet to greenlight the IPO's broader rollout beyond its initial OEM launch in China, but these early figures hint at meaningful real‑world improvements for Arrow Lake gamers.
Sources:
BiliBili, via Unikos's Hardware, Tom's Hardware
IPO's D2D and NGU fabrics run at 3.1 GHz due to power-and-thermal headroom trade-offs. Across the board, IPO edged out 200S Boost by roughly 2% in average frame rates and 1% in the 1% lows. In Forza Horizon 5, IPO delivered 274 FPS versus 269 FPS on 200S Boost, with 1% lows of 198 FPS (+1 FPS). Cyberpunk 2077 saw a 3% jump to 297 FPS average and a 6% gain in 1% lows. Total War: Warhammer III's averages climbed 6%, while 1% lows rose 9% under IPO. The most pronounced advantage appeared in Counter‑Strike 2 (tested at 1080p), where IPO boosted averages by 16% and 1% lows by 20 %. Watch Dogs: Legion also benefited, with an 8% average and 9% low‑end uplift. These results suggest that IPO's balanced tuning of CPU cores, ring bus, interconnects, and memory yields consistent, measurable gains over the simpler fabric‑focused 200S Boost profile. Intel has yet to greenlight the IPO's broader rollout beyond its initial OEM launch in China, but these early figures hint at meaningful real‑world improvements for Arrow Lake gamers.
11 Comments on Intel IPO Surpasses 200S Boost Profile in "Arrow Lake" Gaming Performance
No no magic here - just massive OC on the ram. Probably barely stable.
Now you have DDR 5 8400+ with "tuned timings" (probably trefi blown out as far as they can reasonably push it)
"Across the board, IPO edged out 200S Boost by roughly 2% in average frame rates and 1% in the 1% lows" is purposely misleading.
o.O - you can use 200s with 8400 tuned timings to get the same results. Bottleneck is IMC is a mile away from the cores on a slow ring, so juicing memory/ring is 99% of the pefromance gain.
The problem is there is a HUUUUGE wall going above 49 E-Core... what may feel like you got a golden chip will change once you change the multiplier to 50 then you'd need to add a significant amount of voltage thereafter, in my case I needed above 1.40 vCore to boot passed 49 E-Core from 1.37. And Ring unfortunately isn't voltage influenced so you can add as much System Agent as you can but it will still be unstable passed usually x41 multiplier.