Arrow Lake Retested with Latest 24H2 Updates and 0x114 Microcode

[W1zzard]

Yesterday, Intel announced that they had root-caused the majority of Arrow Lake Core Ultra 200 performance problems, and that OS updates are already available. We tested Windows 11 24H2 with the new patches, and also compare results with 23H2 and a new motherboard BIOS.

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[dirtyferret]

"It seems that Intel did not "fix Arrow Lake," but they "fixed Arrow Lake on 24H2"—why isn't the company transparent and makes that clear in their messaging?"

I don't think anyone is shocked by this unfortunately

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Thanks for the update w1z. Seems like its still good at what it's good at and unimpressive at what it's not.

Fixing 24H2 somewhat is still nice the age of having to use specific windows versions with specific processors is annoying.

 

[LastDudeALive]

Honestly, I feel like Intel is getting too much flak for Arrow Lake. While they obviously need to improve things like thread assignment with the new architecture, I feel like most of the blame needs to be assigned to Microsoft. 24H2 is absolutely broken in every single way. Every day a new article comes out about how 24H2 broke a certain feature, or gaming performance, or a software. I work in IT, and we've had to roll back 24H2 on multiple computers because it breaks multiple unrelated pieces of software that are absolutely business-critical for us, so it's not just an issue with a single feature or part of Windows.

I'm very bullish on Intel overall, even with Arrow Lake. The big-little architecture was absolutely the right move for consumers (which AMD immediately copied), they've adopted the chiplet design after seeing how well it worked for AMD (and let AMD handle much of the "teething issues), and they've moving to drop native support for x86, which I think will pair very nicely with moving to single-threaded cores and allow them to simplify core design immensely.

 

[Ravenmaster]

Lame processors. I've been buying Intel for years but this generation i switched to the 9800X3D. I'm not a fanboy I just go with whoever is fastest. Intel dropped the ball hard

 

[notoperable]

I suggest they consider a relaunch under a new name: Intel Pinocchio

 

[jpvalverde85]

Hey, why the scenario 24H2 / Dec 24 updates / Newest BIOS wasn't evaluated?

 

[brink]

Honestly, I feel like Intel is getting too much flak for Arrow Lake. While they obviously need to improve things like thread assignment with the new architecture, I feel like most of the blame needs to be assigned to Microsoft. 24H2 is absolutely broken in every single way. Every day a new article comes out about how 24H2 broke a certain feature, or gaming performance, or a software. I work in IT, and we've had to roll back 24H2 on multiple computers because it breaks multiple unrelated pieces of software that are absolutely business-critical for us, so it's not just an issue with a single feature or part of Windows.

I'm very bullish on Intel overall, even with Arrow Lake. The big-little architecture was absolutely the right move for consumers (which AMD immediately copied), they've adopted the chiplet design after seeing how well it worked for AMD (and let AMD handle much of the "teething issues), and they've moving to drop native support for x86, which I think will pair very nicely with moving to single-threaded cores and allow them to simplify core design immensely.

even if blame on microsoft is justified, all the root cause of troubles was intel starting with the p/e cores mess. and amd is also not better with the 3d-v-cached cores vs normal cores.

 

[OneMoar]

tonight on tech news with moar: in a stunning non-development science has once again proven that No microcode can make a pig fly. this and other revelations at 11 stay tuned...

 

[AcE]

and amd is also not better with the 3d-v-cached cores vs normal cores.

AMD is totally different. You must see it like this: without Vcache it's the regular CPUs for people who don't need best performance in gaming, or don't game at all, the normal variant. X3D versions are specifically for gamers, so it makes sense to bring both.

 

[LastDudeALive]

even if blame on microsoft is justified, all the root cause of troubles was intel starting with the p/e cores mess. and amd is also not better with the 3d-v-cached cores vs normal cores.

Intel was absolutely right to bring the p/e cores design to x86. ARM introduced it in 2012 and it's obviously been successful. Even Apple has it in their M chips. AMD has also adopted it in EPYC and their mobile chips. It just makes sense when you're trying to maximize both power efficiency and performance.

As for AMD, it's not a issue with the 3D cache specifically, it's been an issue ever since they introduced the multi-chiplet design. They've always had issues with thread assignment and trying to keep related threads (gaming or not) on the same CCD. That was part of the reason for Ryzen 9000's underwhelming launch, is there was thread assignment issues on the 9900X and 9950X. 3D cache just made it more obvious in gaming workloads.

There's always going to be shared responsibility between Microsoft and Intel/AMD to make a new architecture work. But innovation has to happen, and my point is that Microsoft bares much of the blame for both Arrow Lake and Zen 5 performance issues specifically because 24H2 is an obvious disaster. But the underlying philosophy of what AMD is doing (chiplets, 3D cache) and Intel is doing (single-threading, p/e cores) are solid.

 

[W1zzard]

Hey, why the scenario 24H2 / Dec 24 updates / Newest BIOS wasn't evaluated?

As explained in the text, twice. ALL 24H2 uses the newest BIOS

 

[chrcoluk]

That was fast @W1zzard I only asked for a new review some hours ago.

I am going to speculate it seems to be mostly scheduler side looking at your results, that would explain the sporadic improvements, and also why full threaded loads dont change much. The 6-30% claim seems to be

 

[wNotyarD]

That was fast @W1zzard I only asked for a new review some hours ago.

Almost as if was made by magic

 

[bobsled]

But the underlying philosophy of what AMD is doing (chiplets, 3D cache) and Intel is doing (single-threading, p/e cores) are solid.

How is single threading a solid approach? Applications are multi thread aware and (hopefully) optimised as time passes. The age of monolithic dies is done.

Intel deserves all of the flak for an ass of a launch, and I have no idea why a true IT professional would be gung-ho for a company with absolute clustercuss launches. (Alder Lake, Degradation of 13/14th Gen, corrosion, Spectre/Meltdown?)

 

[TristanX]

It seems that ARL is broken at siilicon level, doubt they can fix it in new microcode in any significant way. Maybe this is caused pairing MTL SOC wuth ARL compute tile, and they do not talk in efficient way ?
Intel now must make new revision with fixed silicon, or say godbay to some 20% of their CPU share, as gamers and many causal gamers won't buy it.

Can you also test ARL issues with drives ? It seems they broke that feature too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1grq7r2

 

[Vincero]

It seems that ARL is broken at siilicon level, doubt they can fix it in new microcode in any significant way. Maybe this is caused pairing MTL SOC wuth ARL compute tile, and they do not talk in efficient way ?
Intel now must make new revision with fixed silicon, or say godbay to some 20% of their CPU share, as gamers and many causal gamers won't buy it.

Can you also test ARL issues with drives ? It seems they broke that feature too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1grq7r2

Surprisingly they still haven't appreciably dropped the pricing of it much since launch.... I suspect once the next few updates come that'll probably be the thing that drives the performance up noticably or forces the price to drop to levels where it starts to get some market share.

 

[AcE]

Surprisingly they still haven't appreciably dropped the pricing of it much since launch....

Intel arrogance forever.

 

[Upgrayedd]

How is single threading a solid approach? Applications are multi thread aware and (hopefully) optimised as time passes. The age of monolithic dies is done.

Intel deserves all of the flak for an ass of a launch, and I have no idea why a true IT professional would be gung-ho for a company with absolute clustercuss launches. (Alder Lake, Degradation of 13/14th Gen, corrosion, Spectre/Meltdown?)

I believe they are talking about hyperthreading.

 

[LittleBro]

How about memory latency - has it improved?

This sucks so badly. Nowadays one must be extremely careful about OS version they want to use with newest hardware.

So they improved Arrow Lake on 24H2 ONLY.

Good lord, what a year for hardware.

 

[thevoiceofreason]

Like fine wine

 

[Dyatlov A]

Was the AMD 9600X / 9700X retested since, as they received also extra performance since launch?

 

[LastDudeALive]

How is single threading a solid approach? Applications are multi thread aware and (hopefully) optimised as time passes. The age of monolithic dies is done.

Intel deserves all of the flak for an ass of a launch, and I have no idea why a true IT professional would be gung-ho for a company with absolute clustercuss launches. (Alder Lake, Degradation of 13/14th Gen, corrosion, Spectre/Meltdown?)

Moving back to single-threaded cores doesn't hurt multi-thread applications. SMT was introduced to improve performance when CPUs were a single core, and then to improve thread count when core count was low because Intel was stuck on large processes. Now that we have advanced processes and can fit dozens of cores on a single CPU, Intel has shown they can get much better results by carefully optimizing smaller, single-threaded cores instead of wasting space on the components needed for SMT. Just look at the benchmarks. It matches the 9950X in multi-thread Blender rendering and bests it in Cinebench multi-thread, despite having 8 less threads and most of its cores running significantly slower than the full cores on the 9950X.

Every company has bad launches. Just look at the review for the initial Ryzen 7 1800X. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-1800x/16.html It had many of the same problems Arrow Lake has. Poor game performance with new architecture, apps/OS needed to be optimized for the dual-CCD design, etc. I'm not saying Arrow Lake is great, if you just look at performance it's a sidegrade to Rapter Lake and Zen 5. I'm saying the new architecture is the right direction. I will not be surprised when AMD follows suite with single-threading cores and big/little desktop CPUs in the next generation or two. It has obvious advantages to performance.

 

[TristanX]

Surprisingly they still haven't appreciably dropped the pricing of it much since launch.... I suspect once the next few updates come that'll probably be the thing that drives the performance up noticably or forces the price to drop to levels where it starts to get some market share.

ARL names 285, 265 and 245 suggest they knew it is broken and won't be true successor for Raptors X900, X700 and X600. Maybe they do quick revision with fixed perf and names 290, 270 and 260.

 

[phanbuey]

ARL names 285, 265 and 245 suggest they knew it is broken and won't be true successor for Raptors X900, X700 and X600. Maybe they do quick revision with fixed perf and names 290, 270 and 260.

This logic makes sense, so therefore there is very little chance Intel marketing thought like this when naming the chips.

This is an intelligent retroactive rationalization, though.